Discovery — Map Whitman

Will the future destroy our civilization? Will the Earth revolt against the demons humanity has unleashed? Will humans transform themselves to rebuild a more compassionate society? Would you? Or is it already too late? The rising storms of corporate greed, peak oil, climate change, pollution, species extinction, new viruses, and over-population have wrought an apocalypse in the not-too-distant future. Life there is recognizable, and yet a hauntingly contradictory blend of high tech and horse-and-buggy. Living on the precipice of this apocalypse, Alma and her brother Uly toil to maintain a mountain homestead safely tucked away from the pitiless corporations which control what remains of a technologically advanced civilization. There, Uly's mysterious panic attacks might go unnoticed by everyone but his family. But then their parents, working for a corporation to study a virus that attacks the human genetic code, join the long lists of people who have inexplicably Disappeared. Their mountain paradise shattered, Alma and Uly must make a choice. Do they hobble along in relative safety without their parents? Or do they risk a journey to Disappeared, knowing the corporation will send assassins to stop them? Their extraordinary odyssey through rugged mountains, parched high deserts, dangerous squatter towns, and surreal cutting-edge walled cities leads to cataclysmic discovery - about their civilization, their government, their environment, and ultimately about what it means to be human.