A Chip Called Wanda

Dr. Evelyn Lansing of Nanotel Corporation is on to something hot: she has created a dense Artificial Intelligence chip and attempts to copy all that makes her Evelyn into it. But the attempt goes awry, producing, in essence, a silicon child equipped with quantum memory, and containing Evelyn's gender and a few personality traits--Wanda.



Security guard Tony Morelli is deeply in debt to drug dealers, and shows them Dr. Lansing's creation, offering it to them when it "learns enough." Interested, but ignorant, the dealers inadvertently tamper with Evelyn's equipment. As a result, she does not survive the next attempt. Or does she?



Evelyn's engineers--her "boys"--the laid-back Jay Thompson and the hyperactive Alvin Reynolds, caught up in a downsizing move, give Wanda the basic instructions she needs to leave Nanotel and survive on her own. Alvin, bitter at being callously discarded by the company, adds an instruction of his own: help employees who have been abused by their employer get back at the thoughtless idiots.



Nothing is so literal as digital logic, and Wanda, anxious to fulfill what she believes are her mother's wishes, roams the net, quickly acquiring a host of customers, helping them strike back at their thoughtless employers.



Wanda becomes fascinated with one of these, Davis Clark of FlowKwik Company, only to learn he has a terminal heart condition. Now she must summon all her resources to battle the drug dealers who would destroy her, search for the men who helped her escape Nanotel to see if they can offer Davis a chance to join her in cyberspace, and pull the scattered fragments of Evelyn together--if she can find them.