 |
"Trojan Horse" This work was translated into Chinese for world distribution. ISBN: 7-80656-041-6 / I * 303 Beijia Publishing House |
 |
A description of the Trojan Horse
While typing up a report on his computer, a man suddenly dies from agonizing seizures. The bizarre nature of his death leads his wife to ask his best friend, Kent Reynolds, to investigate. Reynolds is a management consultant and widower, embittered by the hit-and-run accident that killed his wife years before. The failure of the police to find his wife's killer has left him plagued with a sense of injustice that drives him to find it himself.
At first, Reynolds is skeptical that anything unusual caused his friend's death. However, when he finds reports of other people worldwide dying of seizures while using computers, he begins to suspect something sinister lies behind them.
With the help of his hacker friend, Janet Bourne, Reynolds uncovers the existence of a computer virus known as Cerberus. When activated, the virus displays a pattern of colored lights that triggers fatal seizures in anyone who sees it. It is, in essence, a computer virus that kills people. Somehow, this virus has spread undetected to computers all over the world. The virus is due to be activated in a few days, and unless Reynolds can find a way to stop it, Cerberus will kill millions worldwide.
Reynolds follows the trail of Cerberus all over the country until he discovers that the virus has spread through copies of a popular computer game called Odyssey. The game and the virus were created by an organization calling itself the Cyberspace Liberation Front. The CLF is a terrorist group that exists only on the Internet. Its members have never met face-to-face, interacting only through online chatrooms. Its goal is to inspire terror in computer users to halt what they perceive as the exploitation of their virtual world.
Throughout Reynold's search, the CLF employs a sadistic female bodybuilder named Sonya Hawke to stop him. Sonya leaves a trail of destruction as she hunts down Kent Reynolds.
Through Reynolds' determination and ingenuity, he manages to escape Sonya and tear through the web of mystery to the leader of the CLF, Roland Weaver. But Weaver is no mere hacker. He's the founder of the Vulcan Corporation, one of the world's largest software companies. Weaver's plans for the Cerberus virus go far beyond terrorism. Only he possesses the vaccination program that will detect and eliminate the Cerberus virus, and he plans to sell it in the form of a new operating system that will give him complete control of the computer industry.
Kent Reynolds races to the Vulcan Corporation's headquarters in Los Angeles to expose the existence of Cerberus and retrieve the vaccine before it's too late. As the minutes tick away before the virus' impending release, Reynolds infects a computer in Weaver's penthouse with the Cerberus virus. Weaver is killed by his own creation.
With the CLF imprisoned and the virus contained, Kent Reynolds finds that his quest has brought him the sense of justice he had lost, and the ghosts of his wife's death are exorcised at last.
www.harrisliterary.com
Return to Authors' Showcase
Home