The Cloud

Elizabeth Lyon, amazon reviewer, Five Stars

How do we know what is real and what is fake? What is programmed into us versus what we can freely choose? Is there a “group mind,” a way to tap into a collective force for the good of all or have we long ago been seduced into an easily manipulated hive mentality? The Cloud is a riveting exploration of these questions at a time when implementing the right answers becomes just as urgently needed. Not unlike the power of The Matrix, The Cloud taps into a supra-reality that transcends the simple boundary of fact and fiction.

The Cloud is a captivating story that projects our collective fears into a near and very possible future where little separates virtual reality from reality, and whoever controls VR holds the most power. The thoughts of the wealthy elite as well as the starving poor (the “unproductives” called Slags) are monitored by “eye” implants, and those who disobey are annihilated by a “Mantis,” a VR mental monster controlled by the ruling Cloud empire. Minsheng, a genetically enhanced former army commander, plans on becoming the Cloud’s dictator. He directs the entertainment division in 22nd century L.A. at a time when everyone is addicted to VR entertainment, including or especially the sex-bot programs. Minsheng hires the world’s best virtual reality programmer, Blaise Pascal, because Blaise is the only one who can code a VR series so addictive that it drives its players to suicide. Mensheng will unleash it as a weapon of mass murder, for genocide of billions of Slags as a means of reducing overpopulation in the face of limited resources and imminent global climate change catastrophes, and thus secure himself as the world’s sole ruler.

After Blaise completes the fatal program, Mensheng promises him eternal life through genomic age-reversal technology. Mensheng keeps Blaise’s sex addiction slated by femme fatale Mitsuko, Mensheng’s daughter, who is also a talented VR programmer. Grieving the long-ago suicide of his ex-wife and murder of their daughter, and horrified to learn what the program he’s hired to create will be used for, Blaise seeks relief, if not oblivion, in Slag dives. There he meets and is seduced by Kristina Sun, who shows him the underground hacker and Slag civilization she is building. She plans a rebellion against The Cloud using weaponized nanobot technology. Her success depends upon Blaise uploading a virus her team has created that will destroy the program Blaise has been hired to perfect. Besides her love, Kristina offers Blaise a powerful gift of learning “curseil” powers, how to create a unified force field by joining with others via meditation, for blocking VR mental controls and advancing collective good. Blaise is caught between good and evil, and his love of two women.

The author, Robert Rivenbark, offers the reader believable characters who must make moral choices while tempted by promises of ever-lasting love, sex, security, luxury, and power.