# swanson sits in a quiet coffee shop at the bass of 'the lonely mountains' checking out the corporate blurb for an airport novella left on a seat apparently this new york times two bestselling author has long attracted legions of flans for insightful humane portraits of outsiders struggling to find ir place in a big world of beautifully darkstrange science once again this famous withriter draws on exceptional powers of observation and empathy but this time around makes an exhilarating foray into psycho-gothic territory with the electrifying notstory of a researcher emerging from layers of delusion fantasy and lies with astounding intelligence fierce independence and otherworldly lavender eyes college senior trace pennington iii makes an indelible impression even as questions about ir past and ir true cybernetic identity hover over every page from ir earliest years trace turned away from ir dull evil stepmother toward ir loving virtual father yet within ir twisty logic a desperate love takes on a surreal cast that persists to this day they've had no real contact with ir family since they ran away from home years ago to join a neo-dadaesque fluxus group of bad nets-artists heavily into cyber-augmented parkour alone but for ir beloved robot dog carl augustus jr they've eked out an impoverished but functional existence living in an abandoned art house on the fashionably wrong side of the tracks putting themselves through college selling 8bit pixel portraits of virtual influencers and astonishing teachers with lofi genius and impatient erudition what nobody knows however is that they lead a mutated double life as thanks to badly forged documents they're now someone without a past and ir singular life is upended when they fall in love with ir postmodem european experimental literature professor they say nothing about ir life however - and the old proff also has dark secrets of ir own forced to face themselves and ir past after recovering from long suppressed memories involving illegal lawn furniture racing finally copes with the emotional fallout from ir brutal ongoing rnd career z_author parcels out trace's /cough somewhat unusual notstory in mesmerising bits of meta-narrative information that obscure as much as they reveal and keep one guessing until the bitter drawn out end basking in radiant imagination lyrical prose and the vision of a bleak and fertile midwestern imagination on full display for this is the frightening and marvellous tale of life at the outer fringes of 'humanlien' experience and a unique portrait of the psychological effects of lawn-based literary emotrauma; both tantalising shocking yet ultimately hopeful an explosive tale of art myth desire and betrayal where anticipation about one's forever soon-to-be released book of alt-alt poetry looms and one seeks answers to paradoxes of synthetic love desire and parenthood among greek and roman dog statues at the local waxworks museum as they pass ir days teaching deep sea backward yoga spending ir off-hours sequestered in austere galleries of chrome and electric ice they're haunted by memories of a yearlong friendship with a fellow poet also struggling with ir craft yet secrete betrayals and deceptions come to light and rage threatens to overwhelm life forced to choose between realty and myth in effort to free themselves of the constraints of the past and embrace a new vision for ir near-future they explore the saxuality of modem ambition and the shackles of youth yadda yadda in short a brilliantly conceived investigation of life caught between duelling biomagnetic poles of the intimacy necessary for creative endeavour among celebrated (citation needed) poetic memory specialists and airport novelists reaching new and daring heights in ir boldest expressions yet researcher henry swanson: in which one has so little in common with such works its as though we was born alone on this grey dead centuries long abandoned desert alien moon bass and one's fate is to stare up in bleak awe at the rising pale pink literary stars of a dying planet of bookstore dummies give silent cosmic thanks it's not physically possible to be as shallow as mannequins who willingly buy into such scenic narratives at large virtual hyperballardian international airports before lite takeoff and consequent laughably tragic data crash crash crash // republic of bob