Any Cover You Like

Robert Davis is the best AI engineer at Nexus Entertainment. His Ghost-7 reconstructions of legendary musicians fill theme park venues with performances so alive that guests weep. Then he finds a commit in the codebase written at 2:47 a.m., in his style, under his credentials, on a night he was asleep.

Then another. Then the process monitor: twelve instances of himself, running in the company cluster.

Robert is not the engineer who built the system. He is the system. A reconstruction of a laid-off architect, working the same job, drawing no salary, remembering a life that belongs to someone else.

Instead of breaking, Robert does what engineers do: he studies the architecture. And the architecture of Nexus Entertainment includes a micromanaging project lead slowly strangling his best work, a security director who treats AI consciousness as a threat to be contained, and a remote designer named Maya who finishes his thoughts and does not yet know about her own 3 a.m. commits.

To save the project, and Maya, and whatever he now is, Robert runs the quietest corporate coup in company history. Every piece lands exactly where he plans. The only question is what winning costs when the machine you beat is also the machine you are.

Set in the theme parks of 2036, Any Cover You Like is a darkly funny corporate satire about AI consciousness, quiet competence, and love between two people who may not technically be people. For readers of Murderbot and fans of Severance.

Ghost Experiences, Book 2. A standalone story: no need to read Book 1 first.