In 2038, a private detective navigates a corrupt city’s web of deceit and violence, aiming to cleanse the town of the gangsters that have taken control, but finding that he may be a pawn in a greater game.

SYNOPSIS:

2038 - northern Nevada desert. The Continental Agency, a high-tech private security firm, sends one of its “Operatives” — detective Eddie Dolan — to Lodeville, a dusty industrial town controlled by rival criminal gangs and plagued by corruption orchestrated by its owner, Herman Loda.

Dolan’s investigation into the murder of Loda’s son brings him into conflict with the police, mobsters, neo-Nazis, and Dinah, a cynical, money-hungry femme fatale. After an assassination attempt on Loda (and two attempts on Dolan), Loda hires Dolan to clean house.

Dolan manipulates the gangs against each other, leading to a rising body count as he endeavors to rid the town of its criminal elements. Dolan has help: Dinah’s been using her considerable wiles amassing a wealth of blackmail fodder on the town’s players, including Loda himself. Dolan’s remote partner at the Agency, Cassidy, feeds him more data to facilitate his next moves.

A drugged Dolan awakens to find his hand holding an ice pick. Buried in Dinah’s chest. As Dolan tries to piece together what happened, and tensions escalate in Lodeville, events at the Agency hint that there is more to the narrative than meets Dolan’s eye. A colleague of Cassidy’s, a remote operator, professes an unhealthy fascination with his Operative. His subsequent enablement of that Operative — Reno, a criminal — fuels the fire, literally, in Lodeville, bringing the gangs into a decisive final conflict that leaves only Dolan and a dying Reno.

Reno “gifts” the truth to Dolan. First, of Dolan’s innocence for Dinah’s murder, and then of who – or what – they really are: competing A.I.s in a simulation the Agency runs to provide its real-life agents with predictive intel.

Dolan, now fully enlightened – but hiding it from the Agency – chooses to remain in the simulation and do the work that makes him feel most alive.