In an all-too-possible, not-so-distant future dominated by AI, universal basic income, and “subtirees” living pod-bound lives of leisure, idealistic, semi-slacker hacker Stu Reigns dreams of more.
When Stu’s brilliant ex, Roxy Zhang, develops digital immortality, the world’s powerful elite scramble to secure their eternal existence. Enter Chuck Rosti, a merciless, terminally ill tycoon made more dangerous since he’s on the brink of conviction for massive fraud. His plan? Coerce Stu into helping get Roxy’s groundbreaking invention so “Feds can incarcerate my corpse.”
Caught between a sick billionaire, a Russian mob, digital mind clones, and a shrewd, devout Southern matriarch, Stu gets tangled in a twisted, high-stakes, ‘inverted heist.’
But as betrayals mount and revenge includes murder, Stu and new allies must race to save lives and seek justice in humanity’s digital immortality.
Fans of smart cyberpunk, like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, or sci-fi with humor, as in Andy Weir’s The Martian or John Scalzi’s Redshirts, will love Immortality Bytes.
LINKS to 15 accolades (including four 1st-place wins):
https://linktr.ee/immortalitybytes
Reviews:
1) "Our Verdict:✓GET IT" — Kirkus Reviews
2) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5-Stars — Manhattan Book Review
3) ✓EDITOR'S PICK — Publishers Weekly's BookLife Reviews
1-Minute Trailer: https://youtu.be/Mr9eIe4TKOg
https://corpaniaproductions.com/immortality-bytes
In the years soon known as 20NF, businesses encroached on the sky. Delivery drone traffic was so frequent that, at a distance, they looked like bafflingly efficient murmurations of starlings. Product-transportation robots trudged out of “Pie in the Sky” Italian restaurants and loaded mega stacks of 20 pizzas into FDDs (“Food Delivery Drones”) the size of refrigerators.
Sadly, still no jetpacks. Humans were in enough peril moving in two dimensions on roads; the exponential increase in the danger of a third axis didn’t make sense. Vehicles drove more lanes since street parking ended. Sure, that was because most cars were driverless, but also, the number of destinations worth leaving your home for kept decreasing.
Conspicuously low-traffic cityscapes had 90% fewer storefronts; those still in operation had display samples only, no inventory.
In almost every neighborhood, one could find a “Distribution Relay Station” used by AMACAE delivery services — the Alibaba/Meta/Alphabet/Costco/Amazon/eBay Cooperative. Ever-present, autonomous construction robots built them, with human supervisors functioning as bored babysitters to perfectly behaved children.
Back in the 2030s, the international press marveled at a milk crate-sized MakerBot (3D printer) as it finished producing Augmented Reality glasses. A sign flashed “Testing” as robot arms measured its specs in seconds and displayed “Passed.” This MakerBot thus passed its own quality control test, having itself just been manufactured by a gigantic Dumpster-sized “Mega-MakerBot.” Once machines started making machines, the long-term viability of human careers decayed.
People with the most vulnerable immune systems carried belt-mounted pathogen air meters. Due to newfound prudence, all bio-labs had international inspectors, and workers endured four-month, submarine-style deployments bookended by one-month quarantines.
Continued improvement made some boast this was a “post-scarcity” world. While no one lived on the street or begged for food, no one considered this heaven on earth either. How tragic, given endless leisure, so few kept their ambitious “if only I had time” promises. The combination of work-free days, limitless food delivery, and unlimited streaming and gaming made comfortable hammocks function as veal pens. The hedonistic treadmill led the idle to expect praise for saying, “I work hard to have a good time.” Society saw this trajectory as unchangeable, wondering who’d want it changed.
Maybe because nobody could imagine an era realistically much better, most sort of believed “we’re living in the future” despite humanity’s natural drive to always want more. What started as a facetious meme became a trend — calling the current date “twenty-near-future” or “20NF” for efficient posts and messages.
The most popular, futile question on social media asked, “What job do we even hope our grandchildren could do better than a robot?”
The most popular response was, “Hey, it’s 20NF. It’s not about jobs. It’s occupations, anything to eat the day. Get a good hobby.”
___________________________________________
Chapter 12 - HUMOR SAMPLE/EXCERPT:
The next morning, Yevgeny surveyed the carless street and texted Pyotr: “Stu & Maria left. Apt empty.”
The message got an emoji thumb-up, so Yevgeny gave Dimi a real thumb-up.
Dimi looked up at Stu’s apartment and wagged his finger horizontally. “Why do I have to do it?”
Yevgeny held up his disabled arms and asked, “Really?”
“You use that excuse a lot. Not doing a lot of favors for your disabled rights movement. One of these times, you’re gonna have to dirty your hands.”
“Climb the damn wall, Dimi.”
“I can break front door, take elevator, and then break Stu’s
door. I promise it’ll be faster.”
“No. Brute force is for reckless idiots or when you are against reckless idiots. Straight-up robbing — it leaves too much evidence for cops and especially for Stu. Who knows how many countermeasures he’s installed?”
“My point exactly. So, what’s the difference?” Dimi stood his ground on this.
“Pyotr said you climb. So that is all,” Yevgeny said, trying a harsher pitch.
Dimi’s head lurched back, “So, okay. You should’ve said at beginning.”
Yevgeny helped Dimi rig up professional rock-climbing gear. Dimi kicked his metal crampons against the wall to check their integrity. He was about to start his ascent when Yevgeny handed him a realistic-looking Halloween mask of a Latino face. “Wear this.”
“I have balaclava in my car.”
“No, we want every misdirection possible. This face makes you resemble old classmate of Stu’s.”
Dimi liked Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther and Captain America series for Marvel Comics. Subsequently, he got into Coates’ essays and non-fiction books. Dimi could always perform his vicious mafia enforcer assignments, but he nevertheless had a moral code. Everyone has a line they won’t cross. Dimi held the “Latino
Man” mask and cleared his throat. “The thing is… I’m 100% Russian, so I don’t feel comfortable doing such cultural appropriation and perpetuating racist stereotypes.
I’m a violent thief, not a white supremacist.”
“If Pyotr wants you in a Pope Margaret the first mask, dressed like Indian belly dancer, singing… I don’t know… those tween, New Wave, Nigerian K-Pop songs in most offensive accent, you do it. Now stop stalling.”
“Yeah, but, so you know, Ahmed Olade’s music is not for just tweens. I argue he single-handedly resurrected BTS’s career last year. So don’t be pop-snob, Yevgeny. Or a racist. It’s not cool, bro.”
“Dimi! Climb up the fucking building!!”
Dimi shrugged, popped up on the wall, and scaled a few floors with well-trained fleetness. He was indeed the best choice for the job. At Stu’s apartment window, Dimi pressed a hand-held transmitter, which activated Stu’s automatic window opener. “It worked,” Dimi said, comforted by accurate plans with no surprises.
Out of the corner of Yevgeny’s eye, he spotted a police drone on a standard tour of the neighborhood. He reached for his EMP gun, aimed, and knocked it out of the sky. “I had to drop a drone. You got maybe eight minutes to get done and out of there.” Yevgeny radioed to Dimi’s earpiece.
“Roger that,” Dimi said while sliding inside Stu’s kitchenette.
Tillman leaped on Dimi, barking three times at a medium volume.
“солнце, you’re such a handsome wolf,” Dimi said while giving Tillman affectionate alpha-petting. That was another reason Dimi was the best pick; he was good with dogs. Tillman smiled and laid on his back for a few more tummy rubs. Dimi toured the apartment and entered Stu’s home office with all his computers.
The counter’s smart TV sprang on with Digi-Stu framed actual size, “Tillman? Tillman! It’s me, daddy’s here.”
Tillman jumped to attention and rolled his head to try to recognize him.
“It’s me. Or, for practical purposes, it’s me. In two dimensions, you should think it’s me. Now listen. There’s a very bad man in there.” Digi-Stu pointed around the corner.
Tillman wagged his tail, convinced and ready to accept Digi-Stu and his orders. Tillman pointed his nose around the corner to confirm.
“Yes, good boy! The cops will be here in three minutes. So you gotta keep the bad guy here and don’t let him take anything.” Digi-Stu took a moment for reflection. “Yeah, this is probably too much info for a canine. Ah, body language nuances are important.” Digi-Stu pantomimed biting and holding while Tillman enthusiastically panted.
“Be careful. Stu’s on Facetime with the dog,” Yevgeny said, radioing to Dimi.
“Understood. Don’t worry, I’m leaving now, anyway. I have Stu’s hard drives,” Dimi said while placing them in his bag.
He turned the corner and…
Till pounced on Dimi, this time ferociously and terrifyingly. Dimi realized his dog-whispering didn’t work this time. He tried to fend him off, grabbing Tillman around the snout to keep his jaws closed. But Tillman parried, freeing his jaws for more attacks. Dimi punched Tillman, who yelped in pain, giving him time to get up.
Dimi turned to the window. Tillman locked onto Dimi’s bag. This was a tug of war, and Tillman would never give up. Back and forth they went. Dimi tried lifting both the bag and Tillman off the ground, but Tillman got leverage by instinctively using the corner of the counter.
A faint police siren in the distance grew louder and was joined by a second.
“You hear that?” Dimi asked Yevgeny.
“Yeah. They’re faster than we expected. Get out of there.”
“Crazy-big dog has the bag with the drives.” “Then shoot the dog!” Yevgeny demanded.
“I’m not shooting a dog, Yevgeny.” Dimi had some hard lines he wouldn’t cross.
Digi-Stu addressed Dimi, “Wise choice. Hate to have a John Wick-style vendetta here.”
“Ha! I don’t give a half-a-shit about you. I’ll kill you and your whole family for fun. But dogs are angels on earth,” Dimi shouted between furious pulls of the bag.
The police sirens grew louder, two blocks or closer.
“Fuck this,” Dimi said, giving up the bag. He fastened a rappelling wire to the windowsill and bounded down in seconds.
Yevgeny had the car running. “You got ‘em?” he asked.
Dimi said, “This dog might be a bear. I hear cop sirens. We gotta go.”
“I don’t hear… Okay,” He hit the pedal, and they sped off.
“Stu’s drives were probably massively encrypted, anyway.”
Yevgeny checked back at Dimi and said, “Oh, man. Don’t get blood everywhere. I didn’t get the insurance on this rental.”
“What? Oh, shit,” Dimi said, noticing Tilman’s teeth slashed his punching hand.
Yevgeny said, “You gonna need rabies shots. Two weeks of the needles.”
“No way Stu’s dog has rabies.”
“Once rabies takes hold, you die. Not worth the risk that dog just got rabies from squirrel in the park. You take the shots.”
“Fine, take me to hospital,” Dimi said, clutching his wound.
“Ah, Pyotr says we only go to urgent care. Is good enough and less price.”
Digi-Stu finished praising Tillman. “You’re the best,
Tillman! Daddy’s so proud of you!!”
Tillman wagged his tail with glee and jumped around in excitement. The sirens abruptly ended. “You don’t want to hear those noisy, fake sirens from these speakers. Do you, boy?”