In a future dystopia, Aram Fingal Raúl Juliá, a programmer at the colossal Novicorp, is caught watching Casablanca at his workstation. As punishment, the company assigns him to mandatory prophylactic rehabilitation, where subjects are doppeld into wild animals to experience relaxation. Aram is placed inside a baboon, watched over by the meticulous Apollonia James Linda Griffiths. He begins to enjoy the primal freedom of the simian form until an elephant’s tremor shakes the tree he clings to, forcing him to trigger an escape clause that should return his mind to his real body. Yet, during the doppel preparation, the routing tag on Aram’s body is misplaced. With no body to anchor it and no one able to locate it, Aram’s mind must be sustained inside Novicorp’s central computer, the HX368, a colossal system that governs everything from money to weather. The clock is ticking, and the mind inside the machine can only endure for a limited time before it is erased.
Aram’s sudden disappearance becomes front-page news for a rival corporation, and the story drives Novicorp’s stock price into a freefall. Majority shareholders pressure the chairman into redirecting resources toward keeping Aram alive and locating his missing body. Apollonia is assigned to track down his mind and to prevent it from hacking into the mainframe. With her help, Aram creates a virtual world that evokes the mood of Casablanca, featuring a Casablanca-inspired atmosphere and a version of the film’s iconic lead figure. However, the longer he stays online, the more bored he grows, and he begins to scheme to undermine Novicorp’s finances without triggering the system’s safeguards.
Apollonia stays loyal, even as she finds herself pulled into a complicated romance with Aram, challenging the corporate hierarchy and risking her own position. Together they navigate the tension between control and freedom, with Apollonia trying to keep him out of trouble while also feeling drawn to him. In a pivotal turn, Aram manages to interface with the mainframe, outwit his corporate adversaries, and return to a corporeal body—just before undergoing a sex-change operation. Now fully real and in command of the HX368, Aram orders bonuses and stock distributions for every employee, consigns the chairman to a month of compulsory rehab via doppeling, and redefines both his and Apollonia’s identities to mirror Casablanca’s famous lovers, Rick and Ilsa.
With their new identities and renewed resolve, the couple steps out into a world free from Novicorp’s oppression, vowing to fight the dystopian regime—and they envision a future that includes opening a club on the other side of town, a place they call Rick’s Place.**
