THE DIE

Righteous hackers guided by Hindu philosophy battle a sinister mind-control device in Berman’s speculative thriller.

The author depicts a future in which the United States is under the tyrannical rule of a nameless dictator, with democracy holding on in the breakaway nation of California. The plot centers on a “pod” of six employees of the Silicon Valley video game company HastinSys who live together on a Bay Area farm. They include emotionally fragile tech writer Darah Ahmadi; hotheaded coder Beers; levelheaded supercoder Jedd; and progressive ultracoder June. Their nemeses are a rival pod of marketing staffers named Kurt, Karin, and Keith who ruthlessly take over the coders’ penthouse office space and get them displaced to a smaller room. The coders discover that the ‘Ks’ are working with the dictator and his Russian backers to release the Happy App, which can subliminally program users’ brains. Repairing to their farm, the coders try to derail the plot by hacking the app. They are assisted by Ansirk, an unhoused, barefoot, flute-playing teen with an enigmatic smile whose name spelled backward approximates that of the Hindu god Krishna. He provides moral support and brainstorms a promising hacking strategy: They will alter the Happy App to impart the calming “soundless sound” of the primordial universe into users’ minds. The author sets her pastiche of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata in a high-tech civilization—driverless flying cars and holograms abound—and a sleek corporate setting. The novel features nifty capers—Darah seduces a co-worker to plant a bug—along with engrossing procedural sequences, including Jedd’s creation of a virtual road trip to Canada to hide their whereabouts, complete with simulated pit stops and snack purchases. Along the way, Ansirk teaches ethics and advocates giving up control in limpid prose that’s replete with evocative metaphors (“You can go through life like a steering wheel, with your ego-mind running the show. Or you can go through life like [a self-driving vehicle], where your mind takes a back seat and you place your faith in the car’s power”). The result is an imaginative tale alive with captivating ideas.

An entertaining mix of SF and corporate intrigue that pits futuristic gizmos and ancient wisdom against authoritarian politics.