Is this real life, or is it just fantasy? In a futuristic world where coastal cities like Venice are underwater and cities like Paris have been destroyed by nuclear war, they only live on through memory and uploaded on to a virtual reality called Flow. Actor Nikolai Vasilyev spends his time drinking and wallowing in the past and immersing himself in the career he wished he still had through Flow. When he agrees to deliver a strange gift in exchange for food and alcohol, he is dragged into a surreal series of events, never sure if he is hallucinating, trapped inside Flow or working as a spy. We are deftly swept along with Nikolai through the plotline, the unreliable narrator successfully keeping us destabilised and unsure of what’s happening and what isn’t. The storyline has a surreal, dreamlike feel to it, disparate pieces of a puzzle that merge into one another. The Zeroth Day uses its dystopian / sci-fi storyline to explore a number of themes - people increasingly spending their time and living their lives online, the development of AI and potential future uses and pitfalls as well as the political climate and future sources of energy. I think that this would make an interesting read for fans of surrealism and science fiction, keeping you thoroughly off balance until the end.
Set in a near future in which Venice and other coastal cities are underwater, Paris has been incinerated in a nuclear blast, and surviving cities like Moscow are plagued by permanent rolling blackouts, the vast majority of humanity finds escape in the Flow, a virtual-reality simulation of the world that’s powered by users’ subconscious desires. The story follows Nikolai Vasilyev, who’s a shadow of the man he used to be. Once a renowned actor, he’s now a down-and-out alcoholic struggling to come to grips with the death of his wife, who died years earlier. Essentially begging for some vegetables and a bottle of vodka at a store in an impoverished Moscow neighbourhood, Nikolai agrees to deliver a gift (a wooden case containing two glass beakers filled with a transparent liquid) to the store proprietor’s cousin. But the simple deed goes awry as Nikolai questions whether he’s hallucinating, institutionalized in a mental hospital, stuck inside the Flow, or a spy in a secret program run by an AI research institute. With what might be the spirit of his dead wife leading him through a surreal dreamscape, Nikolai finally discovers the mind-blowing truth.
