Angol
What happens to your freedom when someone else controls the world you live in?
Dave is seventeen, a boxer from Utah who can read an opponent before a punch is thrown. Outside the ring, he wants to make his own choices, help other people, and build relationships without surrendering his independence.
That is why Aeternum chooses him.
An alien civilization turns Dave into the subject of an experiment in human freedom. Using artificial intelligence and immersive technology far beyond our own, Aeternum constructs historical worlds he cannot distinguish from reality. His body remains aboard its ship while he experiences life inside them.
From Spain in 1492 to medieval and Renaissance Florence, from the Rome of Spartacus and Caesar to Venice and Lepanto, Dave faces hunger, slavery, authority, and war. Each reconstruction puts his independence under pressure. He must adapt to survive, but every compromise raises the same question: how much of himself can he afford to give up?
HUMAN OFF CODE brings together science fiction, history, and psychology in a novel about identity, belonging, and the cost of obedience.
When someone else can shape what you want, whom you trust, and how you choose, how do you recognize the moment their will begins to feel like your own?
Includes twenty companion essays and a bibliography of seventy-two sources, distinguishing historical and scientific evidence from fictional reconstruction and speculative technology.
