Soul Bound

When AI is on the cusp of growing beyond human control,                can one woman affect the outcome? After AI systems have grown beyond human control, hindsight will make it easy to identify the cusp of that transition: which person had the final opportunity to choose what AIs would value, and the moment at which that opportunity expired. Until then, every elite with a hunger for power is going to view gaining that opportunity as a winner-takes-all competition with the highest of stakes - total control over the life of every human alive or yet to be born.  A competition they fear losing so desperately that any action likely to gain them an advantage seems worth risking, no matter how despotic it is or how damaging to others; even if that action just increases their future freedom to act or decreases the future ability of others to take effective action against them. No wonder life is grim in a 2045 so close to the cusp that the leading elites can act unhindered by the pronouncements of purchased politicians or the mutterings of the machine-replaceable majority.  But is their victory assured? Soul Bound is the tale of one such replaced woman, Nadine, who was reluctantly persuaded to try gaming for the first time; of the vivid world of myth, magic and memorable characters that changed her; and of a new technology that would ultimately turn her journey into one final chance for humanity to break free. Content warnings: diverse gender and sexuality representation (no graphic sex scenes, though), detailed discussion of various ideas and concepts from science (skippable), occasional character stat tables, historic references, script style dialog format, long novel (over 500,000 words at last count), large cast of NPCs PLACES TO START First Chapter Art Buy the series as paperbacks RELEASE SCHEDULE: Wednesdays and Saturdays