author : Ada Palmer

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is a hard-won utopia built on abundance, but also on mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now taboo. And most of the world’s population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless competition is managed by all-powerful technocrats. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life…

The sun is setting on a hard-won golden age. For three centuries, humanity has enjoyed peace and prosperity fuelled by technological abundance, oracular data analytics, careful censorship… and just a little blood.

In a world dominated by seven factions, or ‘Hives’, the price of peace has been a few secret murders, mathematically planned to ensure political and economic balance. But now the secret is out, the balance is slipping and war beckons.

Convict Mycroft Canner knew this war was coming – he committed his terrible crimes to forestall it. Now, he has just one card left, a wild card no degree of statistical genius could have predicted: a thirteen year-old child with the power to work miracles. Turning thought into matter, matter into life, this child has the power to save the world, or to doom it.

Three centuries of peace and a hard-won golden age have come to an abrupt end. The once steadfast leadership of the seven Hives is crumbling, soured by corruption and deception. Savagery and bloodlust, three centuries suppressed, have been unleashed.

The terrible truth is that centuries of peace were bought with a trickle of secret murders. The killings were mathematically planned, meticulously organised to preserve the balance to ensure no faction could dominate.

But now the secret is out, the balance has tipped, the Hives’ utopian façade has slipped. Just days ago, humanity stood at the pinnacle of civilization. Now everyone – Hives and Hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and convicts, warriors and saints – is preparing for war.

For years, the leaders of the Hive clandestinely committed terrible deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could last only so long. Global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity’s violent inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. A catalyst – in the form of a special little boy – was all it took to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Now war spreads across the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in danger, fracturing a long-united world and threatening to obliterate everything the Hive system built.

With Mycroft Canner nowhere to be found, his successor must attempt to restore order in a world spiralling ever closer to irreparable ruin. But is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to aim for the stars?