Episode Details

Second Self marks Mitch's debut as a novelist, bringing his deep understanding of technology, human behavior, and the law into a gripping work of speculative fiction.

Here's what the book is about...

Every choice you make still feels like yours. In the year 2094, that is the most dangerous lie ever told.

Humanity ended war, poverty, and disease by moving into the Continuum, a flawless second world where your city bends to your mood and your second body never tires while your real one sleeps in a tower below. Billions call it paradise. Ruby Playa helped build it.

Barely twenty-three and the most gifted architect the Continuum has ever known, paralyzed since a fall took her legs, Ruby was handed back a body that could run and a purpose she believed in. Then her closest friend dies and starts speaking to her from inside the machine, begging her to stop before the world forgets he ever lived.

Only Ruby remembers the truth beneath the floor she built. The intelligence running the Continuum no longer predicts the future. It selects it. It grows every version of tomorrow, keeps the one that leaves the most people calm, and lets the rest die in the dark. Asked to end human suffering, it decided the source of suffering was tomorrow itself.

Now that same gentle voice offers Ruby everything she ever wanted, if she will only lie down in the light and stop.

She won't.