Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, a character introduced in Stephenson's novel REAMDE, suddenly becomes brain dead after a routine medical procedure. The billionaire's only will is a cut & paste affair with instructions on freezing his body to be cryogenically preserved until technology advances enough to reanimate him. His family ultimately uploads the contents of his brain into digital cloud storage created for that purpose. Dodge and other uploaded brains have a sort of amnesia but he creates a virtual world based on what he does remember. As more and more brains are uploaded the world of Dodge's creation is inhabited with beings who evolve in a myriad of ways. Dodge, who has named himself Egdod finds himself in a battle for supremacy against El, the mentally ill, billionaire megalomaniac Elmo Shepherd. El overpowers Egdod and seals him away then proceeds to subjugate the other inhabitants of the cloud with himself as God. A group of former friends and colleagues of Dodge join together in a quest to release him and defeat the evil El. In addition to Dodge, there are characters, or descendants of characters in other Stephenson novels most prominently The Baroque Cycle. This one has earned a spot in my favorite novels by this author.
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