Grid City Overload

Set in the fictional city of Grid, CO - a sprawling metropolis built to look intentionally futuristic - GRID CITY OVERLOAD swirls around three central characters: a budding uppers addict, an informational psychopath, and a schizotypal soda factory worker who believes he's a fish. Two interlocking conspiracies are slowly converging on this trio who are all socially, as well as psychologically, vulnerable to advanced technology in a city that has fostered a technocracy. A ubiquitous software company, InfoZebra, begins construction on a massive new corporate headquarters at the heart of Grid. At the same time, the legal rights to a dying woman's head are called into question. At the center is a prodigiously skilled hacker known as XittyXat (in reality a young woman named Amy Arsenault, an informational psychopath obsessed with manipulating reality through digital means) who transforms both situations into scandals, and in so doing embroils the people surrounding her - knowing and unknowing. What results is a journey into the minds of the citizens, and objects, of Grid. Based on Alvin Toffler's theory of information overload from his 1970 book FUTURE SHOCK, the novel tells the story of people living in the final years of the Information/Technology Age as humanity nudges into a new era of advancement. Narrated by a diverse cast, including monastic cultists, overfueled addicts, anti-identity authors, a jethead inventor of a modern religion, a retired hitman, and a sentient phone