Cortex Machina (ePub)

It is the end of the 21st century. Attempts at reversing global climate change have failed catastrophically, causing a rapid meltdown of the ice caps and leaving Earth entirely under water. Only a fraction of humanity has survived and is forced to live on The Tower: an 8-mile-high, 6-mile-wide arcology, housing over 300 million people that is governed by Dr. Jupitus Gaius Fortuna, the owner of Cortex Machina Corporation.

Ex-cop Attila Hunter is a failed private detective who can't get over the murder of his mentor Capt. Gabrielle Vargas. The prenatal death of his twin sister and the memory of his abusive mother keep him from forming healthy relationships. When he gets hired by Dr. Fortuna's daughter Lara to investigate an assassination attempt on her father, he begins an odyssey that leads him from the slums of Midheights to the luxurious Clearsky and down to the Uninhabitable Zone. Soon he finds himself in the middle of a larger plot where the stakes are much higher than he anticipated. On his journey he encounters, among others, a truck-sized brain-in-a-tank that is about to become self-aware, a living H.R. Giger exposition and a pair of Sufi/Buddhist conjoined twins who rule a mutant empire. In the climactic battle against phantom forces he eventually has no other option but to face his inner demons to prevent civil war and save the remnants of humanity from mental slavery.