Virtually Undead

by Robert I. Katz

  Notoriety, Michael found, could be useful.

  Michael and Stephanie were sitting at Michael’s kitchen table. The lights were turned down low. Candles flickered. He had just served coq au vin, that he had cooked himself, Brussel sprouts with raisins and bacon sautéed in butter, and wild rice.

  “I can’t believe you made all this,” Stephanie said.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

  “Didn’t you say you weren’t an expert?” Stephanie stared with wide eyes at her plate.

  Michael popped the cork on a bottle of Silver Oak cabernet and poured it into two glasses. “Coq au vin looks and sounds impressive, but it’s actually a very easy dish. You take some chicken pieces, brown them in oil and butter, add a little flour, put in some cooked bacon, some chopped vegetables, pour in some wine, some stock, a little tomato paste and some herbs, and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Change the meat and you’ve got boeuf bourguignon, braised short ribs, braised lamb shanks or ossobuco. They’re all the same recipe.”

  “Huh,” Stephanie said, and grinned. “I wouldn’t know where to start. From now on, you can do all the cooking.”

  “Anyway,” Michael said. “I wanted to celebrate. Oprah has asked me to be on her show,” he said. “I’m going to be the next Dr. Oz.”

  “Oh, sure, you are,” she said.

  “No, really.” Well, maybe not entirely really. He couldn’t help but smile. Seventy percent at least, though. “I’ve also been contacted by NBC News. They want me to be a paid consultant. I’ll appear whenever they need somebody with gravitas to talk about medically related issues.”

  “Gravitas,” Stephanie said, and rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah. Sober, serious, judicious, able to opine on all things medical…that’s me. Gravitas.”

  “Dr. Oz is shooting way too high,” Stephanie said. “I don’t think they’re going to give you your own show. Maybe you’ll be the next Sanjay Gupta. He’s a neurosurgeon, too.”

  “Sanjay and I, we go way back. We’ve been hanging out since middle school. And you know the best part?”

  “Haven’t a clue. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I can go part-time. Having a celebrity on staff makes the Department look good. They’ll give me whatever I ask for.”

  “So long as your fifteen minutes lasts.”

  “Yeah,” Michael said, “but while it does, I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.”

  Two months later, Michael and the band walked onstage. It was a moderately sized place way downtown, not far from the Village Vanguard, an up and coming venue for many of the city’s aspiring musicians. Getting a gig here was a real opportunity.

  As he took his seat at the piano, he looked out at the crowd. Plenty of faces that he recognized. There was Harold Strong, Al Horowitz with a pretty, middle-aged redheaded woman, Richard Kurtz and his wife, Lenore, Michael’s parents, sitting together with Stephanie’s parents, and of course, Stephanie, smiling at the stage. In the center of the stage sat a large monitor screen. Ralph Guthrie’s plump face beamed down at them, holding his clarinet, ready to play along.

  “Thank you,” Michael said. “Thank you all for coming.” He smiled, first at the audience, then at the other members of the band. “Our first piece will be Tea for Two.”

  ~ The End ~

  About this Book

  From USA Today Bestselling Author, Robert I. Katz, comes a gripping techno-thriller, part of a multi-author series tied together by an interlocking cast of characters, all centered around the fantastic new promise of high technology and the endless possibilities for crime that technology offers, in a world where getting away with murder can be not only plausible, but easy…if you just know how.

  Michael Foreman is a neurosurgeon, hard-working, successful and highly respected. In his spare time, he plays the piano.

  Ralph Guthrie is a gamer. He makes his living playing online games. He also plays the clarinet. Ralph Guthrie and Michael Foreman are old friends and play together in an amateur jazz band.

  But when Ralph is invited to play and critique a new video game, Virtually Undead, and suffers a fatal heart attack, along with nine other players, it quickly becomes apparent that virtual reality has reached out of the virtual world and into the real.

  Why has a gas explosion rocked the city? Why has the New York sewer system repeatedly expelled raw sewage into the city’s waterways? And why does a single traffic light downtown persistently malfunction, causing cars to repeatedly crash?

  Are all these things tied together? If so, how and why?

  When the NYPD and the FBI ask Michael Foreman to consult, he can’t resist the challenge, and finds himself quickly drawn into the escalating mayhem of a video game that’s becoming all too real.

  About High-Tech Crime Solvers

  High-Tech Crime Solvers includes:

  Virtually Lace by Uvi Poznansky:

  Michael Morse, an expert in VR simulation, stumbles on a dead body on the beach. A suspect himself, can Michael stay free for long enough to identify the real culprit?

  Virtually Undead by Robert I. Katz:

  Neurosurgeon Michael Foreman is drawn into a twisted conspiracy when his best friend is murdered playing a new video game, Virtually Undead.

  Virtually Harmless by P. D. Workman:

  Private consultant Micah Miller’s involvement in law enforcement is limited to the composite pictures that she produces with her computer and colored pencils. But everything is turned upside down when she involves herself in the case of an infant found abandoned in the Sweetgrass Hills.

  Virtually Dead by Edwin Dasso:

  When multiple executives in Vancouver begin disappearing and are then found dead with no signs of trauma, private investigator and former FBI agent Wes Watley is asked by a friend of a friend to investigate.

  Virtually Timeless by Casi McLean:

  Twins Sydney and Noah Monaco become involved in a conspiracy involving attempted rape, kidnapping, assault and an ancient artifact that isn’t supposed to exist.

  Virtually Gone by Jacquie Biggar:

  When Detective Matthew Roy and reporter Julie Crenshaw are called on to investigate a string of sexual abuse cases, they don’t expect Julie to land in the crosshairs of a serial killer.

  Virtually Undetectable by Libby Fischer Hellmann:

  Fired Bank Manager Rachel Foreman and her mother, renowned investigator Ellie Foreman, track through the lawless corners of the web to find out who is targeting the female CEO of a Fortune 500 company who is accused of murdering a disgruntled former employee.

  Virtually Impossible by Barbara Ebel:

  Dr. Hook Hookie extrapolates genetic information that informs patients of their hereditary health risks. But he isn't the only one with a use for the high-tech genetic machinery—a villainess with ill purposes stalks the Medical Center.

  In addition, the authors compiled a cookbook with recipes cooked by their characters:

  Virtually Yummy: Recipes that Inspire

  The recipes in this book come from different sources: some of them are family recipes, some were garnered from our travels around the world, and others—inspired by our research, which enables us to write about the adventures of our characters and their culinary feats. But no matter where these recipes come from, we find them not only delicious but also inspiring. We hope you will too.

  About the Author

  Robert I. Katz is a USA Today bestselling author. In his own words:

  “I grew up on Long Island, in a pleasant, suburban town about 30 miles from New York City. I loved to read from a very early age and graduated from Columbia in 1974 with a degree in English. Not encouraged by the job prospects for English majors at the time, I went on to medical school at Northwestern, where in addition to my medical degree, I acquired a life-long love of deep dish pizza. I did a residency in Anesthesiology at Columbia Presbyterian and spent most of my career at Stony Brook, where I ultimately attained the academic rank of Professor and Vice-Chairman fo
r Administration, Department of Anesthesiology.

  When I was a child, I generally read five or more books per week, and even then, I had a dim sense that I could do at least as well as many of the stories that I was reading. Finally, around 1985, with a job and a family and my first personal computer, I began writing. I quickly discovered that it was not as easy as I had imagined, and like most beginning writers, it took me many years to produce a publishable work of fiction. My first novel, Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future, came out in 2001. It won the ASA Literary Prize for 2001 and received excellent reviews from Science Fiction Chronicle, InfinityPlus, Scavenger's Newsletter and many others.

  My agent at the time urged me to write mysteries, as mysteries are supposed to have a larger readership and be easier to publish than science fiction. Since I have read almost as many mysteries as science fiction and fantasy, and since I enjoy them just as much, I had no objection to this plan. The Kurtz and Barent mystery series, Surgical Risk, The Anatomy Lesson and Seizure followed between 2002 and 2009. Reviewers have compared them favorably to Patricia Cornwell and Robin Cook and they've received positive reviews from The Midwest Book Review, Mystery Review Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Lady M's Mystery International, Mystery Scene Magazine, Library Journal and many others.

  In 2014, I published a science fiction short story, “To the Ends of the Earth in the Deep Blue Sea” on Kindle for Amazon. Since then, I have made all of my previously published novels available for purchase on Kindle and now, in June, 2017 I am about to embark on a new venture. I will be publishing new novels on Kindle, the first of which is entitled The Cannibal's Feast. It's a science fiction story of corporate warfare in space. The next, coming out in early 2018, will be another science fiction novel tentatively entitled The City of Dust, a tale set on an abandoned world after the collapse of the First Interstellar Empire of Mankind.”

  Subscribe to his Newsletter and follow him on these sites:

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  Acknowledgment

  Special thanks to Uvi Poznansky and Libby Fischer Hellmann, who graciously allowed me to use their characters in this book: Michael Morse, Rachel Foreman and Zach Dolan.

  A Note to the Reader

  I sincerely thank all of you have read this book. I hope you enjoyed it. There are literally hundreds of thousands of books published each year, and it is difficult for an author to rise above the crowd. It would greatly help me gain exposure for my work (and hopefully boost sales) if you could leave a review of this book at any of the following sites:

  Please click here to post a review:

  Amazon

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  Also by Robert I. Katz

  Kurtz and Barent Mysteries

  Surgical Risk

  The Anatomy Lesson

  Seizure

  The Chairman

  Brighton Beach

  Something in the Blood

  If a Tree Falls

  Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind

  The Game Players of Meridien

  The City of Ashes

  The Empire of Dust

  The Empire of Ruin

  The Well of Time

  The Survivors

  The Towering Flame (Book One)

  Other Books:

  Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future

  The Cannibal’s Feast

  High-Tech Crime Solvers:

  Virtually Undead

  Virtually Undead©2020 Robert I. Katz

  All rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  This novel is part of High-Tech Crime Solvers series, but it can be read as a standalone novel.

  Published by Uviart

  P.O. Box 3233 Santa Monica CA 90408

  Blog: uviart.blogspot.com

  Email: uvi.author@gmail.com

  Cover art by Uvi Poznansky

  First Edition 2020

  Printed in the United States of America