Circuit of Heaven
Dennis Danvers
The body is baggage. The soul is expendable.Nemo's mother and father left him behind to enter "the Bin"--joining twelve billion uploaded personalities who live in crime-free, disease-free and deathless virtual societies.Nemo hass come of age on a dangerous, near-deserted planet populated by a handful of stragglers: religious fundamentalists and rebels, the creeps and the crazies.Now he is twenty-one. And on a rare, reluctant visit to the parints who abondoned flesh and son for cyber-utopia, Nemo has met the perfect woman: a new Bin arrival named Justine, a beautiful pop singer sho dreams other people's dreams in the virual night.Now an inconvenient attraction is leading two lovers into a perilous mire of irreversible choice. For Justine has no body to return to. And Nemo the renegade has sworn never to sacrifice his own; to live, age, and die instead in a bleak erthly hell. Because, as an aoutsieder, he may enter the Bin for short periods of time. But if he ever decides to stay...there will be no way out again. An ingeniously original new voice in the realm of high quality SF, Dennis Danvers has seen tomorrow--and its the Bin: a vast network of silicon crystals into which twelve billion people have uploaded their personalities to live in crime-free, disease-free ad deathless virtual societies, leaving the dangerous and unpredictable Earth to a few stragglers, the creeps and the crazies, the religious fundamentalists and the rebels. Outsiders may visit the Bin for short stretches of time. But once they decide to stay. . .its forever.  Nemo is an outsider. This is his coming-of-age story. And it begins on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, when he reluctantly pays a visit to the parents who abandoned their flesh and their son for cyber-utopia. Nemo is a righteously angry young man determined to live, age, and die in a bleak, almost deserted earthy hell rather than sacrifice his body and soul to a technological purgatory.  Until Nemo meets the perfect woman--a newly arrived resident of the Bin named Justine--a pop singer and beautiful enigma with an unsettling void in her past. And now Nemo the renegade is questioning everything he has ever fought for or against. But the strange dreams that come to Justine in the dark of the virtual night belong to somebody else--and theyre leading two innocent young lovers into a dangerous mire of irreversible choice, and into the intricate machinery of devastation.