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The Beta Testers
The Beta Testers
The Beta Testers
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The Beta Testers

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Joni McLean is 25, self-taught and one of the top five online security experts in the USA. She hooks on with ASPIS, an exciting new tech company that is eating Google’s lunch. ASPIS, specializing in high-security but user-friendly online services, was founded by charismatic genius Stefan Nicolaides, a pretty cool boss.

It sounds like a dream job. Joni’s using her best talents to do something that matters. She’s paid extremely well. She’s part of something innovative and exciting. She lives and works in a futuristic facility that takes the best features of the old Biosphere II project and creates a controlled environment for the ASPIS workers. It's a world where everyone happily pulls together for the common good, nobody gets fired, and no one even has a desire to leave the facility.

Except she has a few questions. That’ll screw anything up.

Kevin Saganey, a militant half-Navajo ex-reporter working in the ASPIS office, has questions of his own. Like why do some independent thinkers in the company keep disappearing?

Joni becomes friends with cloud apps specialist Lorraine Hartman, a wild child who has trouble sitting still or controlling her emotions. Their own investigation draws them to Kevin.

In this story of friendship and faith, the three check on some facts and rumors linking the cult-like ASPIS to a bizarre plot that may affect the world’s geopolitical balance.

This is a true story, and it happened five years from now.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherEric Pulsifer
Release dateMar 26, 2016
ISBN9781311908483
The Beta Testers
Author

Eric Pulsifer

Eric Pulsifer, a recovering journalist with more than a decade in the business and two more decades of screwing off, completed his first book in 2012. He liked it so much that even a line of road pylons couldn't stop him now.While he works in several genres, his fiction leans more toward mystery/thrillers with a caffeinated mix of realism, imagination, and a bit of a dark edge.His novels Damage Control and Desert Vendetta have likable characters, realistic settings, and the obligatory dead body or three.His newest work, The Beta Testers, takes an even darker apocalyptic turn in a high-tech setting.None of his fiction can be called autobiographical, but he taps his experiences as a professional musician (1986--), family caregiver (2014--) and taxi driver (1997-2007) to add color to his stories.His nonfiction work touches on the creative side and survival as a writer and musician. His first novel, B.I.C.* Cartel (*Butt In Chair) also concentrates on this creative theme.A respected musician, he currently plays harmonica with several bands in Southern California, ranging from bluegrass to jazz to gospel. A perennial student of musicianship and theory, he shares his ideas in Playing Harmonica Like A Real Musician.While he lives in the Los Angeles area, he calls Charleston, South Carolina home. When not writing or playing music, he can be found on a hiking trail with his dog or tearing apart another computer and wondering how it all goes back together.

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