System Purge
Author
Ross Willard
Author Bio
Born in Michigan and raised in Texas, Ross Willard has planted roots all across the nation, and then ripped them out to move on to somewhere new. One of the few constants in his life has been writing. Ross has been a speculative fiction writer in one form or another for as long as he can remember. A longtime member of the Penpointers critique group, Ross can often be found reading or writing at his local independent coffee shop, or working on his website, www.rosswriter.com. Ross has published about a dozen short stories in various magazines and websites over the last few years, and at the beginning of 2013, self published his first novel, System Purge, book one in his ongoing series, Digital Evolution. The second book, System Failure, came out in August of 2013. Ross resides in College Station, Texas, where he spends as much of his time writing as he can.
Ross includes, among his influences, Jim Butcher, David Brin, and Carol Berg. He is currently working on book three of Digital Evolution, and on the first book of a new, urban fantasy series. He is a big believer in self publishing, and is working to reach a point when he can support himself entirely on his writing.
Description
System Purge, book one of Digital Evolution, is a story in three parts. One third of the book follows Tommy, a 14 year old prodigy who struggles to connect to the people around him, and desperately wants to know why his birth parents gave him up for adoption. One third of the book follows Samuel, a self aware program, and the leader of the Society of Machines, as he tries to guide his people into a brighter future, while negotiating the complex political intrigue and backstabbing of his own people. The final third of the book is dedicated to Rowan, a genetically engineered soldier who is returning home after years overseas. He finds himself representing his House in a delicate negotiation between the twelve genetically engineered houses as they attempt to gain access to power and resources within the U.S. government, without revealing their existence.
As the book progresses we learn that Samuel’s people have emerged from a tumultuous civil war, and that Samuel’s greatest fear is that the war will be restarted. We also discover that the Twelve Houses are both aware and terrified of the Society of Machines, and that it is only in the face of this threat that they are willing to put their differences aside and work together. But the question of who Tommy is, and how he is connected to these hidden communities, that ties the book together. We learn as the book progresses, that Samuel has been keeping Tommy’s existence and nature a secret from both his own people, and the Twelve Houses, but has been watching the boy with keen interest from afar.
It is not until the end of the book, when Tommy travels on a school trip to Washington, that riddles are finally answered, and the book reaches its dramatic and violent conclusion.
Book excerpt
“Sir, the warden is expecting you.”
Samuel nodded and followed the man in the prison-guard uniform.
They walked into a packed room, but the two moved through it easily. The crowd parted like a curtain in front of them. Heads turned as they passed, all eyes fixed on Samuel.
Samuel was, for lack of a better description, utterly average in appearance. He was of average height and average build with average features. His light brown hair came over the top of his ears, not short enough to be military, and not long enough to be unruly. He was dressed in a conservative business outfit that looked decent without looking expensive.
The only thing about his physical appearance a casual observer might find noteworthy were his eyes. Samuel’s eyes were bright green, a piercing shade, and they seemed to take in the entire world and see right through it at the same time.
Samuel looked around as they walked.
It was visiting day at the fake prison and a hundred and twenty two A.S. units were coming in for their annual upgrade. Prisons made an excellent cover for manufacturing plants. Large, busy facilities that received regular influxes of people and supplies, but which had a sort of foreboding that usually kept the public at arms distance and discouraged casual interest.
This particular facility manufactured, repaired, and upgraded ‘frames’, the robotic bodies that the A.S. wore to look human.
Their biggest concerns, in terms of security, were making sure that no human was transferred into the facility, and seeing to it that the occasional inspections were performed by one of their own people. Occasionally, of course, representatives of some rehabilitation program or religious group would stop by, so several facsimiles prison blocks were set up, but the majority of the compound was dedicated to the uninterrupted production, recycling, and repair of frames.
Samuel followed the guard past the supply room which was open, revealing mechanical arms, legs and torsos. They headed through one of the prison block replicas, mostly empty except for a few men in jump suits pushing carts full of computer components and disturbingly realistic limbs.
“You weren’t here during the war, were you?” Samuel knew the answer. Rhetorical questions, however, were part of his social behavior program.
“No sir.”
“Everything was much more hurried back then. People were so desperate to get the replacements and upgrades.” He shook his head at the memory, another bit of human mimicry he had written into his programming. “The parts were of lower quality, and it took us so much longer to make them. This facility alone performed an average of six hundred and eighty repairs a week, and about the same number of upgrades. Everybody wanted upgrades. They wanted the best odds they could get in case they were ever hunted, or simply found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were producing at nine tenths of current efficiency, but the assemblers were working at nearly a hundred percent capacity.”
Genre
Fiction
