A Play Between Moments

Somewhere in the fine print of existence, there's a clause nobody reads: reality is a simulation, life is a game, and somebody, somewhere, is grading your performance. Our hero doesn't know any of this. He just knows that when a pretty girl catches his eye, time stops — literally. At first it's a neat party trick: freeze a moment, steal a kiss, walk off with someone's jewelry, come back for cheeseburgers. Then the men in orange overalls show up. And the men in black. And a woman named Jewel, who has a whip, a bad case of insomnia, and a very pointed question about why he's ruining her caseload. Somewhere between the bureaucrats running the universe, the hunters trying to recruit him, and the increasingly personal question of what he's actually doing with his one (or is it several?) life, our hero has to figure out the rules of a game nobody bothered to explain to him — before someone official decides to end it early. Equal parts absurdist comedy and existential detective story, this is a novel for anyone who's ever suspected the universe has a customer service department, and that department is chronically understaffed.