Virtual Light (bridge, #1)

Set in a near-future California, the story follows multiple characters whose lives converge around a stolen pair of high-tech glasses containing secret data about a massive corporate redevelopment plan for San Francisco.

An unnamed courier sits in a Mexico City hotel room, drinking miniature bottles of vodka. He carries two identical cases: one holds a beloved interactive pornographic program, and the other holds data he has been entrusted to deliver. After receiving a phone call confirming a flight to San Francisco, he falls asleep.

Berry Rydell, a young former police officer from Knoxville, Tennessee, works in Los Angeles as an armed-response driver for IntenSecure, a private security corporation headquartered in Singapore. He drives an armored vehicle nicknamed "Gunhead" with his partner Sublett, a Texan with severe allergies and mirrored contact lenses who was raised in a Fallon-ite trailer-camp video-sect. In Knoxville, Rydell shot a man named Kenneth Turvey who was holding his girlfriend and her children hostage with a homemade cannon. The television show Cops in Trouble hired the defense lawyer Aaron Pursley and agent Wellington Ma to represent him, and a Cops in Trouble lawyer named Karen Mendelsohn brought Rydell to L.A. and began an affair with him. When a more sensational case eclipsed his media value, Karen dropped him, and Rydell took the IntenSecure job.

One night, Gunhead receives a fabricated distress call about a hostage-taking in Benedict Canyon. Hackers from the Republic of Desire, a decentralized network of digital criminals, have infiltrated the vehicle's computer and fed false data. Rydell crashes through the subscriber's gate into the living room and finds no emergency. IntenSecure strips him of his driving privileges and offers lesser assignments, which he refuses.

In San Francisco, Chevette Washington, a young bike messenger, lives on the decommissioned Bay Bridge, an abandoned span that has been transformed into a densely populated squatter settlement. She impulsively steals an object from the pocket of a drunk European man at a lavish party hosted by Cody Harwood, an advertising heir, at the Hotel Morrisey. The stolen item is a pair of heavy, opaque black glasses in an expensive case.

The next morning, the courier wakes in his San Francisco hotel, hungover, and discovers that the remaining case in his jacket holds his personal pornographic software. The glasses containing the data he was supposed to deliver have been taken.

Yamazaki, a Japanese sociologist conducting fieldwork on the bridge, has been interviewing Skinner, an elderly original settler who lives atop one of the cable towers. Chevette acts as Skinner's caretaker. Yamazaki regards the bridge as a supreme example of a "Thomasson," a term from Japanese cultural criticism describing useless yet strangely artlike features of the urban landscape.

Back in L.A., Rydell's former shift supervisor offers him a job driving for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer (someone who tracks missing people and recovers stolen property) hired by IntenSecure to handle the Morrisey theft. Rydell flies to San Francisco and meets Warbaby, an enormous, melancholy man who walks with a cane, and his technical consultant, Freddie. Warbaby reveals that a courier named Hans Rutger Blix, who was carrying data belonging to IntenSecure's Singapore parent company, has been murdered. They meet two Russian-immigrant SFPD Homicide detectives, Svobodov and Orlovsky, who share crime-scene details in exchange for access to IntenSecure's database.

Chevette's friend and fellow messenger Sammy Sal DuPree identifies the stolen glasses as virtual light devices that use electromagnetic drivers to stimulate the optic nerves directly, producing visual overlays. When Sammy Sal activates them on Skinner's roof, Chevette sees the San Francisco skyline overlaid with 17 enormous tower complexes labeled "SUNFLOWER CORPORATION." Warbaby identifies Chevette as the likely thief and sends Rydell onto the bridge.

Before Rydell arrives, Loveless, an armed operative hunting the glasses, forces Yamazaki at gunpoint to guide him to Skinner's tower room. Loveless binds Skinner and Yamazaki and forces Chevette down the ladder. Sammy Sal, hidden on the roof, drops tarpaper onto Loveless and tosses the glasses case to Chevette. Her bike's anti-theft capacitors discharge into Loveless's gun, stunning him, but he recovers and fires on full automatic. Sammy Sal is hit and falls into darkness. Chevette runs.

Rydell tracks Chevette through the storm-battered bridge to a bar called Cognitive Dissidents. Lt. Orlovsky bursts in to seize her. Josie, a regular patron of the bar who operates a holographic projection system from her wheelchair, projects a hologram onto the Russian's face while the lights go out, and Rydell grabs Chevette. Outside, Svobodov cuffs them together. Loveless emerges from the Russians' car, revealing that the detectives are working with him. Nigel, a bridge-dwelling bike builder, crashes a bicycle into Svobodov's back. In the chaos, Rydell kicks Orlovsky down, hauls Chevette into Warbaby's Ford Patriot, and drives away as Warbaby fires a weapon concealed in his cane, blowing out the back window.

They ditch the car in the Haight district and shelter in a tattoo parlor, pretending to choose matching designs. Over cups of tea, they exchange their stories and realize the Russians are corrupt, working with Loveless rather than investigating the murder. Chevette calls Fontaine, a bridge resident, to watch over Skinner.

The next morning, Mrs. Danica Elliott, an elderly woman Rydell met on his flight to San Francisco, spots them on the street, claims to be lost, and asks for directions. Rydell volunteers to drive her south in her rented RV. He wakes in the parked vehicle to find Loveless holding a gun. Loveless reveals that Elliott works for IntenSecure. He takes the glasses and explains his history: He is the son of an American who helped establish Central American data havens, digital repositories evolved from cartel infrastructure. He was Blix's handler. In Mexico City, Loveless viewed the glasses and saw the Sunflower plan, a scheme to rebuild San Francisco with 17 self-sufficient tower complexes whose advance knowledge would allow fortunes in real estate speculation. When Blix lost the glasses at the party, Loveless killed him. Chevette, sent to fetch a Diet Coke, dumps an entire bag of dancer, a dangerous controlled substance she found in a stolen phone, into the can. Loveless consumes the drug and begins screaming and firing wildly. Rydell crashes the RV through a dead mall's exit and escapes.

They drive to Paradise, a Fallon-ite Christian compound where Sublett is visiting his mother. Rydell contacts the Republic of Desire through a borrowed VR rig and warns them the Sunflower plan threatens their operating environment. They agree to help by hacking the Death Star, the LAPD's geosynchronous law-enforcement satellite.

Rydell lures Warbaby to Century City II in Los Angeles by claiming he has the glasses. Chevette and Sublett gain entry to Karen Mendelsohn's apartment, where Karen examines the glasses and recognizes the Sunflower data's legal and media potential. When Warbaby arrives with Freddie and the Russians, the Republic transmits false data through the Death Star, identifying the group as terrorists. Unmanned drone gun-platforms descend and pin the four men. Loveless, battered from his dancer episode, appears at Karen's door with his gun aimed at Chevette. Rydell blasts him with a pepper-spray flashlight.

Pursley arrives with lawyers, followed by Ma. The LAPD never admits the Death Star was hacked. Pursley declares the case enormous, and Karen highlights the Sunflower data's implications. Rydell, Chevette, and Sublett are arrested but bailed out the next morning.

On the bridge, Yamazaki has been caring for Skinner, selling the old man's possessions to buy food. Fontaine reports that Sammy Sal has been found alive. A funeral procession carries the storm's dead along the upper deck, including Nigel, who was shot during the bridge confrontation. As the community prepares to celebrate the birthday of J. D. Shapely on November 15, honoring the HIV-positive sex worker whose mutant virus became a vaccine that reversed the global AIDS pandemic, Yamazaki promises himself to observe and record it all.