Any feedback on this blurb for Ever Sleep, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, 72K, would be appreciated.
Raphael Lennon, thought dead after committing terrorist acts against the Eliot Group—a powerful alliance of AI firms—has hidden in the California Sierra for four years. His partner, Addy, shares the rough but rewarding existence. To avoid tracking, they’ve forsworn electronic communication. When Addy leaves camp to buy supplies but doesn't return, Raphael sets out to find her, guided by signs from nature. He soon encounters the disturbing world that an AI-driven culture has created, including banning human art and enslaving artists. Even the Group’s prime mission: reviving dead individuals as cyborgs has taken a dark twist. The newly-minted humanoids suffer defects, leading to comas after a few weeks of human activities.
On his trek, he meets Maya, a precocious nine-year-old, who guides him into the gated city of Dream Minus 72, where the Group keeps her cyborg parents. She tells Raphael that his destination, Longfish, is a center of Eliot activity, and that they’re building something there that may furnish the humanoids with dreams, thought to be the key to their reanimation. Raphael promises Maya he’ll return with the dreams that will bring her mother and father back to life. He orders her to stay in Dream Minus, but she secretly follows him to Longfish.
In that city, he tracks Addy to a Fungi Farm, where prisoners cultivate the mushrooms used to create the cyborg brains. From one of the inmates, Raphael learns that the Eliot Group, led by Quaestor Nuart, has taken Addy to the Project in the Sequoia National Forest. After fighting mechmutts and mercenaries to get to Addy, Raphael is captured, identified as the AI terrorist, and brought inside a rectangular building that contains a nine square mile sequoia grove, where he is kept as a prize fugitive. While resisting torture, he must unlock the Project's secrets, break free of his handlers, undermine the Eliot Group's malevolent plans, and with Addy and Maya save the world from AI dominance.
Raphael Lennon, thought dead after committing terrorist acts against the Eliot Group—a powerful alliance of AI firms—has hidden in the California Sierra for four years. His partner, Addy, shares the rough but rewarding existence. To avoid tracking, they’ve forsworn electronic communication. When Addy leaves camp to buy supplies but doesn't return, Raphael sets out to find her, guided by signs from nature. He soon encounters the disturbing world that an AI-driven culture has created, including banning human art and enslaving artists. Even the Group’s prime mission: reviving dead individuals as cyborgs has taken a dark twist. The newly-minted humanoids suffer defects, leading to comas after a few weeks of human activities.
On his trek, he meets Maya, a precocious nine-year-old, who guides him into the gated city of Dream Minus 72, where the Group keeps her cyborg parents. She tells Raphael that his destination, Longfish, is a center of Eliot activity, and that they’re building something there that may furnish the humanoids with dreams, thought to be the key to their reanimation. Raphael promises Maya he’ll return with the dreams that will bring her mother and father back to life. He orders her to stay in Dream Minus, but she secretly follows him to Longfish.
In that city, he tracks Addy to a Fungi Farm, where prisoners cultivate the mushrooms used to create the cyborg brains. From one of the inmates, Raphael learns that the Eliot Group, led by Quaestor Nuart, has taken Addy to the Project in the Sequoia National Forest. After fighting mechmutts and mercenaries to get to Addy, Raphael is captured, identified as the AI terrorist, and brought inside a rectangular building that contains a nine square mile sequoia grove, where he is kept as a prize fugitive. While resisting torture, he must unlock the Project's secrets, break free of his handlers, undermine the Eliot Group's malevolent plans, and with Addy and Maya save the world from AI dominance.