Promo ‘DeepFreak’ by Mars Dumont

A magical mystery tour of virtual reality and beyond.
Love, politics, conspiracy, and fluctuating space-time coordinates all come to
a head when a huge solar flare disrupts the event horizon between parallel
universes.

Living in simulated reality, SIM, is all the rage in the mid twenty-first
century. But just when it seems that illusion has triumphed and Reality has
become irrelevant, Reality throws a curve ball.

Audrey is a SIM designer and an art Prank hacktivist. When her friend Dano
disappears, Audrey is forced into the gritty world of Real to find him. People
disappear all the time in this dystopian near future. But then there are Type
III disappearances, so when the young Milan also vanishes, but this time right
before Audrey’s eyes, the quest for the disappeared takes a whole new turn and
Audrey finds herself unwillingly thrust on a bizarre existential odyssey. Real?
SIM? Or hallucination? Nothing is what it seems.
Meanwhile, Milan wakes floating in midair before the floor suddenly comes up
and crashes hard into him. He looks around and at first the room does nothing.
Then it wakes up. Myllan is on the other side, a place where people meet in
Astral, not SIM, where luminescent mushrooms grow in the snow, and the weather
knows what you are thinking.

Chapter 1: Switch and Razer

Audrey and Nina liked meeting here, dangling their legs
off this unknown digital dock someplace, somewhere, on an unknown digital lake,
wriggling their toes in the spectral water. 
An unforgiving white light reflected off the waves and over-exposed
their faces like some faded bleached-out memory.  A first version eyeVid freeware, it was now
on some long forgotten and discarded netWorld by-way.  Nobody remembered it.  No one else came anymore.  It was now their private SIMlounge.  They’d been hanging here, just the two of
them, since they were SIM enraptured kids playing with their very first
eyeVids.

Actually, Mars Dumont is not a real person, it’s two
people. We think of ourselves as a band. Originally we tried to think of a band
name like “Liquid Mars” but it sounded too goofy so we came up with a nome de
plume using his made up first name and my made up last name.

Mars was born in Poona, India. His father was a biologist,
and research grants took his family to Mexico City, Silicone Valley, Stockholm,
and finally New York City.  After
graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Mars traveled around Europe
and spent time in London and Prague.  He
finished his undergraduate studies at Columbia College, with a major in art
history and a minor in physics, and then got a Masters degree at Columbia’s
Graduate School of Architecture.  Mars
then spent many years doing architecture as a day job and playing electric
guitar (for The Shameless Sycophants, Dark Blue and Linoleum Blownapart) at
night, in clubs ranging from CBGB’s to the Knitting factory.  Mars holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and an
Elder Brother rank in Tiger Claw Kung Fu. Mars Dumont speaks three languages:
Czech, Spanish and English.  Remaining
creative is, as far as Mars is concerned, the most important thing in life.

Venus’ unique style took form in New York City with
summers on Block Island under the supervision of her advertising mad man art
director father and her gourmet cook mother. Their home was a gathering place
for artists and intellectuals.  As a child she wrote and illustrated her
own books. Venus’ affinity for art and design eventually took her to Italy
where she studied for a number of years. Although she has lived and worked as a
designer in New York City for most of her adult life, she still retains close
ties with friends in Florence and a love of everything Italian.  Venus has
a soft spot for Italian style anarchy and humanist centered dissidents.
 She also likes to dabble in the mysteries of Astrology and Tarot and
draws on the archetypes to develop the characters in her books. 

For more information about DeepFreak and Mars Dumont please visit the website.