I am the mask. The mask is me. America has fallen. Remnants of states cling together. The Pacific Northwest is now PacNorth. Democracy has gone off the rails. Citizens still vote, but only to vote away anything — or anyone — they don’t like. Long-term wisdom loses to short-term pleasure. And the Collectors come in the night. Radial is a Collector. The instrument of the will of the people. You get voted away…Radial makes you disappear. The system works, and he is its servant. The rule of the people is the highest form of human government. He is a believer. Until he is asked to collect someone who should never, ever be voted away.

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About The Author

Kerry Nietz spent much of his childhood developing a love of reading, technology, outer space and later, writing. A refugee of the software industry, he spent more than a decade of his life flipping bits-first as one of the principal developers of the database product FoxPro, and then as one of Bill Gates's minions at Microsoft. He is a husband and father, a technophile and a movie buff. Kerry resides in Ohio with his wife and three children.

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