Committal

This was a relatively quick and interesting read by Irene Cooper, set in a not too distant future when AI had developed to the point of being able to respond to just about your every need--certainly all your information needs. Luci Sykes is at the heart of the story, born to a beautiful and intelligent mother, Maggie Sykes, and an ambitious and uncaring father. She was deprived of oxygen by an incompetent nurse at birth and consequently suffered emotional and neurological problems as a child, but was nevertheless a savant of sorts. When her father tired of her tantrums, he sent her to a clinic that promised a cure; there she underwent a lobotomy. She came out even smarter and certainly more in control. But the underlying rage that fueled Luci never left; it just went underground. She has a constant companion at the clinic and in her current life, Jasper. He was abandoned at the clinic when a former patient ran away. Luci runs Olympia Navigation and is the creator of a ubiquitous and highly successful intuitive navigation system called Beacon. BEACON is also a character in the story. Luci has created a new, even more advanced GPS, Searchlight, to replace BEACON, but it is also secretly programmed to do something that will end the human race. One of the things Luci didn't realize was that, in transferring programming code from BEACON to Searchlight, the two AI's developed their own relationship.

Another surprise comes in the form of another major player in the story,  Luci's fraternal twin brother, Tokker. She never knew anything about him, nor he about her until Mr. Lamb shows up on Tokker's little farmstead in Oklahoma and informs him he was sent away at birth to protect Tokker from the twins' father. Mr. Lamb wants Tokker to find Luci and stop her from releasing the program. Tokker is aided in a seemingly senseless and futile quest by BEACON who takes him all over the country to gather clues. Luci has created a complex puzzle that will lead to her location. Along the way, Tokker meets and is assisted by Viggo Mortenson, Tilda Swinton, Daniel Day Lewis, and Steve Buscemi. Offbeat sci fi/fantasy is how I might describe it, similar in some ways to Tyler Hayes' Imaginary Corpse. We also learn in the end that everybody seems to be related to everybody else.

I would agree with Publishers' Weekly that Luci's character is underdeveloped and that the frequent flashbacks and gimmicks detract somewhat from a clever storyline.