And After: A Novel

"The hard parts are where the light gets in."In 2041, physicist Amara Osei discovers how to hold a human mind in suspension for centuries. As climate collapse, algorithmic inequality, economic catastrophe, religious division, and geopolitical rivalry begin tearing civilization apart, the Meridian Project offers one desperate possibility: place ten thousand people beneath the Gobi Desert and wake them after humanity's worst age has passed. But deciding who sleeps, and who must remain behind, turns humanity's ark into a battleground over who has the right to inherit the future.Five centuries later, the sleepers awaken to a world preserved by generations who spent their entire lives keeping strangers alive.There they encounter the Threnni, who conquered suffering by surrendering individuality, and the Omm, who believe grief and love are the universe remembering itself. When an approaching phenomenon called the Silence threatens to reduce consciousness to something perfect, permanent, and meaningless, humanity discovers that the contradictions it spent centuries trying to eliminate may be the one thing the universe cannot destroy."You cannot average Amina Kone. You cannot optimize Wei Jun. The moment you say a name aloud, you put an unresolvable term into the equation."