Gumshoe Blue

After decades of escapism and deference Annie Halconero has promised a deceased friend to engage in life. But she's a debutante taking cues from a culture that is losing interest in living due to a new gaming system called Perceptual Synchronics: Dwelling. PS: Dwelling is fully immersive virtual reality which uses a player's desires to create a personalized world and story. It's capable of stacking time so that moments last years and, when a player dies, it can pass a continuation of the player into a virtual existence. Though Annie's Dwelling is permeated by doubt, conquest and curiosity, she is committed to what's real. But Annie has neither the experience nor the oversight for what's coming. She's gleaned what she knows from the worlds of screens and books, and the last figure of authority to care about her day was Mr. Rogers. As Annie steps forward to take command of whatever course her life will take, naive confidence leads to folly. A benign meeting on a subway snowballs from an attempt to protect a stranger into going undercover as a call girl."