The panther braced itself and jumped. It landed right in front of me, its eyes glaring at me as if it were starving. I turned the laser back on its eyes. It contracted its muscles, jumped up and… … dove toward me. I dropped to the floor and felt the beast’s claws against my left arm. The sound of breaking glass. The feline roared. Glass shards showered over me. I rolled against the bed and closed my eyes.
In the near future, robots and other forms of artificial intelligence have progressed to the point where we interact with them daily. Robots perform the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs and are being used as appliances, toys and entertainment. There are people who frown upon that. They feel that those robots are being abused and should be granted civil rights. Some activists are even prepared to reinforce their message with violence. While working on his thesis, a programmer of artificial intelligence is wrongly suspected of being one of those terrorists. He loses everything and has to go into hiding. Determined to prove his innocence, he has to dodge the police and the terrorists long enough to prevent the next big terrorist attack.