M-0:2

Meliade has completed the first stage of the forbidden Gaudium Program, but happiness remains beyond his reach.Two final pillars stand between him and the emotional life he has lost.First, he is plunged into a manufactured reality designed to reveal whether he possesses an aspiration powerful enough to overcome his instinct for self-preservation. Beyond the Fragmentation Wall, rebellion is spreading, the foundations of Thinker society are under threat, and the intelligence guarding the divide becomes entangled with the conflict inside his own mind.The final stage confronts Meliade with something even more dangerous than death: genuine human connection.Isolated beneath the city with another participant, he must lower the defenses that have governed his entire life and develop emotions he neither understands nor trusts. Yet the Gaudium Program is illegal, and those conducting it cannot remain hidden forever.As perception, memory, and desire begin to blur, Meliade can no longer be certain which experiences are real, which feelings truly belong to him, or how much of himself the pursuit of happiness will demand.