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by Erika Moak (Author)
A tale of hope and love in the age of AI.
Eudemonia, a technocratic city, is experimenting with social banishment in the form of self-contained incarceration: criminals can choose to serve their sentences in a mobile prison - the Banesuit. These faceless prisoners, referred to as Banes, are free to wander the city streets, ignored by the populace, but carry with them a custodial cybernetic implant that monitors their behavior, controls their sensory perceptions, and can inflict painful punishments to enforce the rules of Banishment.
Katrina Nichols, a stubborn reporter hungry for a real story, investigates the Banishment Project to learn if it truly is inhumane. During a midnight conversation with a Bane (something no Bane should be able to do), Katrina discovers that this particular Bane seems ecstatic with the conditions of her imprisonment, describing "Pleasure you can't imagine. Love you'll never know," and naming the source of her joy with one cryptic word: Eudeamon.
Intrigued and secretly enticed by her own dark fantasies, Katrina makes a drastic choice and contrives to get herself banished. She goes in hoping to expose the system, but the reality turns out far worse than she imagined. Yet, she may come to discover a Heaven within Hell, as only a Bane of Eudemonia is able.
Through her protagonist, Erika Moak traces a compelling and melancholic journey that takes us through our deepest desires, the agony of mourning, the hunger for revenge and, ultimately, compassion for ourselves and each other.
