Rick Lawton

Phisto Rick Lawton

Jack, a brilliant video game developer, uses his gaming platform, Phisto, to look for clues to the disappearance of his flamboyant partner, Maddy. Jack creates the digital environment of Western Marin and four people Maddy mentioned in her last video. The digital characters don't reveal many clues, but quickly create problems for Jack.

Talia Morris runs the Line where she talks to the homeless, the runaways, and alkies in San Francisco's Tenderloin offering them relevence and humanity. While posting flyers about the Line, she finds a flyer Maddy posted a year earlier, and she becomes as obsessed as Jack with finding Maddy.

Through their quest Jack and Talia begin to see who they are and how they became who they are. Their quest for Maddy ends in a shuttered SRO hotel in the Tenderloin and sends them on their own quest for relevance and happiness.

Phisto poses questions about the nature of quests, personal identity, created digital worlds and reality, and finally the conflict between men and women.