Panacea Genesis – L Ana Ellis 


 

Mariela Stafford is a vice president at the world’s largest metaverse and pod warehousing company, until she’s demoted by her new boss and replaced by his digital clone. Now the clone wants to kill her boss and is blackmailing Mariela to help.

In 2115, embedded chips, expanded virtual reality, and the threat of extreme weather have led to a market for businesses that keep a person’s body alive in a habitation pod while the person lives entirely in the metaverse. But not everyone embraces technological advances – a group of people have adopted the tech of 2005 while isolating themselves to resist the temptation of advanced technology. Panacea Corp – the world’s most powerful corporation – connects both worlds through providing the metaverse, the pod warehouses, and the land to the technology resisters.

Mariela’s boss, the new CEO of Panacea Corp, gives her job to his digital avatar and then adds insult to injury when he tells her to train it. Now the avatar, in a bid for power, is forcing Mariela to help it kill the CEO. To delete the avatar, she’ll need to access an 80-year-old server in the isolated area.

Mariela recruits others to carry out her plan, but none of the other team members knows the true nature of what they are doing. The team members include a man who’s still resentful about losing his job three years ago after being outed as unchipped, a woman who doesn’t fit in with the chipped or the unchipped, a renowned former player in the Zazora Games, and a woman who just left her habitation pod after living in the metaverse for 32 years.

This ‘earth’ opera—a tale with all the drama, expansiveness, and varied cast of a space opera, but set on earth—will appeal to anyone who’s ever felt out-of-control of the technology in their lives.

Panacea Genesis is book one in the Panacea Trilogy.

SPSFC Year 2023

Subgenres: Adventure, Artificial Intelligence, Cyberpunk, Dystopian

Date first published:  May 3, 2022

On Kindle Unlimited: Yes

Book Links

Author Information

Twitter: 

Website: https://fireforgedbooks.com/

Biography: L. Ana Ellis, a sleep-deprived government worker by day, lets her imagination roam free while writing science fiction late into the night. After spending her days toiling over spreadsheets in a windowless cubicle with fluorescent lighting, and unbeknownst to her coworkers who think she spends her evenings watching cat videos, she spends her nights creating worlds that are more of a commentary on the present than an accurate prediction of the future. Speculating about how societies will change in the future fascinates her; she is undeterred that so far she has been wrong 100% of the time. When she’s not pondering how societies operate or writing about alternate realities, she enjoys Ren Faires, Cons, and, as her coworkers suspect, watching cat videos. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband, two cats, and the occasional foster kitty. When procrastinating, she occasionally posts on Instagram as lanaellisbooks (although her Instagram page is mostly cat photos). She publishes under the indie press Fire-Forged Books.

Other information

Cover artist name: Jeff Brown

Cover artist website: https://www.jeffbrowngraphics.com/

Editor/Formatter’s name: Ariel Anderson

Editor/Formatter’s website: