Jess doesn’t know her technology’s important, but it is. So important that the Berkeley professor might be about the change a world in which air quality and drought are harrowing life and death issues. Profiteering corporations could put a stop to the good her tech could do, though. After witnessing an attack on her boss, Jess has to go on the run, with the help of a knowledgeable but suspicious stranger.
Several decades into the future, the world has changed dramatically. California is drought ridden and reliant on the desalination of seawater – controlled by a suspect monopoly – to feed and water its residents. The air quality is so poor that carrying containers of oxygen is all but essential, and the rich and the poor are close to war. At UC Berkeley, a professor is working on technology she believes links to areas like the efficient crushing of grapes to make wine, but turns out to have far more wide-reaching consequences, as her boss and former boyfriend realizes.
When David sends his prodigious ex Jess a suspicious message, she sets aside their difficulties to check he’s okay, and finds her boss being beaten to a pulp by thugs apparently linked to the water desalination company. As she escapes the scene, she immediately comes under threat, and makes her escape with an apparent stranger, Matteo. The world of the future is a difficult place for those on the run, though. Almost universally, people use ‘Keepers’, a complex digital technology that almost forms part of the body, a kind of inbuilt, softly-spoken Google with which they can communicate internally. Many sell the use of their Keepers for surveillance purposes in exchange for a meager income. Drones and cameras are everywhere, and criminals are ruthlessly and efficiently tracked down in a domineering police state.
That makes Jess and Matteo’s escape increasingly difficult, as they’re chased relentlessly through California, the complexities of their relationship and Jess’ confusion about Matteo’s motivation increasingly front and center in their travels. The result is a manically-paced, page-turner of an adventure book with some interesting and thought-provoking views on how the future might unravel, and the consequences for humanity.
One weakness in the text is the tendency, especially early in the book, for the plot device necessary to unravel a situation to become apparent only a few pages before, but given the setting is pointedly unfamiliar, that is to some extent unavoidable. Overall, it’s an intelligent and memorable vision of the future, combined with a frantic plotline full of twists and turns, and polished character development. You might even up your ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ efforts as a result.
Whose side is Matteo on? Will they escape, or make peace with their pursuers? Will the world find a way out of its smog-filled misery? You’ll just have to read it to find out.
~James Hendicott for IndieReader