Comfort Zones and Other Anthropolitical Constructs:
A Far Reaches Novel

Their world is a glittering lattice of pods above a spectacular waterfall, surrounded by wilderness teeming with phosphorescent, gloriously varied life.

Inside their arcology, humans lack for nothing. Content in their machine-guided stasis of many cultures, screened from reality by holotechnology and a vast experiential database stored in their own DNA, they buy and sell, eat and sing, consume entertainments and, very occasionally, venture to the more rugged but equally sheltered “Outside” settlement to feel adventurous.

Some can breathe the air, and most of their descendants someday will; this is a young colony: it will be generations upon generations before the majority of humans, all the different phenomes assembled here from a thousand planets, have evolved enough to live free on the surface.

But all has not gone to plan. Long ago, an accident in space cut the machine brains in the arcologies loose from their overseers, the much more sophisticated computers in orbit.

The disaster could not be predicted. Suddenly, those who survive must face a hostile atmosphere, dangerous wildlife, deprivation, and, perhaps most challenging, self agency.

The remaining societal structures overwhelmed, things growing desperate, a group of new friends thrown together from multiple cultural backgrounds rally an expedition to seek aid, against all odds, stalked by two human monsters.

Part 01: Comprising the preface "And So Do We Travel" and the first chapter, "Holoboy". We learn how humans came here, and we meet Kenno, a gadabout holoboy, on a birthday quest.

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Part 02: Comprising the chapters "The Teacher" and "The artist at Home". We meet Chathi, a teacher of the young on a field trip, and Macaithe, a reclusive writer of fantastic adventure stories.

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Part 03: Comprising the chapters "For a Good Time" and "Playtime". We meet Desra, an acclaimed intimate companionship artist, and Dazover, a very dangerous man.

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Part 04: Comprising the chapters "Leashed Titan", "The Unexpected", and, with the beginning of the second part of the book ("Sundering"), "It Begins".. We meet Ruth, an intersex bodybuilder of partial heavy-gravity heritage who is terrified of the outdoors, and we come to understand what calamity befalls our population.

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Part 05: Comprising the chapters "Helpless Shelter", "Native Wisdom", "Eggshell Existence", "Come Together", "Change of State", and "The Fossil Cage". Our characters become aware of the end of the world, but don't understand it yet.

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Part 06: Comprising the chapters "This Fresh Hell", "Collection", "Indecent Exposure", "Human Chain", "Revelations" and "The Mountain in a Time of Flood", we follow our characters as they react to what has happened to their world.

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Part 07: Comprising the chapters "Go With the Flow", "All Through the Shelter", and "Base Motivations". Kenno, Chathi, the children, and the evelyns make their way toward safety while Dazover treats Macaithe with delicacy.

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Part 08: Comprising the chapters "Adrift", "Threshold", and "Somebody's Got to Do It". In which Desra's feet hurt, Dazover takes Macaithe home, and Ruth finds a source of food and water.

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