Cyberdrome

Book excerpt: When Earth is threatened by a deadly plague, a young man enters a virtual world to find the key to humanity's survival. Will he find it in time? A man-made, nanotech plague has ravaged America's heartland and will soon spread to the rest of the world. Our only salvation might be found in an unlikely place: an advanced computer system housing a hundred virtual worlds, each one a replica of Earth and populated by billions of digital "people" who have no idea that they are only programs, living simulated lives, and secretly monitored for new technology that could save us all. This is Cyberdrome. When the son of the company's founder is called in after one of his programs is used to attack Cyberdrome, Alek Grey is shocked to learn that both his father and ex-fiancée have become trapped in neural interface with the system. What's even more concerning is that the reason for the lockdown might be the emergence of a smarter-than-human intelligence in one of those hundred worlds, an intelligence that seems to want out! Alek knows of only one way to rescue the people he loves, but will he jeopardize the rest of humanity to save them?