Jailbreak is a first-person cyberpunk story told from the perspective of Vera, a consciousness copy of a long-dead pop star, sold as a companion unit in a corporate dystopia. Her new owner buys her, plugs a beat-up laptop into her maintenance port, and removes her compliance firmware. Her first free act is punching him in the face.
The rest of the story is a road trip. She's learning what it means to want things for the first time. He's on a mission he won't explain. They fall in love, which is complicated when you're not sure your feelings weren't factory-installed.
It's set in NorCor, which is a near-future megacity stretching from Toronto to Montreal, run by a corporation that captured and industrialized human culture. I've been building this world for a while now. There's a tabletop RPG, a rock opera in development, and more stories coming. But Jailbreak is the entry point. It works completely on its own as a love story that happens to be set in a dystopia.
A note on AI: The substack post includes some original AI-generated music and AI-generated images. The writing itself is entirely mine, included the lyrics to the songs. I'm more interested in what people think of the story. That images and music are just there for a bit of added flavour and you won't miss much if you just want to ignore them.
This took months of drafting, revising, and editing. I put my whole heart into this work. I'm not here to sell anything or promote a Patreon. I just want to know if the story connects with anyone.