SYNOPSIS FOR “GREAT AMERICA IN DEAD WORLD” by David Agranoff:
Kai is a post-human woman who is technologically modified to survive the harsh realities of climate change and works as a “Janie” whose only job is to keep her wealthy clients alive in their simulation pods within Great America. Here, the blurred lines of a post-truth society threaten to destroy reality as we know it.
Great America in Dead World by David Agranoff is an experimental satire patterned after the writing formula used by the late science fiction author, Philip K. Dick.
Agranoff’s novel imagines a future dystopian world where, under the rule of President Supreme, global temperatures are on the rise, and the ultra-wealthy plug into a virtual Heaven while the working class keep them alive in their pods. But when the global food supply begins to run out, what will keep Great America from devouring itself?
Chapter 1 of Great America in Dead World by David Agranoff
[Release Date: July, 2025 from Quoir Publishing]
1
The parts of Kai that were not human were already awake when her alarm went off. She opened her eyes slowly and saw the blinking notifications in the bottom right of her vision. Her membership to the Dream Circuit had expired at midnight. She had a vague memory of a dream she hadn’t paid for. There was an ad for a radio show by a political commentator, Steve O’Connell: “You will never forget those, they are just beyond your psyche like an echo.”
The natural dreams, as always, were nonsensical and frustrating. They were about work, but she could barely remember it as she looked up at the ceiling. At this time of year, there was an orange glow in the morning; her window faced the east. When she was younger, the sun would’ve blinded her natural eyes as she sat up, but the smog dulled them now.
Good morning, Kai. Her avatar texted on her slide. It glowed on the nightstand by her bed.
“Prepare sync,” whispered Kai. It was the first thing she did in the morning. See what her Aver did when she gave up control. She hated letting the program play the game for her, but Night Warrior had four hundred and twenty levels of gameplay, and players around the globe constantly. The game never stopped, and players who slept were constantly getting knocked below 200-level, which meant you didn’t even earn coins. The competition was fierce.
Twenty-seven confirmed kills, 4 identity suits claimed, 13 levels advanced, and 48 coins earned.
Kai felt she could have done better but it was a decent night of play. The idea was that you trained the program with your habits, and it could move faster than a natural mind. Kai hadn’t had an unaltered brain since she was a child. Most augments were about survival, even those about operating the net, grid, or Sims. She looked in on the live feed. The game led her into a concert hall. A virtual crowd was forming, and there were reports of mass shooters in the building. It was no different than the real world; you had to pay attention to the forecast. It was the only way to be sure. She pulled up live market rates from the exchange, one hundred coins for a kill or capture. She cracked her knuckles, ready to hunt.
“Sync and give me ammunition and weapon levels.”
In the game, she lifted her rifle and scanned for the shooter as she approached the elevator. She pushed the button and waited.
“Miss Kai, I am sorry to be the one to remind you that your shift begins in less than two hours.
Her bed spoke with the insistence of a device designed for impatience. She had registered it for no more than 230 pounds, and a six-hour sleep cycle. She had to pay for each minute she went overtime and the pound of pressure she put on the smart coils. She was not a tall woman, but her augments put her over the weight limit. An ad for drought-resistant Calgary almond-based Foodle flicked across her blanket. Until she paid up she would have to endure the pop-ups from her total sleep unit. Once the ten-second point passed, she wiped it away.
Go to work, I’ve got this. In the last couple of months, her avatar texted this type of thing more often.
Kai noticed the “I” statement. The avatar was supposed to maintain her social media and game engagement as she slept or was busy at work. It was the first bill she paid every month or else her Manager was useless. It wasn’t an I. Some people thought of their Avers as alive or friends who were separated from them but that just wasn’t the case.
She looked at the glowing device at her bedside. The Manager was five inches tall and three across. It was thicker than glass and operated all her systems, biological, mechanical, and virtual. She received thirty notifications from past-due bills and ads for ways to spend her coins inside the game. When she went to bed, they were down to four coins.
The concert started inside the game. A kid’s show with giant mascots. A big red dinosaur danced on the stage. The concert was filled with children and families. Not real ones, but that explained why the coins they could earn were off the charts. Shooters who targeted children were valuable. Kai selected enter and the number fifty came up in a notification from the game admin. Fifty coins just to get in. That was close to everything she had.
Go to work. Another text.
Kai felt like her own program was annoyed with her. She knew she had to go to work. One day of work in the real world meant they could transfer funds for serious coin. She needed to check the exchange rate. If they could get to 300 hundred level, play the game for work, or even afford GA+ membership, then she could hire the other jackass at work to be her Janie.
We can get a few kills on this level.
It said we this time. Avers, the good ones, can read their hosts’ minds–not telepathically, but predictively. She’d loaded the program herself using all the personal data she’d input to her Manager since her mother had given her the unit. The government provided payment programs for Manager slides as they were essential to maintain their great simulation. The Manager was essential for daily life for people who couldn’t afford Prime or Plus membership.
She put her feet on the floor and felt the carpet beneath her toes. Kai pushed the control button and selected slide control. “Can I get the forecast?”
Avers, avatars, or cloner programs are not supposed to be alive, just be the AI that runs your personal slide Manager, what old people called their phones fifty years ago. Hers preferred they or it, as a working pronoun, but Kai had friends whose Avers picked genders. Why that mattered for a computer program, she couldn’t say. It seemed like a liberal notion of the elites she couldn’t understand. She was told gender mattered in GA+, but she hadn’t spent more than a few minutes in the Sim during her whole life.
Stepping into the bathroom mirror, she cringed, expecting to see a funky bedhead. Her hair, styled in a short pixie, was dyed dark red at the roots and blue, green, and purple at the tips. Her bright diamond blue eyes were her most expensive feature; her interface reflected against her inner eye, and optical Sim control was not cheap. It was not just tech crossovers. Her eyes also must survive intense heat and dust storms, which were all too common in LA these days. It was a ritual for her to look at herself for a long time in the mirror before getting dressed.
The forecast scrolled along the bottom of the mirror. “Presented by LA group injury attorneys. High of 115 degrees with a heat index of 125. Forty-six percent chance of afternoon Santa Ana dust storms. There is a 35% chance of mass public shootings. *Click here for self-defense upgrades.* Sunset at eight p.m. with orange contrails all along the way.”
Kai slid off her pants and used her slide to select an outfit. Her Aver sent a list of the next available sky trams she could catch. There was one coming to the building roof-port in five minutes.
“I can’t, I need the next one.” Kai sat on the toilet and instantly felt more comfortable as she peed. She had enough of her original parts to still have a bladder. She had to drink less water thanks to her new skin and coolant tattoos. It was the thing that made it harder to pass. Her skin didn’t burn, but she sprayed on protection all the same. She was still peeing, and even though the Aver didn’t say anything she had a sense that her program was annoyed by this basic human function. Kai ran into the bedroom and found her new outfit waiting on the bed as the closet closed itself.
“I will get to work when I can,” she said aloud as her slide transmitted her voice to all her devices. “I need a bottle of Foodle to go.” Her contact lens displayed her current Foodle stock. She had breakfast and lunch bottles but would have to mix the powder packs when she got home.
The arms from the fridge placed the two bottles just off her path so she could sweep them off the counter into her shoulder bag. All of her systems were working to get her on the first Skytram. The difference in salary for a full day was motivation enough. All programs reacted to her desires, as a good AI learned to do.
***
The temperature rose steadily in the morning and was north of one hundred on the surface by eight in the morning. The low temperature never got below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit in Los Angeles at this point. It was the reason why the Skytrams were created; most buildings and the most expensive real estate on the West Coast rose over the heat domes. Kai couldn’t imagine living in a building that didn’t have a rooftop port. A westbound tram was not due for three minutes when she walked on the roof. George stood in the shade with his Manager in his hand. He was in a suit, his tie loosened, sweat already intense and dripping on his brow.
“Morning Georgie,” Kai smiled and waved her half-consumed Foodle bottle.
He smiled at her, as he always did. He worked at the court downtown and was getting close to enough money for a GA + membership. His mood went from constant frustration at the heat and dust storms to jovial humor over the last few weeks. People got that way when a great change was in sight.
“Morning Kai, who did your hair… Crayola?” He smiled as if he said something hilarious, but Kai didn’t get the joke. He was thirty years older and his humor sometimes made sense for a world that she never experienced. She smiled and pointed at her new do as if she got the joke. He shrugged and she assumed that he was fine if she didn’t get the joke.
Her mind was a million other places: money, the apartment, the sleep unit, her Manager, and, of course, the game. She just wanted to be playing Warrior.
“Careful out there today,” George didn’t look up his slide. Working for the city, he did have some information that was not on the slides.
She pulled hers out of her pocket and opened each of her social platforms and news apps. She had a system that took about thirty seconds; she could open all other main apps scroll quickly and look for a topic and if anything was there, she could find it. Nothing on Town Square, Neighborhub, or Socials. Instaspace, Friendline, Yearbook, and Videoport were all trending with GA + internal gossip.
“What am I looking for Georgie?”
“Didn’t hear it from me?” That was a question, and she nodded. They had gone through this before. She had not betrayed his trust. She was very careful what she posted in general, but George let city business slip all the time. She smiled at him. He was a sucker for her smile and carefully chosen head tilts. She watched his judgment.
“Okay. Foodle riots over in Studio City. There were no shipments of actual food.”
Kai rolled her eyes. “What is so bad about Foodle? It is food.”
“That’s a young person talking. My boy Alexi plays Citizen Savior and Night Warrior. He lives on GA+, I haven’t seen anything but his feet in months. He plays live in four windows, and he programmed Avers so he could play under four user names at once. Foodle was fine for him as long he was not hungry. Foodle is just protein, and vitamins, but food…”
She didn’t want a back-in-the-day lecture and leaned over the edge of the building hoping to see the Skytram due any minute.
“Kai, let me ask you something?”
The hovering Skytram turned the corner with a woosh as it pulled up to the port.
“My ride is here,” She pointed at the tram, even though she knew George was boarding too. She hoped he got the idea she wasn’t in the mood. “Speaking of Warrior, I am running a campaign myself….”
“Have you had a banana?”
She was confused. “Excuse me? Hold on, Georgie. It is not like you’re not getting a GA+ membership, I know…”
“Have you ever eaten a banana?”
Eaten. So, it was a food of some kind. She looked at her slide. He reached out and put his hand over the screen.
“You were going to look it up.” George shook his head.
“No, no. It is food, a…” She snapped her fingers.
“A fruit,” George said as the door to the tram opened. “A delicious fruit. My grandma called it nature’s candy bar.”
A hologram advertising a banana-flavored foodie popped up in the space between them.
“Sorry,” Kai swiped the ad away. It was embarrassing that she had no money to turn off floater ads.
It was George’s turn to roll his eyes as the tram door opened behind them. The people getting on and off didn’t look at each other and seemed to run into each other. Kai sees it every workday. It is like the people getting on and off don’t consider that anyone exists or might be using the same tram. There is a confused dance as each one figures out how to get past the others.
“Young people,” George muttered. “Learn to live in the world, please!” he pushed his way into the car. The tram was twenty-five years old, and while in service that whole time, the plastic seats were cracked and dust damaged. They hurt your ass if you sat too long. During rush hour, it was mostly workers, plenty of Janies, and advertisements that popped up around the tram. Foodle drinks, employment agencies, lawyers, and GA+ memberships, the floaters targeted your Manager and would follow you if you tried to walk away. The ads crowded the space when gamers concentrated and didn’t swipe. They caught the eyes of those looking and adapted to your interests. Her eye augments caught the swipes, so she saw them anyway. She needed to pay up or the pop-up chasers would follow her all day.
Kai sat down and opened her slide. Her avatar was in the middle of a battle with a mass shooter. The Aver had spent her coin, to get into the concert hall and confront the shooter. She looked at the game controller and saw three other living players. Kai employed a VPN to make it appear as a living player even with her Aver. You never really knew, as the program could speak in the user’s voice. She pressed her earlobe, and the implant played the sounds of the scene before her view opened. Shots fired, screams of children.
“Engage sync.”
The Manager opened her first-person POV, and she lay on the ground as a bullet whizzed above. Concert shooters were worth serious coin, child killers even more. She had five minutes before her tram stop to play the game live. She closed her eyes; she was going fully into the game.
*
The sound of the screams and bullets felt extreme; once the shooting began, the player without experience would run, afraid that their Avers would die. It is expensive to resurrect an avatar in the game, but many forget your Aver only dies inside the game. Remembering that helps one to play with a little bit more Once you earn 200 level points you can buy armor. It would cost fifty coins, but if she bagged this shooter, they would profit by one hundred and fifty coins.
It had to be a night shooting. She scrolled the database, using a snapshot of the room to try and identify the real-life incident. The game accessed the historical details of over 100,000 available nighttime mass shooter events from the United States and Great American databases. The source record quickly matched a 2017 event, gunfire at the Sesame Kids live concert in Kansas City. That would explain the screaming children. Records indicate a lone wolf with Daddy issues, two legally bought AR-15s, sixty-five rounds, and twenty-two victims. She looked at the current score of five dead; she still had seven teenage victims to save, and she only needed to save ten to win the simulation.
Kai’s avatar in the game used an operating suit and looked more like a 20th-century action movie hero, with skin painted blue and white. They moved along the floor as the first blasted above. Another player with a virtual suit was moving along the floor, and it was a race to the center aisle of the theater. She did a quick search of the player’s IP. Snatch_22 was a popular gamer who streamed his play with millions of viewers who tried and failed to copy his strategies. There would be many eyes on this game if she had more coin left and could put up a “follow me” flag.
The shooter stayed on the stage, firing what seemed like endless bullets. Kai controlled the interface on the slide, never opening her eyes. Seeing the tram around her would break her focus. She could see Snatch, who had a smaller, faster avatar, reaching the center aisle first. Using expensive upgrades, his avatar slid under and through the seat, changing shape to fit and slithering like a snake. He spent serious coin for that kind of hero suit.
With nothing she could do but watch, the Avatar stood up shirtless, covered in camo-painted muscles as it shot a barrage of machine gun fire.
“Shit,” Kai opened her eyes and unsynced her avatar. She hated losing, and later, she might pull up the stream.
She looked across the tram. George was reading something on his slide. He read articles, like a boring old person.
*
Kai stepped off the tram at the Skyport building. Two other Janies came off the tram, carrying their tool cases; it was the clearest sign of their occupation. Kai wore hers in a shoulder bag. It was heavier, but she was less obvious walking around. Hackers sometimes followed well-paid Janies back to their client’s homes. She carried disinfectant, disposable wipes, and tools. The client was expected to provide their own Foodle. Deliveries sometimes were waiting at the door or up here on the roof. She didn’t see anything and hoped these people had what they needed. She swiped away ads for apartments and nightclubs, they followed her as she walked, and every tenth ad couldn’t be swiped. She tuned out as the ad for a new Sim called ‘Heaven for the Living.’
“Experience your last heatwave with Heaven for the Living. A realistic life Sim for up to twenty members interested in living forever in a world tailored to their loves and joys. Heaven is more than a promise now – it is a membership you can afford.”
The building had a neon sign that was cursive, and the glow cut through gritty air. The Waverleigh’s name glowed in neon, but written under it in chipped paint “21st century Conapts – condominium conversion pods for the Great American lifestyle.” The other Janies were having a conversation, and they seemed familiar to each other.The building knew their faces and let them in, but this was a new client for Kai. The door locked on her. She reached twice, but she heard the lock catch. She pulled out her Manager to text the building’s operating system.
Janitorial and pod maintenance for the Runcibles in Apt 355. Requesting access.
The door snapped open, and Kai looked up to the camera inside the door. “Can you put my face ID on file please?” Buildings hardly respond so she walked to the lift. The air conditioner kicked on stronger as she dropped the seventeen floors. When she stepped into the third-floor hall she saw one of the Janies from the roof going into another apartment. A door opened down the hall. She knew it was 55. She walked toward it and could hear the AC working to cool the space. The pod units regulated their body temperatures, and the AC only came on if the residents were awake or had visitors.
The hallway was like an oven, funked up by humidity just three levels from the surface. Kai waited outside as the AC regulated the temperature inside and coughed the stagnant air out. She felt the cooling elements under her tattoos cool her skin. The hall would be unbearable without them. As the door opened and Kai walked into the air-conditioned room, she wondered how Arnold and Janet Runcible made their coin. The apartment was not much bigger than their pods which breathed as loudly as an iron lung. Inside the room, the bodies of the couple lived on so their minds could enjoy the benefits of all that hard work.
On the wall were several photos of the couple playing tennis; a square-jawed athletic man and a well-dressed slightly younger woman. They had more pictures of tennis rackets than of their two kids. Most of the pictures had been chosen to show off their athletic nature. A photo had been placed prominently on the desk—Janet, who’d once been an important woman, had been staged in an awkward photo with the President Supreme when he was still doing public rallies.
Walking further into the apartment, Kai realized this job would be more than simple cleaning. His and hers pods were in rough shape. She walked along the pod and looked to see what she was dealing with. The Foodle ports were crusted with molding green junk, the air vents were covered in dust slowly becoming goop. She pulled the covers off the hands and feet, the nails that had grown into curls.
This was Janie malpractice.
Her slide lit up with a notification. Janet Runcible has sent you a GA+ chat invite.
She would have to pause her Aver, to reroute the bandwidth and log into the guest network. The program would argue with her if she didn’t do it quickly. It was best to lie down if you didn’t have a pod for the interface. She was a guest, and not fully integrated so the Sim would not be as life-like as it would be for a real member. Kai lay on the floor feeling the carpet against her back as she hit the link to log in.
Wait, no let me keep playing…
Reality folded in for a moment. It felt a little like stepping off a diving board, not that Kai ever had that experience. She just knew it felt like falling. The apartment faded away. The words floated around her and came into being for a moment before her…
GREAT AMERICA PLUS GUEST MEMBERSHIP LOADING
The words faded into a fine mist, leaving her in another world. The first thing she noticed was the blue sky, clear except for a few wispy clouds. The air neither hot nor humid. She moved her hand around in the air, and it felt thin. A breeze came across her face. Her mind was convinced it was a breeze. The view was the coastline, might have been California but she understood Great American geography was different. Waves crashed into the source with a gentle rhythm. This felt very real, and a guest membership was only a fraction of the realism promised to ‘paying’ members.
She selected her work agency avatar that looked like her, with shoulder-length brown hair and her natural face.
“Stay chill,” she whispered to herself. Already she wanted to be here, to live here, in this world. Every time she had been here it only lasted minutes and she always wanted more. Her father had loved to remind her it wasn’t real. Maybe not, but it was nice. What was real anyway?
Kai spun and saw a tennis club. Arnold Runcible sat in a chair off the tennis court, looking over the ocean. Next to him was Janet who appeared to be ten years younger than the pictures in the apartment. She’d spent money programming her avatar. Her legs were muscled, her face free of wrinkles, and the light freckles Kai had thought were so cute in the pictures were gone. Kai had to fight an urge to reach up and touch the ultra-smooth skin of the woman’s face. Arnold had lost the spare tire, and he no longer bore the thick body hair he had in the pictures. They were living commercial for the lifestyle in Great America-Plus.
Kai approached, getting used to walking in the Sim.
“Welcome, Miss.” Janet sat next to her husband.
“Kai, my name is Kai Dame, just call me Kai.”
“Welcome.” Arnold smiled. “We just have a few things to go through.”
“It is a beautiful Sim you have here.”
“It is not ours, I’m afraid. We are just logged in like most Americans.”
The ones with money, Kai thought to herself.
“We pay for it. Hopefully, one day we will be able to pay for something a little more private.”
She shot a dirty look at the mother and daughter playing tennis a few courts down. The mother and daughter were logged into the same club. They were real avatars, not digitally simulated phantoms. The GA+ control unit sometimes filled in simulations to give the population a fuller look.
Speaking of payments,” Kai said, smiling, “I understand you are new to Friendlies pod maintenance; we have top-of-the-line service.”
“How bad is it? We have not logged out in some time.”
“Yeah, I could tell.”
Arnold sighed, but Janet stiffened, her smooth forehead creasing into a frown.
“Who was your last contract with?” Kai thought she knew, but she needed to ask.
“Aja’s Domestics.”
“His shop is not union, and it shows.”
“We learned our lesson, no need to shame us,” Janet sighed, her frown remaining.
Aja undercut the prices of union shops but relied on subs and temp workers he could pay off the books in cash and not pay for insurance. The program glitched for just an instant, an accidental reminder that she was a guest there.
“How bad is it?” Arnold took a drink and fooled his mind that he was hydrating with something besides Foodle.
“Pretty bad,” Kai said. “I have to do some grooming on top of setting up a long-term Foodle drip to keep nutritional needs going.”
Janet cringed a bit: she had vanity still about her real-world body. Kai could tell Arnold didn’t care about vanity. They were not as thankful to her as some clients. Many of these rich fucks forget that Janies keep them alive. Still, these assholes would earn her the coin she needed.
“My husband doesn’t give a shit, but I do. Please make sure we are presentable.”
“I never log out anymore; I work from here, ” he said casually, obviously not thinking about how privileged he sounded.
Kai wanted to enjoy the breeze, but she knew they would lock her out soon; she had to feed these helpless fucks. In the corner of her vision, her Manager offered up three response options, but the company slogan was blinking; her Manager clearly wanted her to select it. She could almost hear her company training videos. Be reassuring; they trust their earthly bodies to take your care.
“I got you; your job is just to relax.” She repeated the Friendlies pod maintenance slogan under their logo and the signature on their e-mails. “Your job is to relax.”
Kai logged out, and the Conapt came back to life around her. Even in the AC, the air felt warm and soupy. She looked at Janet Runicble’s curled toenails. She had work to do.
***
Great America In Dead World will be released on July 8th, 2025
David Agranoff is the Wonderland-award-nominated author of The Last Night to Kill Nazis, a columnist for “Amazing Stories,” and the long-time co-host of The Dickheads Podcast. His eye
for Science Fiction and deep study of Philip K. Dick as one of the most important writers of the 20th century makes him uniquely qualified to write this humorous, bizarro novel about an
alternate reality that feels almost too close to tomorrow’s headlines.
