Rasere's War (Rasere's Awakening, #1)

In the next 500 years, mankind undergoes an amazing transformation. A world wracked by wars, political strife, and natural disasters is brought to heel by a benevolent Artificial Intelligence which calls itself Gaiana. It's behind the scenes manipulation aided by a persuasive soft sell of an ideology embracing rationality and self-control tames the negative impulses of man and eventually propels it into an age of prosperity never seen before. People lead calm, productive lives (those who actually have jobs). Crime is virtually nonexistent, religion has been rendered meaningless as obsolete as a "heaven on earth" is deemed to exist. The very few who do not conform are isolated to various regions on the globe: South Asia, Africa, and Antarctica. On a negative note, risky ventures are now entirely out of the hands of man and in the hands of robots and AI. Men are not regular visitors to space, they no longer dive the ocean depths, nor do they build anything by hand. This idleness, coupled with their repressed emotions began simmering beneath the surface. The only safe place to express themselves or emulate forbidden activities were the advanced Virtual Worlds or Simulations. Even there the rules governing actions and expressions are strict. But not all the worlds are so strict. A few operate behind well-protected firewalls and maintained a low visibility. While they may seem tame to us, the 21st-century reader, to the 25th-century person, they were thrilling. One of those worlds was Simvie Loko. Simvie Loko was an Earth-sized globe featuring a welcoming environment with many tourist themed islands, sprawling grasslands, and snowcapped mountains. Due to its low profile on the Network, a number of dissatisfied Users (as the visitors were known) would meet in privacy and discuss their dissatisfaction with their real lives. These talks would often culminate in real life activities that disrupted the peace. This disruption soon caught the attention of Gaiana and his helpers. Once it was traced to subversive activity in a few virtual worlds, he decided to act. Caught in the middle are the sentient AI inhabitants (NPCs) who exist only to serve their human (User) visitors. If Gaiana prevails, the NPCs face certain extinction. Follow the exploits of one of those NPCs, GoSpeed Rasere, who finds herself recruited into a war she is totally unprepared for. Will her side prevail? If so, how will she and her kind carry on afterward with their newfound freedoms? Read Rasere's War, the first in the Rasere series to find out!