Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cole Westbay is a man living in a digital society with a neural interface the same as everybody else, in fact, he was the one who designed and created it, Vitasync received such a positive reception that now everyone has one and it is connected to a worldwide neural network where every citizen uploads their every thought, feeling and action into a lifelog. This neural chip has been integrated so seamlessly into everyday life that as the US Government reorganised and recognised this, they chipped away at the freedoms and liberties the general population had and they accepted it and as time progressed the lifelog became a necessity instead of a luxury, this is something that Cole didn’t agree with at all, but he couldn’t do anything about it. As Cole settles into his work at BioNarratus, he is called into his boss’s office where he is given a promotion and even though it is taking him away from the lab work he loves, he accepts it, but when the work becomes extremely demanding, especially as a file to do with untoward deaths which have been suggested that the Vitasync may have been dysfunctional and the causes of the deaths, so he finishes his most important work and them works on boards to try and find links between the deaths and what he finds is the opposite of what he wanted.

One day Cole wakes up with a splitting headache and none of his usual visual overlays are active, in fact, none of his technological advances are active and he has lost his most recent memory, he has no idea how the blood in the back of his head got there, or why when he sits up, his house is a complete mess, it has been ransacked and he fears he has been robbed. He feels so disconnected from everything that it takes some time for him to process his new situation, it also means that he can’t call anyone to check in with them, so in order to call the police, he has to visit his neighbour in person, it is awkward, but is a means to an end. As he waits for the police to arrive, Cole thinks about how different the world around him looks without his neural interface chip, he feels extremely disconnected and his anxiety is through the roof, but when the Officer eventually makes his presence known, it isn’t in a way that Cole expects and the fact that his lifelog isn’t active lands him in hot water and he is arrested.

As Cole starts to try and figure out what has happened to him and why, he ends up feeling like he can’t trust those around him, so after having to see a doctor about the wound on the back of his head, he goes into work to figure out what he was working on and see if he can pin down a timeline for the last couple of days. It isn’t until he manages to become somewhat connected thanks to a second hand interface system that he realises how being disconnected may not be such a bad thing after all, especially when he is mobbed by reporters until help arrives from a group of people who prefer to remain off the grid. Will Cole be able to figure out who was behind his attack and work out who he can trust out of those he is surrounding himself with, or will he end up more permanently disconnected in the process? This is a dystopian sci-fi adventure which creates a world that doesn’t feel too distant from the one we are living in now while discussing the pitfalls of technology in such a way that it really makes you think and keeps you intrigued all the way until the end when the conclusion is revealed.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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