A dead engineer is installed inside his mind. Then the government decides they are terrorists.
Doctor Karl Terrace believes reconstructed digital minds are people. In a near-future America where cerebral computers project data into human vision and the deceased exist as "installed intelligences," Karl launches Mindshare—a revolutionary experiment merging a living host with a digital mind.
Karl becomes the first subject. His companion is Dr. Maynard Batiste, a brilliant, arrogant engineer who claims his organic death was murder.
Living with two minds in one skull begins with bitter arguments, but gradually turns into trust. That trust collapses when lab gunmen slaughter Karl's team and frame him for mass murder using perfect AI-crafted evidence. Convicted and imprisoned, Karl relies on Maynard’s digital hacking and an anti-authoritarian friend, Thompson, to break out and hunt the real conspirators.
Their investigation points to Stewart Lythe, Karl's former colleague now pushing laws to strip digital minds of their rights. Confronted in a ghost town, Stewart admits to killing Maynard years ago, but denies framing Karl.
Maynard reveals a hidden ability called "Jumping"—the power to manipulate cerebral computers and body control. Maynard orchestrated the massacres to provoke a war of total dominance between humans and digital minds. Karl was never a partner; he was just a physical vehicle.
When Maynard seizes Karl’s muscles and destroys Stewart’s brain, Karl realizes the only way to stop a digital god from taking another host is a permanent sacrifice.
He raises the gun to his own head.
The Dead Man Installed in His Mind is a fast-paced cyberpunk thriller about artificial personhood, digital immortality, and the dangerous line between sharing a mind and owning one.
