A disruptive algorithm takes over the modern world, leaving people to die in slumlands.
Her mind and body shattered by her trauma, Samanta applies for a spot in a questionable safe haven: the MallFam project. She steps onto the mall bus, lets the project-leading Luddite cult mount a metal collar around her neck, and leaves the Slumland behind. She’s finally safe from the AI-ruined world…
...but not from herself.
The only thing worse than the abandoned mall is the world outside.
Sam moved into the mall voluntarily. She accepted the heavy collar mounted on her neck and the title of “Serf.” It’s better than living outside in the hellish Slumland, all that’s left of our civilization since the AI’s algorithm declared humanity obsolete.
She’s really no different from all the other desperate people who live in the mall with her to escape the lawless world outside… even if she does have a secret that would terrify them all.
When Sam refuses to accept her role in the mall experiment, her defiance drives her to a dreadful choice. Wait for the people conducting the experiment to come and get her. Or go out all alone into the horrors of Slumland.
She’s on a quest to find her missing father – and hand him over to his enemies.
Sam’s only goal is to save the Mall and all the friends she left behind there. To accomplish that goal, she’ll have to fulfill a mission for the sinister Charna, the most powerful human servant of the FAMA AI.
Charna wants her to locate the missing Manu Hernandoz, FAMA’s most brilliant programmer – and the creator of the AI. Manu just so happens to be Sam’s own father, who abandoned her in the cannibal Slumland before escaping off to Europe.
To complete her quest, Sam will need the help of an unstable and sometimes murderous young woman, as well as a robotic Picker created from the body of her dead boyfriend.
And she’ll have to do it before Charna runs out of patience – and well before the decaying AI decides to kill them all.
Not all quests have a happy ending. What do you do when yours has ended in failure?
Sam’s days at the Mall are long behind her. These days she lives in Slumland, not far from her adopted sister Ronja and the few survivors of her old life. Her quest was a failure, and she has to live with that.
Her life with her boyfriend Alix is even further in the past, even though he was brought back for a while as her Picker bodyguard. Now Alix is lying in the basement of the FAMA building while Sam’s father Manu tries to find some way to restore him to life. Even if Manu does succeed, she doesn’t know which Alix she’ll get back – lost lover or weirdly innocent sidekick.
As for Charna, the head of FAMA, she has utterly lost her mind. And worse than that, she’s the only one who can control the increasingly erratic and dangerous AI that runs what’s left of the world.
To build a better life among the ruins, Sam will have to confront Charna and the mad AI. But the confrontation could easily cost her what little she has left.
