2054, Los Angeles. An age of total surveillance, corruption, and untrammeled corporate power, where most citizens keep their heads down, or risk losing them.
Yet there are those determined to resist. When impulsive, naive party girl Nadine falls in love with the wrong person, she tumbles into an abyss whose inhabitants are hunted as terrorists, feared for their hacking skills and loathed by the rich and powerful. Soon she is on the run in a treacherous underworld she is not prepared for: a place of high-tech DNA-tuned poisons, brain hacking, autonomous killer drones, and systemic government corruption.
Trust and betrayal lurk around every corner, and each step down the rabbithole risks pieces of herself she cannot afford to lose. How long before there's nothing left?
Debut author E.F. Coleman offers a searing glimpse into a dystopia that is at once bleak and all too plausible.
As the prophet said, when it’s you against the world, back the world.
2054, Los Angeles. An age of total surveillance, corruption, and untrammeled corporate power, where most citizens keep their heads down, or risk losing them.
Yet there are those determined to resist. When impulsive, naive party girl Nadine falls in love with the wrong person, she tumbles into an abyss whose inhabitants are hunted as terrorists, feared for their hacking skills and loathed by the rich and powerful. Soon she is on the run in a treacherous underworld she is not prepared for: a place of high-tech DNA-tuned poisons, brain hacking, autonomous killer drones, and systemic government corruption.
Trust and betrayal lurk around every corner, and each step down the rabbithole risks pieces of herself she cannot afford to lose. How long before there's nothing left?
Debut author E.F. Coleman offers a searing glimpse into a dystopia that is at once bleak and all too plausible.
As the prophet said, when it’s you against the world, back the world.
She picked her way down the cramped alley, decaying shipping containers on one side, rust-stained corrugated metal buildings on the other. A pulsing green arrow hovered ghostlike in front of her, directing her toward the dark silhouette of a long-abandoned warehouse erupting from cracked concrete. Feeble light leaked from the edges of a small window carelessly plastered over with yellowing newspaper. Beyond the warehouse, closer to the water, the shattered wreck of the Georgina Maersk lay broken, speared on the jagged metal fingers of the old docks by a freak storm nearly eight years ago. The area had been up for renewal ever since, but something always held it up. Toxic waste, last she’d heard. Cheaper to move the harbor a few miles than clean it up.
Heat shimmered in the evening air like vitriol after an argument. Sweat clung to her face and arms. The glowing arrow brought her to a massive wood and metal door in the side of the warehouse. “You have reached your destination,” a synthetic voice said in a programmed British accent.
She hammered on the door. A small panel flipped open, sending cold blue light streaming around her. “Yeah?”
“Pterodactyl, man.”
“Name?”
“Nadine.”
The panel slammed shut. A moment later, the door slid partway open with a metallic shriek. She squeezed through into a small room paneled off with temporary partitions. A gaping doorway in the far wall led into a dark tunnel. A large, barrel-chested man in stained work pants and a leather vest glowered at her. Black and red tattoos, jagged and spiky, decorated his neck, spread across his chest. He folded his arms. “You a cop?”
“You know cops don’t have to tell you if you ask, right?”
“So are you?”
“Do I look like a cop? No, I’m not a cop. Jesus.”
He slid a flat black paddle from his belt. Nadine raised her arms. He grunted as he ran it along her body. An all-clear hologram flashed green. He tucked the paddle away and produced a small flat rectangle of grease-stained white plastic, chipped on one corner. “Thirty.” Nadine pressed her thumb to it. He waved her toward the dark opening, eyes already drifting past her. “Have fun.”
She made her way through a tunnel of heavy black felt draped over corroded metal scaffolding. Beneath her feet, cracks spiderwebbed through stained concrete. She pushed through the curtain at the end of the makeshift corridor, strobing multicolored light washing over her. The center of the warehouse had been mostly cleared of junk, leaving an open space for a makeshift dance floor, jammed beyond reasonable capacity with twisting bodies. Along one wall, a bank of gasoline-burning generators purred, venting exhaust through holes chopped in the corrugated metal. Tangles of thick cables ran to an elaborate mixing deck, where a man in a gaudy sequined trench coat swayed back and forth, eyes half-closed, running practiced hands over the controls. Lasers sliced the air around him. Banks of colored spotlights swept the center of the warehouse, where the eager crowd danced in eerie silence among abandoned pieces of heavy equipment.
Nadine’s implant chimed. Words appeared in her vision, floating ghostlike over the surreal scene. “Signal found: d4nc3p4rty0602. Accept?”
“Yes,” she said.
Music poured through her, thumping bass and deep, driving percussion. The warehouse lit up with brilliant cartoon animals floating in hallucinatory color over the heads of the dancers: a white unicorn with long eyelashes and a rainbow-colored tail cavorting obscenely with a grinning hippopotamus as a menagerie of animated squirrels, foxes, and chickens leered. “Get you something, hon?” came a voice at her arm.
Nadine turned. The voice belonged to a slender woman, dark skin and dark eyes, black hair that fell in multiple rows of braids to her waist. She wore a leather miniskirt and spiky stiletto heels that still didn’t bring her as high as Nadine’s shoulder. Loops and whorls of fluorescent green decorated her bare chest. “Get you something?” she repeated. “Beer? Whiskey? Vodka?”
“Vodka sounds good.”
“Eighteen.”
The woman held out a blank white square. The edge lit up green when Nadine touched it. “Be right back, hon.” She disappeared into the gloom and returned a moment later with a small plastic cup. “Enjoy.”
Nadine wandered farther into the warehouse, watching dreamlike figures dance beneath the sweeping lights.
“Heyyyyyy.” A gangly, blond-haired kid, barely old enough to shave, appeared grinning at Nadine’s elbow. Long, waxed ribbons of hair in blue, green, orange, and red hung over his face. “P-p-p-party supplies? I have it all. Latest designer empathogens from D-d-doctor Happy hisself. Uppers, downers, synthetic cannabis analogues, anything you want.”
“What’s your name?”
“T-t-terry.”
“Terry. I’m Nadine. Got any Strake?”
“Yeah!” His eyes, pale blue somewhere behind the hair, lit up. “How much you want?”
“Depends. Is it good?”
He looked hurt. “Only the best for my c-c-customers.”
“Then you won’t mind showing me.”
Terry pulled a fat wad of plastic strips dotted with little blisters from the pocket of his baggy jeans. He sorted through them, untangled a strip, and shoved the rest back in his pocket. From another pocket, he produced a small black cylinder with a lens on one end and a row of buttons up the side. He peeled open the strip and shook out a bright pink pill flecked with green. A smiley face printed in black ink stared back up at him. Intense green light shone from the end of the tube. A moment later, a hologram appeared over it, lines on a grid showing spectral peaks. Nadine nodded. “How much for two?”
“Sixty. Cash only.”
Nadine pushed a handful of crumpled bills at him. He handed her the naked pill and another just like it, still trapped in its plastic blister. Nadine tucked the plastic-wrapped pill in her pocket and let the other dissolve on her tongue. The vodka chaser burned her throat. She closed her eyes and let the music envelop her.
The drift came on slow, like a warm fuzzy blanket gently drawn over her, smooth, no jitters. Only the best, just like Terry promised. Rainbows swirled behind her eyelids. Drumbeats thumped in her head, tinged with blue and green. She stood for a time, swaying gently while the music swirled through her.
When she opened her eyes, a vision of beauty floated before her, so aching her breath caught. She danced with sensual grace, tiny LEDs woven through her long black hair, pulsing with the beat of the music. Her black dress clung to her like a second skin, faintly shimmering in the roving spotlights. Complicated straps crisscrossed her back, exposing sweat-glossed skin.
Nadine flicked off the feed. The music stopped. The pornographic cartoons overhead evaporated without a trace. She watched the woman dance in uncanny silence, captivated by her effortless grace. The woman turned, hands over the top of her head, moving to music Nadine could not hear. Their eyes met. In slow motion, the woman reached out to take Nadine’s hand. Her skin buzzed when they touched. “I’m Anna.”
“Nadine.”
“Nadine.” Anna draped an arm over Nadine’s shoulder. Laser light slashed the air around her. “Dance with me, Nadine.”
Nadine switched on the feed. The music folded around her like an old friend. She closed her eyes and let it carry her, following in Anna’s wake.
They danced for hours through a shifting tapestry of light, heat, scent, and sound. They spiraled in toward each other, closer and closer, until Anna’s body moved against her, sweat-slicked and sensual. Nadine drifted away into a soft haze, where nothing existed except the music in her head and Anna’s skin warm against hers. The LEDs in Anna’s hair glittered, edged with hallucinatory color. Electric currents raced along Nadine’s skin. By the time the Strake started to recede, releasing her as gently as an outgoing tide, most of the crowd had already cleared out.
Anna led her to a small round table of battered gray metal flanked by two rickety folding chairs, where she plopped down gracelessly, panting. Nadine sat beside her. “I saw you looking at me,” Anna said.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s rude to stare.”
“I’m not.” Anna regarded Nadine with heavy-lidded eyes. “Wanna trip with me?”
“I—sure.”
Anna took a round pink pill from a compact metal case. She placed it on the tip of her tongue, then leaned across the table to kiss Nadine, slipping tongue and pill between Nadine’s lips. The pill disintegrated on Nadine’s tongue.
The kiss stretched out to eternity. When it finally ended, Anna ran her fingertips over Nadine’s arm. Nadine’s skin glowed at the touch. “You kiss nice,” Anna said. “If I blow in your ear, will you follow me anywhere?”
Nadine caressed her face. The warehouse tilted to one side, edges blurring. “You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s the drugs talking.”
“No, I mean it.”
“Aww.” Anna nuzzled her hand. “You’re sweet. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Nadine leaned back with her eyes closed and turned up the music until it pounded through her. Seconds or hours later, she wasn’t sure which, a hand caressed her shoulder. Nadine opened her eyes. “Where did you go?”
Anna held up a long plastic strip. Eight small pink pills lay trapped within. “Party favors. I’m taking you home with me. Cab’s on the way.”
The room fuzzed around Nadine. “I told my roommate I’d be home tonight.”
“Is he going to mind if you stay out?”
Nadine shook her head. “She. Olivia.”
“Olivia. That’s a pretty name. Would you rather go home to Olivia?”
Nadine gazed into Anna’s face. The LEDs wreathed her in a shimmering, unearthly glow. “No.”
Anna took Nadine’s hand. Red and green lasers strobed across her skin. At the curtain, the server in the miniskirt stepped up to her, body paint glowing under the lights and the second dose of Strake. “Here,” she said, handing Anna a hoodie printed with dozens of cartoon faces, mad grins beneath large eyes.
“Thanks, hon.” They embraced warmly. Anna pulled on the hoodie and slipped the hood over her head.
“Friend of yours?” Nadine said as they made their way back through the fabric tunnel toward the door.
“Ex-lover. That bother you?”
“Just curious. She’s cute.”
They waited outside as a battered black Tesla made its cautious way up the alley, lights blue-white in the gloom. The front wheels whined as it inched between the storage containers and the sheds. It stopped in front of Anna. The rear doors popped.
They climbed into the grubby back seat, upholstery cracked and torn. The cab was old enough it still had a full-size steering wheel and a complete dashboard in the vacant driver’s seat. A cracked screen lit up on the scratched Plexiglass divider between front and back. “LA transit police investigate all reports of Booker cab vandalism,” the cab warned in a bored synthetic monotone. “Vandalism may adversely affect your Booker score. Acceptance of transit implies assent to these conditions.”
Anna and Nadine mashed the “Accept” button. “Thank you,” said the synthetic voice. The doors closed. The cab rolled backward down the narrow alley, retracing its path.
Anna was in Nadine’s arms in an instant. Her lips touched Nadine’s, warm and soft. “Think anyone ever looks at the camera logs?” Nadine said.
“If they do, let’s give them something worth watching.”
They made out on the stained upholstery, hands roving unfamiliar bodies, until the cab pulled up in front of a faded cookie-cutter mansion surrounded by near-identical twins, monuments to bland conformity. Potholes littered the street like bomb craters. The sounds and smells told Nadine the ocean was not far off.
The doors popped open. “Nice place,” Nadine said, looking up at the balcony a story overhead.
“Used to be, until the storm. After that, nobody could get insurance any more. Banks called in their loans, lot of people lost their shirts. Whole neighborhood sat empty for, what, four years, something. Developer came in, bought all the houses for pennies on the dollar, divided ’em up into apartments, home sweet home.” She presented her eye to a scanner in the door jamb, then fiddled with a heavy-looking deadbolt.
“Anna.” The voice came from the darkness behind them.
“Night off,” Anna said without looking up.
“Sorry.” A man stepped out of the shadows, dressed, like Anna, in a dark hoodie printed with lolling cartoon faces. Beneath the hood, Nadine got a quick glimpse of dark-colored goggles. “Here.” He handed Anna a fat manila envelope tied closed with thin red string. “Who’s your friend?”
“Nadine,” Anna said. She unwound the string and looked inside the envelope. “Nadine, Dan-boy. Dan-boy, Nadine. We just met.”
“Pleased, I’m sure. Can I talk to you?”
“If you must.” Anna gave Nadine a quick kiss. “Make yourself at home, darling. I’ll be right in.”
Lights flicked on as Nadine slipped through the door. She found herself in an expansive living room, peaked ceiling two stories above her head. A crudely-fitted gypsum-board wall divided it rudely in half. Paint peeled from the decorative trim along the edges of the ceiling. In one corner, a cheap IKEA desk held a sleek, top of the line laptop surrounded by three large holographic monitors, all rendering different pastel screensavers. A soldering iron sat atop the desk in its spiral holder, a set of precision screwdrivers and a fiber optics tap beside it. Voices drifted in from somewhere outside, his angry, hers placating.
After a while, the voices softened to some sort of resolution. Anna came in and locked the deadbolts behind her. “Sorry.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Ha! He wishes.”
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“He’d need to be a boyfriend first.” She tossed the envelope onto the desk, where it skidded to a stop against the curved foot of one of the monitors. Neatly-banded bundles of cash slid out. She draped her arms over Nadine’s shoulders. “Where were we?”
“Right here, I think.” Nadine kissed her lower lip.
Without breaking the kiss, Anna half-led, half-dragged Nadine through a door that hung slightly askew in its ornamental frame into a large bedroom with a vaulted ceiling. A battered fan with wide black blades rotated slowly overhead. She pulled Anna down onto a huge, rumpled bed, scattered with unmade sheets and old clothes. Wherever they touched, Nadine’s skin buzzed. “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” Nadine murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Nothing.”
Their lips met again. Electricity crackled. Anna hooked one leg around Nadine’s and pushed her off-balance. Nadine thumped down onto her side, flailing. In an instant, Anna rolled atop of her. Nadine pressed a finger to Anna’s lips. “Aren’t we moving kind of fast?”
Anna’s eyes searched her face, pupils enormous under the effects of the hallucinogen. “You prefer the slow approach? Casual meetings separated by periods of longing? Furtive glances over restaurant tables? Gradual accumulation of erotic tension, building up to explosive release in one wild night of unrestrained carnality?”
“When you put it like that,” Nadine said, “it sounds like a lot of work.”
“My thoughts exactly. Now come here.”
***
Nadine woke the next morning to an empty bed. Cheerful humming floated in through the open door. She searched around for her tank top, pulled it on, fished her panties out from between the bed and the wall, and followed the sound.
She followed oddly-shaped hallways, their geometry distorted by the ruthless carving of the house, into a spacious, well-appointed kitchen. Another unpainted gypsum-board wall chopped the kitchen in half, extending from the counter to the far wall, bisecting an island appointed with a granite countertop that had probably once been expensive but now looked somewhat tawdry.
Nadine leaned against the door and watched Anna go about fixing a simple breakfast of eggs and bagels. She’d unwound the LEDs from her hair, which now fell loose around her shoulders. Anna moved with uncommon grace, body hard beneath a simple lace teddy of white silk. She hummed to herself as she worked. “Hi!” she sang when she noticed Nadine. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“You’re still high.”
Nadine held her hand in front of her face. A faint blue glow crackled around her fingers, chemically induced St. Elmo’s fire clinging to her skin. “True. But in a few hours I’ll come down and you’ll still be beautiful.”
“Aww.” Anna lowered her gaze coquettishly. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“Have to what?”
“Come down. I brought plenty of supplies.”
“What if I want to explore you without chemical help?” Nadine stalked into the kitchen, where she trapped Anna against the half-island in a cage of her arms. “What about that, hmm?” She kissed the tip of Anna’s nose.
Anna blushed. “Aren’t we moving a little fast?”
“If you like,” Nadine said, “we can try furtive glances across a restaurant table. You might have to explain how to do that, though. I’m not sure I’ve ever been furtive.”
“Who has that kind of time?”
Several hours, two toasted egg sandwiches on bagels, and uncounted orgasms later, they lay together on the bed, tangled in poly-silk sheets. Anna stroked Nadine’s cheek. “Nadine,” she said. “Isn’t that French? You don’t look French.”
“No?” Nadine propped herself up on one arm. “What do French people look like?”
“You know what I mean!”
“My mother is French Canadian. My father is Chinese. Hong Kong, not mainland. He ended up in Vancouver, BC after the thing, then in Montreal after Vancouver flooded. Met my mom there.”
“How’d you end up down here?”
Nadine laughed without humor. “How does anyone end up here? I wanted to be a movie star. Gotta come to LA to be a movie star, right? That or Bangalore, and I don’t speak Kannada. My father helped me swing a work visa. Easy to fix if you know who to bribe. He told me it would be the last thing he’d ever do for me until I gave up this foolishness and came back. Haven’t talked to him since.”
“Did you make it in Hollywood?”
“No. Damned if I’m crawling back to tell him that, though.” She rolled over onto her back and studied the ceiling, peeling paint above the dusty fan. “What about you? How did you end up…” She waved an arm at the room around them.
“Ah, well, see, that’s complicated.” Anna rose and wrapped a bathrobe around herself. “You want some coffee? I want some coffee.”
“Was it something I said?” Nadine wondered aloud to the empty room.
Set in 2054, Los Angelos, California, immechanica by R.F. Coleman introduces a world where tech has been integrated into every facet of life. Cars are no longer driven by people but are operated by A.I. Controlled with a thought, people now have implants that can do everything from giving turn-by-turn directions to projecting psychedelic imagery. In this version of the United States, tech and, by extension, extreme surveillance is the norm. But tech isn't the only thing that has changed the landscape. Climate change has left its mark, and corporate corruption is at an all-time high. Humanity, while not on the brink, certainly seems to be inching closer toward the cliff's edge.
Nadine, a wealthy Canadian transplant and failed actress, finds herself at an underground rave where she meets Anna. Anna's story is a bit more complicated - she is a hacker, but not just any hacker. Things go very quickly from tame to entirely off the rails when a few of Anna's associates mess with the wrong business. Now Nadine has been dragged into a world of high-stakes activism, and she's about to learn it's not just as simple as those who hold the money hold the power.
The book is frenetic and captivating -- there is lots of action and suspense. However, it feels like the author sacrificed character development for pacing. This novel is an absolute page-turner, creating and maintaining heart-racing tension that makes the reader feel like they're on the run too. But what would have taken this novel from good to great is if it had given us some time with our protagonist before everything started happening all at once. The reader doesn't get to witness the growing love between Nadine and Anna, just a hint of domesticity between two people who were strangers at the beginning of the book. More time with their relationship would have allowed us to develop a connection and feel the emotional weight of their choices in a way that felt genuine rather than the means to an end narratively.
Although most of the story takes place in well-known cities, the settings and timeline of events leading up to this future are relatively vague, except when Coleman uses specific brands. It might have been an attempt to ground the reader in this dystopian future, but I found it distracting. There are clearly some significant geopolitical and climate occurrences that have led to this point, but the reader never learns what happened. Like all the best dystopian narratives (Blade Runner, 1984, The Hunger Games trilogy), it seems this book seeks to sound the alarm but also asks the reader to question what the legacy of humanity will be.
This is a book full of potential. It starts off with an exciting concept that falls a little flat because the central narrative gets somewhat lost by trying to tackle so many profundities at once. However, while this book isn't perfect, its strengths far outweigh its flaws. It sticks with you, tackling big ideas like transhumanism, environmentalism, and the evolution of a species. This high adrenaline read is perfect for those who love big philosophical ideas and aren't overly concerned with the details.