Atopia - Eric Schrag

Two completely unrelated lives collide in this 93,000-word dystopian, coming-of-age, speculative fiction. The first is Stirling, an inquisitive, twenty-four season boy (the equivalent of twelve years old) who's lived his entire life under the perpetual aurora shielding his community from whatever destroyed the world outside. The other, a conspiracy realist named Brody Burns on a hunt for the truth. Their shared refrain: There must be places out there that we're not being told about. Imagine a peaceful society, living at the bottom of a crater, completely secluded from the outside world. The citizens live their lives the way they always have: trading goods and services, obeying the precepts, not asking questions. As far as the Autonomous Territory of Fairtrade is concerned, there is nothing beyond the aurora covering the crater in which they live, and hasn't been for generations. They don't know about us. We don't know about them. That is how it was meant to be. But everything changes after Stirling has an accident and loses hearing in one of his ears. From then on, things start to become clearer that not everything is as it seems in this utopian world he grew up in. His memories no longer seem to match the collective memories of everyone else around him. His closest friends-even his own mother-remember things differently than he does. Up to that point, everyone believed the native Giants in the area had been their enemies. But now, being saved by one, Stirling's not so sure. In his quest to find out what's really going on, Stirling begins doubting who he can even trust anymore. People have disappeared for knowing less than he does, and he's only beginning to scratch the surface. Simultaneously, Brody Burns, an obscure podcaster on the outside, begins following a trail of leads that seem to providentially fall into his lap one after another. A series of mysterious people washing up on random beaches around the world piques his interest. They must be related. But how? When his guest is spirited away right from under his nose, Brody sets himself to action, journeying half-way around the world in search of answers. What aren't we being told? Meanwhile, Stirling, at a loss of what else to do, tracks down the Giant who helped him. But Stirling is met with more than he bargained for. An old man, the first to disappear, teaches Stirling about the world he thinks he knows within the crater and the world outside that he never knew existed. In a twist of fate, th