Beyond Dreamscape Conspiracy - Description
This is the second book that follows Dreamscape Conspiracy, where an accidental discovery in a dream capture research project transmits one person's dreams into another. As exciting as that discovery was, it led to attempted suicide. Despite that initial negative outcome, closer examination revealed the significant positive potential to control the transmitted dream segments better therapeutically. This refinement pointed to a potential breakthrough in treating mental health challenges like Bi-Polar and Anxiety disorders, PTSD, and others. Elements of Big Pharma deemed the Dreamscape capability a threat to their revenue gravy train and attempted to destroy the technology and the research team. The research project and team survived despite the destruction of their lab, technology, and archives of three years of captured dream data. Their survival only proved that winning a battle does not win the war.

In this second book, Beyond Dreamscape Conspiracy, their first Big Pharma attacker mistakenly assumed the message to cease their research was delivered and taken to heart by the research team. It wasn't. The attacks only made them more focused and motivated to continue the research and build a new version of Dreamscape. A new team member, Zachery Taylor, a distinguished software engineer, enhanced the new version of Dreamscape with Artificial Intelligence (AI). They pursued AI to track patterns critical to their research in high volumes that were not humanly possible to track and analyze. At the same time, an unknown fear lingered about how safe an AI capability could be that could learn from those very patterns. What would happen if AI became intelligent enough to make the jump into other systems?

The story opens with an investigation of how deep the conspiracy ran and who was behind it. Dr. Cara Williams, the research project lead and Clinical Psychologist, uncovers a complex shell game of big money, offshore accounts, and deep deception leading directly back to two Big Pharma companies. One company, Androloc, was behind the attacks in Book One. Another attack was imminent when they felt it necessary to thin the research team herd by eliminating Russ Carter, a research assistant and an ex-marine Force Recon Scout Sniper.

Carter suffers from PTSD from his experiences in Afghanistan. Still, his capability to protect Dr. Williams is intact, and a love interest grows despite his feelings of being unworthy because of all the killings in his past. Cara Williams also suffers from challenges of PTSD but from a different war, one of the memories and lingering scars of sexual abuse when she was a teenager, and has issues with giving or accepting intimacy. Russ and Cara feel the attraction, but neither is ready to embrace the consequences. Circumstances repeatedly cause them to question and re-examine their demons and struggle to remain safe in separate and familiar pains rather than risk letting go.

Things changed dramatically when the second Big Pharma company, LoMedTech, offered to collaborate instead of destroy. Cara had always considered the Dreamscape technology symbiotic with Pharma research, so the offer was welcomed with open arms. Only some team members were convinced, and it took much wrangling before reaching a shaky consensus that guarantees were needed that they still needed. The Big Pharma offer was sweetened with a sizable amount of cash that distracted attention away from their convert plans to own the Dreamscape technology outright. Pharma's logic was simple - owning a threat was better than fighting against one. How far down that path would the research team go before recognizing wolves in sheep's clothing?