Noble Phasic

by David L. McClard

In a dark future about 100 years from now in a post-apocalyptic city-state called Vero City, the story unfolds with chapters alternating between several seemingly unrelated stories which eventually merge. A benevolent exarch of the Grand Senate named Jos discovers that the ruling class section of the city, called H-Lev, is rotting on its feet. Cybernetic technology that inundates people and high-infrastructure is set for a slow self-destruction. He attempts to alert the other "half" of the city, the poor, vast industrial M-Lev, which is not affected by this computer virus. He must overcome a mother brain computer that administrates H-Lev and rest of the city to some extent. A police officer named Adder discovers his long-lost brother in a hospital. The younger brother claims to be a tank pilot for the city's army, and Adder confirms it. The young brother has also been very strangely and grievously mutated. His brother tells him that Vero City might be trading goods with foreign states. Adder uploads his brother's brain into a vast network and this spreads the H-Lev virus to one network in M-Lev, thereby threatening the entire city with the destructive technological scourge. Exarch Jos discovers that the work of a mother brain gone awry. The city, left at the complete mercy of the superintelligence, is left to wonder if it is acceptable to be under her control. Without knowing about the dozens of other surviving cities in the world, they may not have a choice. Noble Phasic addresses to an extent the social implications of the three technologies which we are today on the eve of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics. The GNR revolution has yet to engulf us, but the world in Noble Phasic has long passed the initial honeymoon with these technologies and they have become an integral, sometimes quite disagreeable part of their lives. Noble Phasic also explores consciousness inside a computer, a fate that will undoubtedly become available within some of our lifetimes. This is the picture of a struggling species grappling with the devastating effects of technologies once hailed as the holy grails of science, the keys to utopia. What might just be around the corner is something not the opposite, but a world somewhere in between.

284 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2007

About the author

David grew up fascinated by the imagined stories that would play out endlessly between his army of G.I. Joes and the few Transformers that his older brother would allow him to have. The tableaus between the human armies of good, the sub-human forces of evil, and alien robots from Cybertron planted the seeds of a lifelong obsession with weaving stories of the fantastic.
Life began anew when in childhood he moved out of the Strangelands of Louisiana to the megalopolis of Houston. In high school he learned quickly how to enrage his English teachers and get repeatedly suspended for a number of subversive activities including walking out of class, hijacking morning announcements, and more than anything advocating binge drinking amongst underage classmates via the nefarious croquet club in a bid for intramural renown.
Once that storm passed, David went on to study communication at the University of Hawaii, Sophia University in Tokyo, and ultimately accepting a degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. Those years, which included a presidency at the Omega Chi chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, were characterized by more croquet, beer and a number of other new, unsavory activities that will surely end up in his posthumous memoirs.
A couple of long years after graduating university, David went off to study law in Houston. Aspiring to become a traffic ticket cop, this was the time when he also finally found the discipline to write. The attorney track did not work out as planned, and the subsequent misadventure stemming from a collapsed legal job market led him to live and work in Portland, Oregon and the much less caucazoidal Hong Kong for two inspiring back-to-back jaunts.
Upon returning home to Houston, David settled into a life of muted adventure and solitary workmanship, determined to shamelessly use his writing as an emotional and psychological crutch for his day job as an oil field drilling technology specialist. He still plays croquet.