Users

Marrying the philosophical absurdities of life, technology, start-up culture, and family, Users is for readers of Kevin Nguyen's New Waves, Dave Eggers's The Circle, and viewers of the hit Apple TV+ original series Severance


Miles, a lead creative at a midsize virtual reality company known for its "original experiences," has engineered a new product called The Ghost Lover. The "game" is simple: a user's simulated life is almost identical to their reality, except they're haunted by the ghost of an ex-lover. Responding to and manipulating the user's mind and body in perfect, dystopian harmony, The Ghost Lover becomes wildly popular-and wildly controversial-in the VR world.



When Miles receives a series of anonymous death threats-typed notes sealed in envelopes with no postage or return address-paranoid panic begins blurring his own sense of reality, catalyzing the collapse of his career, his marriage, and his relationship with his children.



The once-promising road to success becomes a narrow set of choices for Miles, who, in a last ditch effort to save his job, pitches his masterpiece, a revolutionary device code-named the Egg, which will transform the company. The consequences for Miles seal him inside the walls of his life as what was once anxiety explodes into devastating absoluteness.



In a world rife with the unchecked power and ambition of tech, Users investigates-with both humor and creeping dread-how interpersonal experiences and private decisions influence the hasty developments that have the power to permanently alter the landscape of human experience.