I'd found a few bodies in my time, but I'd never been asked to find a man without a body. "Let me just make sure I understand you," I said, sitting up and folding my hands on top of my desk. "Your father is dead, and you want me to find him?"
"Well, no," she said. "My father is actually still alive. It's only his body that died."
Angela Blaine was President and CEO of Adaptive Research International whose father, Sebastian Blaine, a brilliant software engineer with a terminal disease, had invented a process where the human personality, upon death, could be uploaded as an AI program. Using himself as the first human test subject, Blaine had his daughter trigger his Program Reincarnation process as he died ... and then he disappeared into the Net, taking all his research with him.
Now Angela wanted to hire Robin Hood and his associates to find him, because without her father's research, she could not bring his Program Reincarnation process to market and her company would collapse. The only problem was Sebastian Blaine had changed his mind. He now wanted to be the only human soul who lived on as an AI program in the Net ... and he would not allow anyone who got in his way to live.
