Brent Kernan

The Synesthete: a Novel Brent Kernan

The setting for this techno-thriller is an America of the near future. Carly Jackson is a synesthete. She sees colors, hears flavors. Her brain's misperceptions can become so complex and debilitating that without her medication she cannot distinguish between the real and the imagined. For much of her life, the confusion of sensory misperceptions had been diagnosed as a mental illness akin to schizophrenia. But in the army, Colonel John Winnower discovered a use for Carlys synesthesia, placing her in his elite unit of computer specialists who work behind enemy lines to infiltrate hostile governments electronic communication networks (like those of the newly-resurrected Soviet bloc). On one mission she is forced to make a choice: betray her country or betray the people she grew up with. She chooses, and the consequences lead her to desert the army and go underground. Using the highly classified military hardware she has stolen, she then becomes a well-paid cyber-criminal. She is offered the biggest job yet of her nascent criminal career. But when the job goes wrong she must struggle to penetrate the complex network of political figures trying to obtain the information she possesses before the one person who knows her best, her former commanding officer, can hunt her down.