Ok, this is a new series by an author I have read for a long time. I’m glad to see him going with a different storyline other than the Argonauts. Still, this one has similar features. Eric (no last name as I can find) is the main character in this book. He is killed in the first few pages. Yeah, he’s involved in an armed robbery and gets shot in the head. He’s definitely dead!
Well, how do you write a story about a dead guy? This is one way. Eric regains consciousness only to find out that he’s really been dead for about two-hundred years. Now he’s not. But he’s not actually a human any more either! No, Eric had a policy that allowed his engrams to be stored until such time as they might technologically be re-used in an advanced age. Now, two-hundred years later, his brain has been written into a digital brain encased in a metallic robot. He’s not actually a cyborg, but a robot with an A.I. built from his old brain. His emotions have been tamped down so that he can’t really react to his current situation until he has passed all the required test. You see, some people brought back as robots don’t take to well to the transformation. There is some pretty strange science going on and I don’t understand all of it.
Lets just say that Eric has accepted what he now is. And what he now is, is a soldier for the government still fighting terrorist! While he once did a stint in the Army and did fight terrorist then, he thought he was finished with that, but now he’s right back in the fight. But, this time, he doesn’t really care. He has no emotional response to the situation so everything he does seems to be OK. All his other military team members are also robots coming from the same process as him. They also have few emotions, but, with their programmable brains, they have learned how to fight very well and very effectively. Eric finds that he has all that knowledge also and isn’t really in training, but just getting used to his new surroundings.
As I said, this is kind of a strange book. These robots can escape their situation by going into virtual realities (VR) and become whomever they wish to be and do whatever they want. So, they can act, look, and be human in VR and that’s how they past most of their time while not fighting.
Then something happens. It might be aliens, but in their part of the world, every piece of metal is gone as well as all the humans. Something has hit Earth or at least part of it and destroyed most all living things. Eric believes they have a new enemy to fight, but due to his programming, he can only fight if the enemy attacks first. That’s not going to work, so Eric begins working on a way to restore his and his robot friends emotions; to take control of their own destiny.
They might not live to see that freedom and they might not even be able to handle it. Still he presses on. Things are going to change as if they haven’t changed enough already.