After technology robbed Randy Hutton of his livelihood, will it also claim his mind?

Randy Hutton had fallen on hard times. He had lost his management job in customer service, “a victim of technology” as his manager had put it during his exit interview. Randy, however, described it as being ousted by little more than a glorified answering machine.

His wife, Isabella Perez-Hutton, on the other hand, was the up-and-coming star at Breakthrough Systems, leading a project that would help artificially intelligent computer systems work with their human counterparts. All the smart machines needed, she reasoned, was a better understanding of the strengths—creativity, intuition—and limitations of their human coworkers.

The irony of the couple’s situation—she building better, faster, smarter technology—and him displaced by a simple form of it wasn’t lost on either of them. That irony, however, wasn’t the reason for the violence that surrounded Isabella at work—a suicide, a demolished lab, a murdered programmer. Rather, the justification for those acts came from a voice deep within Randy’s head, a voice that tormented him endlessly, making sleep impossible and retaliation against those who would destroy him his only sanctuary.

And although Isabella’s new friend, Nicole Veles, came to suspect Randy, would it make any difference? Because by the time she came to this position, husband and wife were deep in the Colorado wilderness and Randy had killing on his mind.