Esperia – Book One – Kobo eBook

In Esperia, nobody is ever told no. They are told many factors.

Eleven million people, nobody hungry, nobody owning anything. There is no money in Esperia and no inheritance: every young person starts from the same single room, and what you become is up to you. The university turns no one away. It only decides how far you will be allowed to go.

Elia is eighteen and has just qualified as a surveyor. He chose the short path because numbers dont lie, and the night before his exam all he wants to know is whether he will measure up. Then, in a waiting room at the heart of the city, he meets Irene: a chair that moves on its own, a score among the highest of the year, and a mind hungrier than any he has ever known. She wants research. The admissions committee, very kindly, advises her otherwisefor many factors that cant be put into words.

Irene doesnt want the position. She wants to know why.

An old teacher tells Elia about a right written into the founders Charter and never once claimed: when the written test and the oral contradict each other, the candidate can demand a review. But the road runs first through the judges of another district, and then through the Citizens Assembly, where anyone may speak and almost no one does. To get an answer, Elia and Irene will have to wake up eleven million people who had better things to do that nightand turn back on the city the most beautiful sentence it ever wrote: the measure of a life is not a number.

This is not a dystopia. In Esperia nobody decides to be unjust: there is no tyrant, no conspiracy, nothing to overthrow. It is social science fiction about a city that has solved almost everythingand about the one small room where lives are still weighed in the dark. A coming-of-age novel about the courage to ask for an accounting, even when you are not sure you are right.

Esperia is Book One of The Esperia Chronicles and stands on its own. The story continues in The Rusted Door.

A city is not measured by what it promises, but by what it is willing to explain.