The Plutonium Blonde — John Zakour; Lawrence Ganem

I AM THE LAST FREE-LANCE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR ON EARTH.

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. The year is 2057 and, after a handful of species-altering upheavals, Earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. But, of course, as in times past, people still run the shades-of-gray gamut from good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while some crazy thing happens that threatens all of society, all of humanity, even the entire space-time continuum.

And for some reason it always happens on my watch.

So when B. B. Starr, the ex-exotic dancer who is now the CEO of ExShell, the largest corporation on the planet, hires me for a particularly sensitive assignment, I naturally expect the worst. After all, B. B. Starr is one of the richest and most powerful people on Earth--why does she need me? But even with the help of HARV--my annoyingly precise holographic assistant, who's the most intelligent computer on Earth--implanted directly into my brain (don't ask), this assignment sounds like more than I can handle. For B. B. Starr wants me to locate and disable BB-2, an android replica of B. B. herself. An android with a plutonium core, 160 times stronger, 176 times more durable, 200 times faster, with senses far more acute, and a vastly higher IQ than normal carbon-based humans. How can I hope to find and deactivate a bad-attitude, hell-bent, nuclear-powered, super android that looks like an exotic dancer and might even be smarter than HARV?