Symbiosis

By Ryan Waldman

Naomi is the newly-appointed matriarch of a cult in the dystopian city of Neo Frisco in the year 2330. Rising sea levels have turned the Bay Area into a flooded wasteland of canals run by gangs and warlords. Only Naomi knows the truth behind her family's theocratic rule: that the god her followers worship is actually an artificial intelligence, one who has been experiencing mysterious glitches lately. When a band of high-tech mercenary crusaders rolls into town looking to hunt down and exterimate rogue AIs, which they perceive to be manifestations of demons, Naomi's falseness is in danger of being exposed. Hoping to redeem her deception of the community and meet her machine god face to face in hopes of repairing him, she tags along with the mercenaries on a treacherous journey into the darkness of the collapsing maintenance tunnels beneath the city, where she experiences both horrors and wonders. What they find down there is something more bizarre than they could have imagined. Deep underground in the AI server core, a fungal slime mold has been growing for centuries, working its way into the AI's circuitry to form a symbiotic lifeform.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GCS6KL8T
• ISBN13: 9798276467764
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"