In late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her part- ner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immer- sive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments. Across the city, in the abandoned ‘real’ world, Tao-Yi’s mother remains stub- bornly offline, preferring instead to indulge in memories of her life in Malaysia.

When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future, or an authentic past.

Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Murakami surrealism thrown in, this is speculative liter- ary fiction at its best.