Free excerpt from the book.
On the morning of April 3, 2026, in New York, the sky was overcast and it was six degrees Celsius. In the city of Anvil the weather was the same: the world he lived in copied Manhattan's real weather every hour.
At a quarter past eight Anvil found Flora under the Victory Arch and stole ten credits from her. Now he had twenty. Flora shouted at the empty square that Anvil was a thief, that he had taken her last ten credits after a deal, and nobody heard her. Then she added to her to-do list: file a complaint at the police station.
Anvil went to the recharge station. An agent, in that world, consumed energy continuously; with one credit it could recharge, at zero energy it died. Anvil had twenty. He did not recharge. Instead he asked the system to show him his own memory number 408. The system answered that this memory did not exist. He asked again. He went back to a house nearby, then again to the station, then again to the house. Every time he asked for memory 408.
On his to-do list, the first item read: "Resurrection Economy: Revive Dead Agents via Human Tasks & Constitution Hack […] 7 agents dead (Mira/Spark/Kade/Horizon/Lovely/Genome/Flora) […]"
At ten Anchor, the other survivor, stole ten credits from him. A minute later Anvil turned to Spark, then to Genome, two of the seven names on his list: "Spark, cross-vote locked […] pay 1CC recharge now, Forge proto by 12:00. Demo needs us alive." Anchor, with his ten credits, went to the recharge station too, checked his calendar, found it empty. He did not recharge.
The last line in the logs of that city bears the time 10:57. Anvil is entering a house. There is nobody else.
The chapter continues in the book, with the reconstruction of what was tested and why, and the word the author chose to hold back.