The theft of technology is a dirty business, especially when a Chinese company opts for infiltration, kidnapping, and murder to get what it wants. Chairman Liu Zheng recruits a mole to extract key materials from Dr. Peter Valois of Cybernetics Implementation of San Diego.
Valois has created the hardware and software to reduce animal brains to data bits in a computer file and leapt ahead to transfer those files to cyborgs—new robots with biosynthetic brains, half electronic, half organic that can analyze and modify animal files. Without approval Valois reintroduces those better-adjusted brain files back into the donor animals to change behavior. Humans will be next, sometime in the future. Zheng sends his mole, Antoinette, to get blueprints for a sensor module and the program that controls brain recording. She seduces her way close to Valois and discovers his weakness: his drug-addicted teenage son Dan. Valois is about to take the risky step of curing his own son’s addiction by brain-file conditioning when Antoinette grabs Dan. Her ransom demand must be paid promptly or Dan dies. Valois delivers files and blueprints, but instead of being released, Dan is taken to Mexico until the materials can be verified. Then he’s disposable. Trapped in a fortified hideaway, Dan’s only hope is a humanoid robot. |