pru·dence n. (prôôd'ns) caution with regard to practical matters; the exercise of discretion.
REAL LIFE. In the far, far future of 1992 North American Confederation, psionic powers won't nearly be as important as the ability to thwart psionic powers. In a world rampant with the Psi, advanced humans holding precognitive abilities, personal privacy becomes an issue. Inertials, whose anti-talent negates that of the Psi, exist to level the playing field. Norms, meanwhile, are caught in between, cashing in on the commercialization of the human psyche. The emergence of psychics has brought corporate espionage to a whole new level, and privacy is a luxury that comes with a price. Prudence organizations have been established to maintain a balance.
A quiet war is being waged between business rivals Raymond Hollis and Glen Runciter. At Hollis Talents, Psis are being recruited as corporate spies. Their telepaths infiltrate companies and extract their secrets from minds of their Norm employees. On the other side of the spectrum are the Prudence organizations, security firms which employ Inertials who try to hunt the telepaths down. Enter one of such outlets, Runciter Associates, headed by Runciter and his right-hand man, recently deceased Joe Chip.
HALF-LIFE. Even in death, Chip has a hand in running Runciter Associates, thanks to modern science. Stored in cold-pac, he is preserved in half-life, a state between the living and the grave. Half-life is a world that parallels our own, pieced together by memories of those in cold-pac. There, the half-dead have problems of their own. Half-life, of course, doesn't last forever. Some half-lifers have taken to feeding off the vitality of others to prolong their own. A half-lifer's only weapon is Ubik, 'reality support' in a can. It reverses the decay that weakens one's half-life, warding off greedy half-lifers who would prey on your remaining vitality.
Based on
Philip K. Dick's Ubik, a dystopic vision of an alternate future that's high tech for lowlives. In this urban landscape, everything is coin-operated. There's nothing but neon to shed light on the ugly corners of this seemingly utopian society. Two sides of a war, opposite sides of the glass. Where do you stand?
