The future is boring. Technology has solved the world's most pressing problems, leaving people with tedious work and mundane play. Jack is a Security Officer Class 5, which sounds important, but isn't. However, her banal life as a cubicle worker by day and tinkerer by night is interrupted when she discovers that her employer's computer system has been invaded. Jack enlists the help of her only friends - her co-worker, Gilles and Adrian, an online friend she's never met - to help her track down the source of the invasion. Her investigation leads her to a shadowy group called the Red, where Jack learns that not everyone lives a life of quiet servitude. Even though she believes that the Red are responsible for a series of gruesome attacks, Jack begins to become attracted to their worldview. In her search for the people responsible for the attacks, she confronts the leaders of the group as well as her own burgeoning sense of self-awareness.
Author
M. Darusha Wehm is the Nebula Award-nominated author of the interactive fiction game The Martian Job, as well as the science fiction novels Beautiful Red, Children of Arkadia, The Voyage of the White Cloud, and the Andersson Dexter cyberpunk detective series. Writing as Darusha Wehm, Darusha’s mainstream books include the Devi Jones’ Locker YA series and the humorous coming-of-age novel The Home for Wayward Parrots. Darusha’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Terraform and Nature. Originally from Canada, Darusha currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand after spending several years sailing the Pacific.
