The futuristic and AI premise of Randy Brown’s Assignment Day made me stop and really think about just how much of ourselves we leave behind on the internet. The story opens in the year 2020, when Ben Thiege is headed to his job at White Sands Missile Range and tracking GPS coordinates. All of a sudden, he mysteriously disappears after tapping an app on his phone. Then readers are taken into the future, and the year is 2080, where Corb Thomas is a high school senior getting ready to receive The Assignment. Like every student, he has been prepped for Assignment Day all his life. This is when seniors are given the chance to reconstruct deceased people from the digital footprints they leave behind, then upload the finished recreation in VX (virtual experience). Corb, of course, is looking forward to winning one of the three coveted prizes for his Assignment, but he has to get a pass first; then a lottery is drawn. During subject selection, lo and behold, he is assigned Ben Thiege. This soon becomes more than just a simple class project of reconstruction, especially when Corb notices gaps in Ben’s social media history and things that just don’t quite add up.