Every Version of You (eBook)

Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror in this spellbinding speculative novel

Grace Chan (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
288 Seiten
Verve Books (Verlag)
978-0-85730-916-7 (ISBN)

Infos

** Winner of the University of Sydney's People's Choice Award **
** Longlisted for the Stella Prize **
**Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Prize **

In late-21st-century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside an immersive, consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile, their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments.

Across the city, in the abandoned real world, Tao-Yi's mother remains stubbornly offline, dwindling away between hospital visits and memories of her earlier life in Malaysia.

When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future or an authentic past.

Stunning and spellbinding, Every Version of You unpicks the ties between life and technology to ask what truly makes us human, and what in our world is worth preserving. Perfect for fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

'Disturbing, unflinching and emotionally-charged' - DAILY MAIL

'Set in the 2080s, this Australian debut maps the sci-fi question in a quiet romantic drama - asking what ties us to the world and each other' - GUARDIAN (AUSTRALIA)

'It's like Ready Player One meets Station Eleven and Ex Machina, and it's the book I can't stop thinking about' - TIME OUT

'A meditative, gorgeous, endlessly imaginative take on the future of virtual reality and what it means to be human, as well as a deeply tender story of love and the immigrant experience... A transcendent debut' - GRACE D LI, author of Portrait of a Thief

'The haunting images in Every Version of You followed me long after I turned the final page... Chan is a vivid, insightful storyteller' - ELIZABETH TAN, author of Smart Ovens for Lonely People

Textauszug

1

The sky’s all wrong tonight. Oversaturated blue, it pixelates at the horizon into streaky seawater, and is hole-punched by the sun sinking towards its bloated reflection. The tide beats against the shore. One, two, three up the sand. One, two, three, four – leaving a sine wave of foam.

Tao-Yi sits with her legs folded beneath her, rotating a nearly empty beer bottle in her hands. Long shadows drip from the sandstone formations around her. In this tucked-away cove, shielded by ruddy cliffs, she can’t see the others, but she can hear them laughing and shouting as they gather driftwood for a bonfire.

She has let Navin drag her here, a little out of obligation, but mostly out of habit. It’s just what happens every New Year’s Eve – Zach throws a party. It would feel wrong to miss it.

The bottle stays ice-cold against her palms, impervious to her body heat. She lifts the rim to her lips. The last gulp slices down her throat. The ocean ruffles like a silk skirt in a breeze, creased and opaque. She waits for the gust to roll into shore, to lift tendrils of hair from her neck, but it never comes – the air in Gaia is as stale as a subway tunnel.

A rustle of sand grass heralds Navin’s approach. He’s almost a stranger – tall and lean in his short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, black fringe falling choppily across his brow, a vulnerable smile. He holds out another bottle of beer.

‘It tastes like shit,’ she says, shaking her head.

‘It’s better than last year’s.’

She manages a smile, thinking of Zach’s experimental brew.

‘Come back,’ he insists, touching his fingers to her hairline. ‘Help us start the fire.’

Tao-Yi lets him pull her to her feet. She follows him out of the cove, skirting a cluster of boulders, and back along the shore. His shirt hangs loose on his frame, catching the bottom corners of his shoulder blades. She wants to touch those out-turned brackets, to assure herself of their realness.

Between the dunes and the sea, the others have filled a shallow pit with driftwood. There are a dozen or so capstone-educated twenty-somethings like herself and Navin, all sharp glances and witty repartee. Gen Virtual. They’re the lucky generation – born into motion, soaked with potential, cresting a wave of change.

Zach moves through the group easily, the others drawn to him like mosquitoes to shallow water. In an orange T-shirt and a knee-length sarong, he looks especially boyish. He leans over the driftwood, a lit match extended like a conductor’s baton between long brown fingers. The others whoop as flames blossom. There are no second attempts, if you follow the formula.

Tao-Yi summons her live interface. In the corner of her vision, a countdown glimmers neon: 9:00pm, 31 December 2087. 3 hours to go! A steady scroll of status updates overlays the beach scenery. Mostly snips, four-second video fragments dissolving as soon as she absorbs them into her attention: friends dancing at open-air concerts, go-karting under electronic fireworks, clinking stim shots to a backdrop of pounding beats.

Evelyn is walking over to her. Tao-Yi wills away the countdown and the snips. Tonight, her petite friend looks a little different. Although she’s wearing a pastel dress from her typical wardrobe, her dark brown hair is arranged in braids and her cheeks are decorated with gothic decals. It’s endearing, like a puppy trying to be edgy.

Evelyn bumps her hip against Tao-Yi’s. ‘Are you flash?’

‘I’m fine. Why?’

‘You just seem quiet.’

Tao-Yi wraps her hands around her elbows, feeling the symmetrical indentations behind the bony joints. ‘Yeah, I’m just a bit spent. Busy day at work.’

‘Oh yeah. Of course. You’re a hot shot Authenticity Consultant now.’ Evelyn drags the syllables out and chuckles.

The title still sounds weird to Tao-Yi’s ears, even though she’s been at her job for half a year. She’s still getting her head around moving from a marketing gig, manipulating people into buying more stuff, to a place like Tru U, guiding lost souls back towards their true selves.

‘People are just obsessed with their avatars. They want to make sure they look as unique as everyone else, you know.’

‘Usoo, Tao-Yi, don’t pretend to be a cynic. I know you’re really a softie underneath,’ Evelyn says. ‘Give it a few more months, and you’ll be spreading feel-good virus like your boss. What’s his name again? Andy? Gary?’

‘Griffin. Not even close.’

‘That’s right. You know what he said to me at that party you dragged me to last month? Wide eyes, straight face. You need to find your path.’

‘Oh, yeah. He spouts that about ten times a day. My brain just filters him out now.’

‘I told him I use Google Maps. He didn’t even crack a smile!’

Tao-Yi laughs. ‘He’s good at his job, though. Come in for an appointment?’

‘No thanks – you lot can stay away from my virtual bits.’

Tao-Yi laughs again and turns towards the fire. Evelyn’s gaze wanders to Zach and stays there. The bonfire’s glow warms his tanned complexion, illuminating his gleaming black eyes and expressive mouth.

For a while, Tao-Yi watches Evelyn watching him. Then she slips away.

•

About twenty paces from the bonfire, Tao-Yi finds a spot facing the water and sinks down onto the sand. On the horizon, the sun’s bleeding magenta into the ocean. A white speck has appeared at the zenith of the sky: the night’s first star. Slowly, more stars emerge, sprinkled evenly across the black in no constellations, and then a full moon, snow-white and perfectly round, suddenly there without any clear moment of becoming. She tips her head back, giddy and adrift. She can’t remember the last time she saw a real star.

She brings up the virtual interface and opens her address book. Her mother’s visage sits at the top of her favourites list: soft and unsmiling mouth, face perpetually angled to one side. Tao-Yi composes a brief message.

Ma. Happy New Year. I hope you’re doing something nice to celebrate?

She zings it off, and waits for the tick indicating a successful transmission.

Navin sits down next to her, propping his wrists on his knees. ‘Trying to run away from the party again?’

Tao-Yi disappears the message – sent, but unopened – and tries to smile at him. The inconstant light plays across his sharp nose and high cheekbones. She feels balanced now, the bonfire warming her on one side, Navin’s shoulder holding her on the other.

‘Just needed some downtime, my cyborg.’

‘Want another drink?’

‘Sure. Anything but beer.’

He unfolds and goes to the box next to the bonfire, which is stocked with drinks and mochi and ice cream. Someone has started a projection of a football match; Navin is pulled into the hubbub. The others are heckling Zach for placing a bad bet. When the banter intensifies, Evelyn loops her arm around Zach’s neck and whispers something in his ear. His head tips back in laughter, his collar-length hair mingling with hers. They break away from the group and race down to the ocean, catching the moonlight like twin sails, disappearing into a spray of water.

The sand is liquid against the soles of Tao-Yi’s feet. She wriggles her fingers into it, grabs a silky handful, holds it to her nose. She smells nothing, or maybe talcum powder. Somewhere in the pit of her memory, she knows of beaches soggy with saltwater and bird shit, gritty with broken shells, where sulphur and iodine fumes rise pungent from mounds of rotting seaweed.

Navin returns with two cans of mixed whisky.

‘It’s almost midnight,’ he says. ‘That was fast.’

‘The night, or the year?’

‘Both.’ He sits back down and clinks his can against hers. ‘What’s wrong?’

Tao-Yi can’t quite meet his earnest gaze. ‘Nothing.’

‘You used to love the beach.’

‘This isn’t the beach.’

Navin’s lips flatten into an em dash.

‘Sorry,’ she adds.

‘You’d rather to go to a plastic-littered dump and splash around in acid water?’

Tao-Yi pops the tab of her can. The surf roars inside her eardrums, like a bad soundtrack played distorted and fuzzy and out of sync. Everything heaves down on her: the rhythmic tide, the silky sand, the perfect bonfire, the sky dusted with...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: identity humanity immigration journey • literary fiction australian contemporary women • mind upload alternative reality video game utopia • romance relationship mother daughter family drama • science fiction dystopian apocalypse future scifi • technology futuristic surrealism digital life • virtual reality vr artificial intelligence ai
• ISBN-10: 0-85730-916-1 / 0857309161
• ISBN-13: 978-0-85730-916-7 / 9780857309167