This one took a bit to refine, because I had a few competing ideas that I was trying to get into the story.
I liked the idea of a programmer testing virtual reality and finding himself stuck in the system. I was originally trying to have the logline show he had been in a coma and what he thought was the simulation was actually the real world a hundred years later, but I went away from that to focus on the progression through various layers of virtual reality.
I also tried to work in the idea that the ruling elite had digitised their minds and were ruling from within the system–and that a virus was impacting them, but this was too much story to fit in a logline.
Anyway, this is the version I ended up on, at least for this series.
SIMULANT
A young programmer testing a revolutionary virtual reality is hunted through a dazzling future city and triggers his escape phrase—only to discover there is no way out, and the system is forcing him through increasingly brutal realities where the only way forward is to die.