Are you ready to upgrade to a fully modifiable and personalized reality?
In Vancouver, 2036, people are tired of the smog and the rain. They're willing to give up a lot for guaranteed sunshine.
Don't think about what you're losing, think about what you're getting -- a life with no wasted hours sleeping or commuting. A life free of crime and disease. A life that ends when you want it to, not when some faceless entity decides it's your time.
Those who don't buy in -- the poor, the old, the paranoid -- have to watch as their loved ones, their friends, and their jobs leave the city. They have to watch as the latest prestige technology, Self, thoroughly transforms their world ...
Excerpt:
When Paul sat down on the bench, the young man moved over a bit without looking at him. His gaze was fixed on something in the sky.
Paul crossed his arms and looked down the tracks.
The young man made a quiet noise. Paul looked at him, and then followed the young man's eyes up. All Paul saw were the gleaming buildings of Frisco's business district, several stretching higher than the eye could register.
"Yeah, they've built them big here," Paul said. "They're not just scraping the sky - they go up forever."
The young man looked at him for the first time. Paul's face was an indistinct blur of features, his suit fashionably cut. "Oh..." the young man said, looking up again. "No, I was watching the ad." He pointed at the empty sky.
Paul turned the dial on his watch, and the blue sky turned into a giant man running through a forest with a six-pack of Pepsi strapped to his head. The buildings obscured some of the ad. The man stopped, pulled off a can, and opened it. "Ah, yes," Paul said. He noticed movement to his left - a giant panda with a fedora was parachuting to the ground. Paul recognized the panda as the mascot for an insurance company. He turned the knob on his watch and both waving panda and Pepsi ad disappeared. The young man was looking at him.
Paul shrugged. "You get used to it. Same as the ties."
The young man looked at his own tie. "Yeah. I never thought I'd get used to it," he said, twisting it around like a noose. "But you do."
Paul laughed, looked down the tracks. Far off in the distance there was a trolley car almost too tiny to see.
"If you don't mind me asking," the young man said.
Paul looked back, his face a flurry of faces, a cipher.
"Uh, it's none of my business," said the young man. "But..." he pointed to Paul's watch. "If you're platinum, why are you taking the trolley car?"
"Oh," Paul laughed. "I just enjoy it. Clears my head. Gives me time to think."
"I see," the young man said, the blank look on his face clearly communicating that he didn't.
Paul started to look back at the approaching trolley car.
