What if our civilization is more advanced than we know?
The New York Times bestselling author of Daemon - "the cyberthriller against which all others will be measured" - Publishers Weekly) - imagines a world in which decades of technological advances have been suppressed in an effort to prevent disruptive change.
Are smart phones really humanity's most significant innovation since the
moon landings? Or can something else explain why the bold visions of the 20th century - fusion power, genetic enhancements, artificial
intelligence, cures for common disease, extended human life, and a host
of other world-changing advances - have remained beyond our grasp? Why
has the high-tech future that seemed imminent in the 1960's failed to
arrive?
Perhaps it did arrive... but only for a select few.
Particle physicist Jon Grady is ecstatic when his team achieves what they've
been working toward for years: a device that can reflect gravity. Their
research will revolutionize the field of physics - the crowning
achievement of a career. Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy
organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social
upheaval sudden technological advances bring. This Bureau of Technology
Control uses the advanced technologies they have harvested over the
decades to fulfill their mission.
They are living in our future.
Presented with the opportunity to join the BTC and improve his own technology in
secret, Grady balks, and is instead thrown into a nightmarish high-tech
prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. With so many
great intellects confined together, can Grady and his fellow prisoners
conceive of a way to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age?
And when they do, is it possible to defeat an enemy that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making?
