This visionary portrait of a technology-dominated near future from the author of The Object asks: Is humanity engineering its own extinction?
By the end of the twenty-first century, cities are surrounded by rising oceans and society has fractured beyond repair. Half the population thrives, stretching their lifespans infinitely through medical marvels and relying on obedient AI-implanted assistants to handle the realities of a doomed world. The other half has become obsolete. At best they scrape by as cheap labor. Surplus humans in a world that no longer needs them.
James was born disposable. When he takes a position as a domestic servant for the elite, the best he can hope for is survival. Sacrificing his free will for a life of comfort may not seem like the best deal, but at least the view is nice. That all changes when his proprietor assigns him a seemingly impossible task: find his missing daughter, who disappeared in a VR simulation of his own design twenty years earlier.
As James descends deeper into a digital labyrinth, the boundaries between simulation and reality begin to dissolve—along with those between human and machine. And buried at the heart of it all lies a terrifying secret. One that calls into question not only Earth’s future, but its entire past.
USA Today–bestselling author Joshua T. Calvert pushes the human race to its absolute limits in this epic cli-fi thriller that’s perfect for fans of the Murderbot Diaries.
