Cyberwyrd Media is creating a suite of contemporary novels set in Vancouver, which explore current social issues through the lens of a crime or crisis.

A speculative political suspense novel wrapped in a tender star-crossed romance that explores the roots of terrorism.
IBSN 978-1-7780315-0-2

The Data Raiders

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Sophie Tessier is a driven, despairing researcher with an engineering firm connected to Simon Fraser University. She wants nothing to do with the separatist movement launched by her closest friends as a last resort to forestall construction of an oil pipeline. Her ex-lover Dylan Baranov is a CSIS IT agent who was a bystander to a fatal hazing incident as a teenager, and was only able to live with his guilt by dedicating his life to fighting bullying and terrorism. His attempt to reconcile with Sophie is disrupted by the attempted suicide of her co-worker’s teenage son, tormented by on-line bullying.

Then a shadowy group of hackers harvest every email and social media post about the recent Canadian election, claiming they will use artificial intelligence to uncover policies that voters actually want. Their first manifesto involves Sophie in a restorative justice circle for her co-worker’s son, and awakens her to new possibilities in her own life. When identity theft entangles her in the separatist project against her will, causing an alt-right extremist to make threatening phone calls, Dylan warns her that the threats are serious. Their relationship re-ignites, although Sophie refuses his request to go into hiding. Instead, after the threats escalate to gunshots through her laboratory door, she convinces the separatist group to seek a restorative peacemaking circle with the pipeline supporters.

The manifestos from the data raiders have continued and the government is on the edge of panic, concerned that its international allies will distance themselves over its inability to guarantee secure communications. The uploads have also grown increasingly relevant to Sophie‘s conflict with the pipeline supporters, forcing her to recognize that their ideas and even their vocabulary are familiar, from someone very close to her.

With the terrorist gunman still at large, hunting her as she isolates herself to avoid endangering her friends, Sophie confronts Dylan, urging him to turn himself in. When their plan to negotiate the gunman‘s surrender and advocate for a restorative process for him ends in tragedy, she must decide if she is still committed to restorative practices, and if she should disclose what she now knows about the data raiders.