"The poor who assembled from these neighborhoods were a completely heterogeneous mix of white, black and brown, for although racism and sexism and all the other forms of disability allocation were in bygone days a primary mode of exploitation, now it was mere artifact. This machine didn't discriminate. It cast it's predatory eye equally upon any person who stumbled, anyone who became sick, injured or sad. Orphaned minors, the mentally ill, the elderly, used up soldiers, the unemployed, political dissidents, criminals and crime victims alike, these were all food. In short, the machine had one sole object: It ate people and shat out money."This is the Old Earth, fifteen years from now. Sometime during the year 2020, the Earth split into two Earths: Half of the world's population remained on the Old Earth-a hot, rapidly devolving savage Capitalist police state. The other half moved to the New Earth, where humanity worked together to "engineer out" world problems to create a money free, sharing Utopia.The Watchers are the only humans on the New Earth who remember the split and the Old Earth. It is their unasked for duty to make sure the horrors of the Old Earth never happen again.This is an easy task until an omen appears and locks a Watcher named Benedick inside his house. It is a fulfillment of an ancient prophesy: The New Earth is still connected to the Old and as the Old Earth self-destructs, it threatens to take the New Earth down with it. In a story that leaps from Portland to Amsterdam, Detroit and São Paulo, Zehava brings into focus the best and the worst of a world in transition.
