Reap3r by Eliot Peper

Reap3r is the 10^th novel by Eliot Peper, and I’ve read them all, reviewed all of them in this blog. His early novels were excellent stories, but somehow, he keeps getting better. This is a very fast paced story with a great cast of characters. The book starts with a murder in La Jolla, California, on the edge of the UCSanDiego campus, and it’s a techie murder at that. It seems that someone is knocking off all the key people who are behind an attempt to develop quantum computing, a company Peper called Q. On the one hand, the ultrawealthy Sansome Haverford had recruited some highly ethical people to form his company Human Capital, but on the other hand he and Paul Valery “wanted to create a rolling permanent record of everything on every computer system on the planet – a private irror of the entire history of the entire internet and every device that had ever connected to it so that he could reach back through time to dredge up whatever secrets the past might offer to tighten his grip on the future.” Paul had secret government connections which also provided unlimited funding for such work.

 

Sansome had a great sales pitch for his Human Capital as he continued to draw investors. He said, “At Human Capital, we don’t bet on technology…. We don’t even bet on companies. We bet on people…. We find the best people in the world, figure out what makes them tick, write them checks, and give them free rein to do what only they can do.”

 

One of the people that Sansome and Paul brought to the Q project was Luki Zubiri, a young Basque man who was a computer programing genius. On the one hand Luki knew he had a deal with the devil, but the devil was the only one willing to pay for the progress he knew he could make, “the scientific achievement of the century – an accomplishment to rival electricity, antibiotics, and the steam engine.” It was Luki’s plan to complete the project for Paul, but then decline to renew his contract with Q and give make the technology open source material, which he thought would only spur the revolution of computer technology. However, he did not understand that goal was something Paul would never allow.

 

Meanwhile, Peper introduces us to Devon Chaiket, a financially struggling podcaster of Rabbit Hole, who had the ear of the tech world. She had also created a following throughout the world, but unfortunately, her sponsorships were not keeping her afloat. Offers from Haverford of funding for her work were too good to be true, but she too was pulled into the matrix of the story.

 

Another key figure was Geoff Rossi, a biotech guy who had lost control of an artificial virus which got out of his lab. The virus, Bakunawa, had killed millions of humans before Geoff was able to create the very vaccine that rescued the planet from total disaster. He was funded by Haverford, and the vaccine was the source of Human Capital’s incredible wealth. It was Haverford that was able to suppress any information that would have revealed that the virus was a human creation and not a natural genetic event. But Geoff was killing himself with the knowledge by consuming massive amounts of daily alcohol. He simply could not live with the guilt of his mistake.

 

Luki was also struggling with the harm his invention could cause. As a Basque man, “He should have known to never trust an authority figure like Paul in the first place, that an alliance with state power ultimately brough the power of the state to bear on you.” Luki new that “Neuroscience showed that your conscious mind didn’t make decisions, but rationalized decisions your brain had already made.”

It's hard for me to classify this book. There’s a sci-fi aspect to it, and there’s certainly a murder mystery involved. There are big and evil forces with a team of calculating David’s that are determined not to let the bad forces win. There’s a historical aspect that takes the reader back to Darwin’s discoveries in the Galapagos Islands, spanning forward through newer scientific discoveries. In order to give this span some perspective, Peper included an ancient tortoise, Bernadette, who was alive at the time of Darwin’s writing and remained alive at the present time.

 

So, Peper has provided us with a new modern adventure, a group of great characters, and a fast paced compelling novel. This one is a 5-star read. It’s available on 5/18/22 and can be preordered now.