Infinite — Julian Gough

A virtual-reality-obsessed teenage boy is caught in a collision between his parents' high-tech careers, and his choices will alter the balance between technological progress and human life as we know it.

In the Nevada desert, sometime in the near future, Naoki Tanaka struggles to raise her teenage son, Colt. He's highly intelligent but on the autistic spectrum; he is impossible at school and is being homeschooled by his mother, at least in theory. Instead he spends most of his time in a virtual game world, where his sophisticated coding skills afford him a sense of control that eludes him in real life.

Soon the outside world intrudes on Colt's carefully constructed, orderly existence when Naoki must leave him on his own while she attends a biotech conference. She's on the verge of a breakthrough in her work on human limb regeneration, and the paper she presents comes to the attention of Colt's father, Ryan, who works for a mysterious government security agency that doesn't officially exist. He tries to keep Naoki's research under wraps, but back at home, Colt has already used it--on himself. He's met a girl in the game, and without a "hardware upgrade" he can't process his feelings for her. The consequences of this choice change more than Colt's love life, as his father comes to see his own son and ex-wife as existential threats to national security.

With delicious wit, compelling characters, and a richly imagined but eerily familiar world, CONNECT is a page-turning techno-thriller and warmhearted family drama that looks closely at how humans can still connect in the digital age.