Zen 12

A murder has been committed, an impossibility in a super surveillance society where everyone lives under the influence of augmented reality 24 hours a day. Zen Guardians are tasked with maintaining the competing illusions, but Zen 12 is no ordinary Guardian. When the Echelon Council needs someone to investigate the crime, they summon her. Garrett, Zen 12, knows that the World Councils are less concerned with the fact that someone is dead than that the violence went undetected. Murder would merely be a failure of a predictive algorithm; but the lack of detection? A catastrophic flaw in the system. In a world where everyone sees what they want to see, and no one goes off the grid for even a second, Zen Guardians wield enormous power. But Garrett’s most potent weapons may prove useless because it appears her adversary is not on the grid, another impossibility that sends a shudder through the World Councils. Murder escalates to bizarre terrorism, and increasingly, it seems her invisible opponent is trying to send her a message. Ultimately, Zen 12 must make a choice between enlightenment or persistent illusion, if indeed she herself can tell the difference.