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Jeanne Boyarsky's Reviews > Proof of Concept
Proof of Concept
by
by
** spoiler alert **
This was a short read. At 131 pages, I read it in a day. The premise is the word is falling apart. People live in dense hives in either MegaCorp East (China) or MegaCorp West (undefined). The other areas are "dead zones" where people live as scavengers. People have to get baby permits, which are valuable, but apparently also free to be ignored?
There's a bunch of AI. One is a global audience mediator which sounds a like like social scores. There's also one in Kar (the main character's) head. The premise is that they want to test quantum space travel in "the Needle." As a test, they have a lot of people live underground, disconnected for a year. At the end there will be a test of the technology where they will visit an exoplanet and return.
Margrethe (scientist) and Dan (reality tv simulating long term travel) lead this. So far so good. There are a series of deaths and Kar's AI tries to warn her. The back cover says humans are programmed to ignore future dangers. I wish that were explored.
Then it gets confusing. Dan's faction believe in innoculating people to the future thru emergency news drills like the Mars Lab being in danger. Or maybe this is real. At the end, they get news of a world destroyed and are told that they are safe because the AI will settle them on a new planet but it will feel like right away). It's unclear to me whether this is true (in which case why aren't they there yet) or a scam in which case they are stuck underground in a non self sufficient system? Or is it that quantum eventually they do in fact visit a new planet, come back and be on the Earth that no longer has people??
Two starts because I read up to the end but left confused.
There's a bunch of AI. One is a global audience mediator which sounds a like like social scores. There's also one in Kar (the main character's) head. The premise is that they want to test quantum space travel in "the Needle." As a test, they have a lot of people live underground, disconnected for a year. At the end there will be a test of the technology where they will visit an exoplanet and return.
Margrethe (scientist) and Dan (reality tv simulating long term travel) lead this. So far so good. There are a series of deaths and Kar's AI tries to warn her. The back cover says humans are programmed to ignore future dangers. I wish that were explored.
Then it gets confusing. Dan's faction believe in innoculating people to the future thru emergency news drills like the Mars Lab being in danger. Or maybe this is real. At the end, they get news of a world destroyed and are told that they are safe because the AI will settle them on a new planet but it will feel like right away). It's unclear to me whether this is true (in which case why aren't they there yet) or a scam in which case they are stuck underground in a non self sufficient system? Or is it that quantum eventually they do in fact visit a new planet, come back and be on the Earth that no longer has people??
Two starts because I read up to the end but left confused.
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