Havall 16 by A. J. Ullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a story of a future which only the rich will enjoy and the lengths that people will go to stop it, it starts quoting an experiment by a russion scientist where a pair of rats are let loose in a labyrinth, followed by a cat, the results of which are the most robust rat sacrifices the weaker one so the cat will go for it first and then make it’s escape, however, the cat kills the robust one nad then proceeds to eat both, therefore, only the cat is the winner and in this future there are two factions, the Havall’s (the cats) and the Havenot’s (the rats), one side has everything and one side has almost nothing, but someone has gone back to change this and so the chase begins, but Tommy Canada and Havall 16 are the rats and someone else is the ca.
Tommy and his partner and best friend Win Gault own a company which they are about to take public and tell the world about their discoveries and what it could mean for them, but on April first, he does a wonderful thing for a coworker and treats himself to clocking out early and a stop off at a favourite watering hole. While he is there he and another friend have a discussion about a scientific breakthrough in health care involving nanobots, his friends response is that “We’re not made to live forever” and provokes an interesting train of thought in Tommy, but when he has to swerve to avoid a collision which nearly kills him and he faces the choice of whether to help, leave or kill a mortally injured racoon, he decides to leave it, but this is just the foreshadowing of a future choice.
The next morning, he is back at the helical shaped office and about to have a meeting with Win about the IPO when his chief of security informs him that there is a virus in the computing system and seeing as it isn’t connected to the internet, she has no idea where it has come from or what it will do, so Tommy asks her to find out and report her findings to him, there is no need to worry Win until there is more information. When he gets to Win’s office, they talk about the upcoming IPO and the party that will go along with it, then they talk about the budget and how one area in particular was using ten times more resources than allocated, but his worry was blown off as a typo, the kind of which never happens, so he heads home after a full day of meetings, where his girlfriend is waiting for him, they talk all the time, but don’t see each other in person as much, so after a bit of wine and some food, for them and his two cats, they reminisce and then have a night of passion.
When he goes for a shower the next morning, he finds some writing on the mirror, but when he asks her if she did it, the answer is no and so it is a mystery, a frustrating one, but one that has to be put on the backburner for now. At work, he has another meeting about the virus, another of the tech team has been drafted in to help, but there is nothing else further to report and the rest of the day involved the usual day to day running of the business and this is the same routine, except everyday the message on the mirror changed until on the eighth day someone came through it, a woman and the news she was bringing was one which would change his life forever. She tells him of the future in which his company becomes the most successful in the world, but that it has come at the cost of those who cannot afford it and she has come back to stop this from happening and convince Tommy to help her persuade Win that it is the right thing to do, but that does not go as planned because they find out that the Havalls have a plan to stop them.
Will they be able to stop the future from happening, or will their plans be terminated before they can even start? Will there be fatal consequences to their actions, or will everyone live happily ever after? The only way to find out is to read along their adventure and find out what the future has in store.
Reviewed by @roxsannel
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