A Life Less Real

Since the end of WWII, Praxis, a British company, under the guise of developing and enhancing medical equipment and computing techniques for civilian and military use, secretly works on machine agility, dexterity and intelligence, and achieves the impossible. Using computational circuits based on the architecture of the human brain, Praxis engineers a mechanical human that has the ability to infiltrate human society without being assumed to be anything other than human. So secret is the identity, the machine itself does not know of its true nature. A Sociology Experiment is performed to test this success. The machine, as a male student, is placed in a London College to see how it learns and adapts, and to assess if anyone can suspect it is anything other than human. But this machine, as a young man, inexplicably falls in love with a young student girl. Sean Heyward, an MI6 Agent, suspects Praxis has successfully and secretly achieved something sinister and someone is leaking information to Russia. No one takes his claims seriously, and with his daughter studying at the same college, his worrying escalates. Liz Kating, a leading scientist who works at Praxis, is confronted by Sean. Finally admitting it is all true, she denies the machine is a threat, and that her work has the potential to totally revolutionise healthcare and technology for the coming new century and make Britain an economic power. All this while, Praxis has been able to secretly produce a second batch of robots that receive military training, but they never achieve the standard of the first. The only one working and able to unlock billion's worth of investment is the one at the college. Ordered by Praxis to obtain this machine, a group of mercenaries invade the annual Valentine's Ball to take hostage his girl. Aware of the danger, Liz joins Sean. They arrive at the college to intervene and prevent the mercenaries in completing their plan. But the machine learns what it truly is and desperately fights back to protect the one he has come to love, and the fighting escalates beyond anything anyone can imagine. The two escape into the domain of London and into the English countryside, hoping to vanish from the authorities. The news of the battle reaches both the British and American Governments and when understanding the truth, a chase between them then erupts to get to the fleeing machine in order to either claim the technology or destroy it, not fully knowing the true intentions of each other. But everyone understands that whoever owns the technology of the future, controls the future. What technology is mankind, and can a computer learn what mankind has miscalculated? The greatest engineering is you.
About the Author: Neale Hambidge, having gained an electronics degree at Queen Mary College, London, worked as an engineer for many years testing the software for the onboard Flight Control Computer System of the EuroFighter, Typhoon, which is now in service with the RAF. He was made redundant and spent three years undertaking another degree with Christ Church, Canterbury University, to become a surgical nurse in the NHS to work in the operating department of The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. The Inorganic, Neale's first book, was published in 2009 from many years of writing as a creative hobby, and over the following 8 years he wrote his second book, which was initially called The Perfect. As time progressed, it was changed to be called The Perfect Shade of Whyte, following Fifty Shades of Grey. In 2017, he revised his first book, renamed it as A Life Less Real and published it in 2018, along with his second novel. Two more books are on their way with Mastery of Hate, which is a horror, detective story of a young female Asian who investigates far more than just a serial killer to discover the potential darkness there is in every society, and Million Miles a Minute, which is a coming-of-age story of two brothers who are addicted to motorbikes and learn the dangers and damage that can come from chasing their dreams. Neale was brought up in The Salvation Army and is now married to Ilse. They met in Jerusalem.