Intelligent thinking machines and cyberspace are investigated on the college campus at one of Americas most prestigious and illustrious institutes of higher learning. Cutting edge robotics labs attempt to blend artificial intelligence and micro-organisms with man’s propensity for greed and lust. This third Jack Kelly mystery leads to the basic question of existence and survival.
MIT graduate students are brutally murdered and ex-Boston Police Homicide detective Jack Kelly is hired by the father of one.
The murdered students are part of a group that works at MITs Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The lab has recently developed a prototype for an all-purpose domestic robot that is expected to revolutionize modern society. Science fiction has become a reality. The Prototype Project has developed a moving intelligent machine that is wirelessly connected to the internet at all times. The robots think, adapt, research, network, and they learn.
Governments and their agencies, as well as the world’s major corporations are interested in manufacturing, developing, and servicing the domestic robots. The human-like robots will soon become essential to every modern home and business on the planet. These all-purpose domestic assistants are going to be very big business. And there are moral and philosophical questions to be answered.
One AI Lab grad student, Tom Peters, has left the pack and with money supplied by Las Vegas card counters and methamphetamine sales has started an escort service which is a thinly veiled prostitution ring. With his cold cash and connections to a very rich and influential group he realizes the huge sums of money and power that can be derived from the control of The Prototype Project.
