Fear the Jump
The School of Psychology at Central State University in Carteret County, North Carolina, is a hotbed of research focused on innovative dream therapy. Dr. Cara Williams is the lead Clinical Psychologist funded to build a team to test the viability of manipulating dreams to positively impact mental health challenges like PTSD, Depression, Bi-Polar, and other issues many face. As the small research team adds more expertise and new technology, they must dodge outside interference from Big Pharma in books one and two because dream therapy could easily replace pharmaceutical treatment regimens. The team learned quickly that winning a couple of battles does not win the war.
When big money is at risk, the value of human life that threatens the status quo becomes expendable.
Several attempts were made in the first two books to eliminate the research team that only turned up the heat to the extent one of the companies described the desired solution simply as eradicating the threat.
Defections from one of the Pharma companies add to the CSU team, only to become a target of assassination, and any collateral damage caused in the eradication process is deemed acceptable.
Artificial Intelligence Matrixed for Evolving Environments, or simply, AIMEE, the team’s AI, is introduced into the research team’s toolbox by Zack Hightower, a software engineer and newly hired researcher. His role is to enhance innovations to leverage the his upgraded Dreamscape 3.0 technology yielding ultra-successful dream therapy solutions. Those solutions made the CSU team a major threat to Big Pharma but held at bay by an amazing media campaign by Marci Patterson, a researcher on staff.
Their most significant and documented success of nightmare intervention for a person living with PTSD is Russ Carter, an ex-marine Force Recon Scout Sniper and husband of Dr. Williams. That success raised the visibility of threat the CSU team represented by eliminating oral medication entirely. Pharma took notice, and a showdown brings nano-technology designed by Mr. Hightower into play in a confrontation that is going to leave a mark.
The title sets up the story as its logical direction is realized when the AI finally jumps. That’s not a spoiler, because the jump is not what Dr. Williams feared, and it’s not clear how deeply their AI has evolved. Machine learning and the ability to generate AI clones only make matters worse. What is most apparent to me as the author, “Fear the Jump,” covers a lot of ground but never leaves the server…or AIMEE…nobody does. Still, expanded research will drive deeper in “Dead Thoughts” – book four.
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The fourth book, “Dead Thoughts” is where AIMEE discovers there are thoughts and memories lost if we ignore the brain when the heart stops beating. What is lost in the small gap in time between flat-line moments where it’s questionable how much brain activity continues when the heart stops pumping oxygenated blood?
The 4-to-6 seconds before the brain begins to die is all AIMEE had to work with, but what she recovered launched one heck of an adventure.