In the world of 2065, the immersive experience of the Cybernet has replaced nearly every aspect of daily existence. It has unified global currencies. It has allowed perfectly safe social interaction in a world that experienced a global pandemic. It provides jobs, entertainment, and every sort of experience possible through the direct stimulation of the brain. Even if the worst possible thing happens and you are killed, it's just an avatar. Your body is perfectly safe. Until it isn't.
Cyrus and Everett are in the wrong place at the wrong time, when a high-profile personality's avatar gets killed and their actual body is found dead as well. If it only happened once that would be bad enough, but the bodies just keep hitting the floor. Cyrus and Everett, of course, are completely oblivious. Add in the return of an old flame and the involvement of a couple of high-level "metas" - power players in the Neverborn game that defines the virtual world. Top it off with some questionable behavior by the algorithms running the game, and even Cyrus can tell something weird is going on. Someone, or something, is pulling strings to manipulate events in cyberspace.
There's a lot to like about Meta: Game On. It's ridiculously timely, tapping into global fears about artificial intelligence, a plethora of references to pop culture, and a desperately clueless protagonist who just wants to get through another day with a minimum of the pain caused by his rare medical condition. The writing is sharp and witty. Black transitions between the various characters within the game, the real world, internal memos between game designers, and public press releases with ease and clarity. The audiobook is a phenomenal performance by Rob Rackstraw, but the quick cuts between scenes suffer a bit in that they require close attention and some interpretative effort by the listener. I frequently had to back up and start over when the chapter or section changed.
For a murder mystery, the story is in no hurry to solve the crime. For the most part, it's not even apparent that a crime has been committed. The story slouches along at the pace of a gamer who has technically accepted a quest from a random COG (cognitive AIs), but is not all that interested in finishing it. When it becomes apparent that the events of the real world are having an immediate and irrevocable impact on cyberspace, the action ramps up to a conclusion that draws all of the spiraling plot threads together - and reveals the importance of some tidbits that Black has slyly slipped into the narrative.
There are important questions at the heart of the book. Virtualism has become the mainstream religion of the virtual space. It was spawned from equal parts isolationism and atheism, and purports that all of reality is just a programmed experience, and that higher dimensions of reality can be accessed by programming cyberspace. Isolationism is a real and driving force for a great many people in society - Cyrus being one of them. Pornographic gratification is arguably an overwhelming force in cyberspace, where anonymity and the lack of consequences cause people to act out their most depraved fantasies. Thankfully, the novel never dips into this phenomenon except to acknowledge it.
At the end of all things, the players grudgingly admit that there are some thing for which there is no substitute in cyberspace, while the novel itself ends on a scene that spins the resolution of the plot into a new direction and casts an eerie, hollow light on every single interaction that has come before. Black has teased a sequel, and I'm eager to see just what it's going to look like. Saying anything more would feel like a spoiler.
It's a book that screams for a spoiler-filled discussion, but you should read it first. Xander Black is on Goodreads, which is where I'll be keeping an eye out for his next book. Live to play!
