The Swarming Stage

Nuclear disaster, crime, climate change and crumbling borders have reduced the United States in 2092 to a disorganized dystopia. What was once Los Angeles is now a vague area known as the Basin Security Zone where economic activity is controlled by The Corporation. Human beings are genetically engineered, there has been a Time of Rain, and animals are being cloned and spliced.

Detective Sergeant Keiko Nomura, an expert on genetics and holographic investigation is sent to the Palos Verdes Genetics Research Lab to examine the dismembered body of a Russian geneticist named Kamenev. While there, Keiko is interrupted by Quinn, a mysterious corporate security expert. After a period of friction, the two agree to jointly investigate the death of the scientist, especially when another Russian scientist named Lara Ulyanov is found dead in her Benedict Canyon Island Biotech Lab. The duo are puzzled by a huge, holographic bee hive with an encoded software data slab that was being kept by Kamenev. It appears that Kamenev was attached by a cloned animal. But was he? And, what happens when Nomura and Quinn find themselves personally attracted to one another?

Gaylord Dold was born in Kansas and raised in southern California during the good old days. He has been a book publisher, a criminal defense attorney and a professional writer for many years.