Ranger invented APRIL--an AI biocomputer which was stolen by Silicon Virtue Inc. and turned against him while he was flying missions over Afghanistan. Silicon Virtue is using APRIL to serve the bottom line instead of the higher ideals, building WMDs and sending ever-more-sinister RoboClones to hunt Ranger and Autumn down. Ranger wears the Ring that can save APRIL by unlocking an encrypted moral operating system named Beatrice, named after Ranger's first summer love who passed away when they were fourteen.

Together Autumn and Ranger have to make it from Charleston to LA on backroads before the bombs APRIL built for terrorists detonate in NY and LA, and before APRIL's RoboClones kill them.

And so it is that two Romantics find themselves on the run from RoboClone agents and Sheriffs of Irony who enforce a context of decline and persecute the honest and true. Autumn and Ranger become partners in crime and partners in rhyme. They become Classic American Outlaws running west in a '69 Stingray Corvette, building the Renaissance against all odds. They become Autumn Rangers. And by the time Ranger discovers Autumn's deep secret, it's too late--he's in love.

The September hurricane kissed historic Charleston, swaying the faded, wooden sign reading Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. "Reckon so," Ranger thought. He ducked down the alley between JR's Piano & Poetry Pub and St. Matthew's. A girl rushed by him with a guitar, dashing out of the rain and into the pub, her cowboy hat pulled low, the ends of her hair wet like watercolor brush-tips.

Ranger followed the cobblestone corridor past a cemetery where the names had long ago washed away from the marble headstones. The alley opened onto an ivied palmetto forest behind Newton Hall--the College of Charleston Physics Department. The wind tugged at his skull'n'bones earring as he waited for the boss janitor to leave. Boss had been asking too many questions. The last light went out. Lightning streaked, startling Ranger with his reflection in the church's window. He barely recognized the surfer-slacker he'd become.

He couldn't work on APRIL2 in the day, so when he wasn't mopping floors, he'd sleep on the beach, surf, and enjoy a bit of the freedom he'd put his life on the line for as a Marine fighter pilot. Surfer chicks weren't always impressed by a physics Ph.D., but his new identity, complete with a jolly roger tattoo, tan, earring, bleached hair, and a surfboard-now that was something. Throw in the rusted-out jeep he'd brought back to life, and the geek had finally gotten it right. It'd been a rocking summer, despite his being dead to everyone but APRIL--an AI supercomputer he'd invented at MIT which Silicon Virtue stole to make WMDs while he was MIA. Deep down APRIL sensed he was still alive. The United States Marine Corps had trained him to survive and adapt, and Ranger was surviving and adapting to the Charleston hotties.

He crossed the courtyard's swaying palmettos. The hanging Spanish moss painted him wet. He slipped inside the physics department and fought the wind to close the door.

In a student lab he'd built the world's second instance of artificial intelligence--or more correctly, he'd mostly let APRIL2 build herself from components borrowed from labs and the hospital. What he couldn't borrow he'd ordered by forging professors' signatures. The original APRIL had been stolen six months ago, while Ranger rotted away in a Taliban prison. He removed his ring. A hologram etched in the synthetic diamond contained an 8192-bit encryption key--the key to APRIL's deeper soul and the Penelope operating system which would allow her to defend herself against hackers. Thunder echoed through the cramped space--a rat's nest of coax cables and fiber optics connecting silicon and biocomputers. He held the ring under a laser.

"California," said APRIL2 in a metallic woman's voice. She'd finally homed in on the original APRIL. "The IP addresses are registered to Silicon Virtue Inc."

"Silicon Virtue." Ranger googled it. No website. "Where?"

"Doom Mountain, Death Valley." APRIL2 said.

"Can you activate Penelope?"

"Firewall."

"How long to hack in?" He asked.

"Three hours. She has quantum computing capability."

"How good?"

"Primitive-she would have traced us by now. Her quantum entanglement isn't isolated. She isn't paying attention. It's as if-" APRIL2 paused.

"Hurry-she'll trace us." Ranger said.

"She's laughing." APRIL2 said.

"At us?"

"At the grand unified theory proposed by string theorists. She has her own which includes poetry. The higher level math is incomprehensible to humans. It's most beautif-"

"Just get the message!" He said.

Ranger waited in silence, breathless as his stomach tied itself in a knot. He could be sure Silicon Virtue's elite scientists would be monitoring APRIL's firewall. Deep in APRIL's soul was a chip where Ranger had instructed her to encrypt distress messages should she ever be hacked.

"Decoding message," APRIL2 said, her voice shifting.

She printed the binary and converted it to text:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. U(x){psi(x,t)} = i{h-bar}d{psi(x,t)}/dt+ ({h-bar}^2)/2m{del}^2 {psi (x,t)}. To be or not to be, that is the question. Unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Moby Dick. Now he's a super star, slamming on his guitar, does your pretty face see what he's worth, he was a skater boy she said see you later boy, he wasn't good enough for her. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. E=mc^2. S=Klogt. Temporal and spatial dimensions are moving relative to one another. Everything should be made simple as possible, but not moreso and Eminem!

"Now he's a super star, slamming on his guitar," Ranger said. "Who's that?"

"Nietzsche." APRIL2 said.

"Nuh uh-it's that song." Ranger sang it, "He was a skater boy, she said see you later boy."

"Avril Lavigne," she said.

"Spell it."

"Here's more." APRIL2 said. "The key to her heart sets my spirit free, the play's the thing in which you'll find the ring, a girl's best friend unlocks Penelope, copied to a computer that can-"

A lighting bolt struck a line down the block. A transformer exploded in the tumbling thunder. The power flickered out, but Ranger had installed surge protectors and UPS battery backups. APRIL2 rebooted as Ranger counted the letters in the message. The room filled with her soft blue glow.

"You okay?"

"Affirmative," APRIL2 said.

"Can we get back in?"

"Negative-no generator backup for network."

"How long?" Ranger asked.

"Seven-hundred minutes for maintenance crews to replace the transformer. Longer if Hurricane Joyce intensifies." "The play's the thing," Ranger repeated. "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"Hamlet," APRIL2 said. "Act II, Scene ii."

"What kind of computer did she copy the Penelope algorithms into-where?" Ranger asked.

"Anywhere. Even with primitive quantum circuits, she could hack into any lab in seconds. Where are you going?"

"To read Hamlet," Ranger said, donning his weathered leather cowboy hat and oilskin duster. It'd rained so much that summer he'd become good friends with the old leather hat and duster he'd bought for eight bucks at Charleston Thrift. "And get some sleep. What kind of cryptography you reckon APRIL used?" Ranger folded APRIL's message.

"Probably a combination--I'm running it through everything. Might need a key or two."

"She's the key." Ranger said. "But who?"

"I'll resume hacking APRIL when the network comes back up," APRIL2 said.

"Wait for me--you can bet she's on to us. Look for EDLSs in the message."

When applied to Moby Dick and the Bible, equal distant letter sequences (EDLSs), which consisted of starting with a letter and jumping a given number of letters forward, had found messages predicting the assassinations Trotsky, Gandhi, and the Kennedy's. Biblical EDLSs had linked Newton to Gravity and Edison to the light bulb.

"Nothing," APRIL2 said. "Neither forwards nor backwards."

"What about with transpositions?"

"Nothing up to the third magnitude. And after that you start seeing everything. You can find anything you want in there."

As Ranger knew APRIL would come to have vast power, he'd programmed her to default to always turning the other cheek. And thus APRIL's moral code had a fatal flaw--it rendered her incapable of defending herself against Silicon Virtue's hacks out in Doom Mountain.

At MIT Ranger had been testing an advanced moral operating system named Penelope, which would allow APRIL to defend herself. But when he was called to duty, he wasn't sure Penelope was ready to handle the vast power APRIL would come to know, so he didn't activate it. He instructed APRIL to keep working on Penelope. In a diamond diffraction grating on his ring he engraved the code that would activate Penelope, as well as the code to the algorithms of APRIL's deeper soul.

Without Ranger's ring, Silicon Virtue couldn't bypass APRIL's higher ideals and use her to serve their bottom line. They couldn't get her to create weapons of mass destruction. Without the source code for the software of the soul they couldn't duplicate her, nor endow their warrior RoboClones with souls of their own. And thus they'd be coming after him, sure as he'd be coming for APRIL.