Nemo's mother and father left him behind to enter "the Bin"--joining twelve billion uploaded personalities who live in crime-free, disease-free and deathless virtual societies.

Nemo hass come of age on a dangerous, near-deserted planet populated by a handful of stragglers: religious fundamentalists and rebels, the creeps and the crazies.

Now he is twenty-one. And on a rare, reluctant visit to the parints who abondoned flesh and son for cyber-utopia, Nemo has met the perfect woman: a new Bin arrival named Justine, a beautiful pop singer sho dreams other people's dreams in the virual night.

Now an inconvenient attraction is leading two lovers into a perilous mire of irreversible choice. For Justine has no body to return to. And Nemo the renegade has sworn never to sacrifice his own; to live, age, and die instead in a bleak erthly hell. Because, as an outsider, he may enter the Bin for short periods of time. But if he ever decides to stay...there will be no way out again.

An ingeniously original new voice in the realm of high quality SF, Dennis Danvers has seen tomorrow--and it's the Bin: a vast network of silicon crystals into which twelve billion people have uploaded their personalities to live in crime-free, disease-free ad deathless virtual societies, leaving the dangerous and unpredictable Earth to a few stragglers, the creeps and the crazies, the religious fundamentalists and the rebels. Outsiders may visit the Bin for short stretches of time. But once they decide to stay. . .it s forever.

Nemo is an outsider. This is his coming-of-age story. And it begins on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, when he reluctantly pays a visit to the parents who abandoned their flesh and their son for cyber-utopia. Nemo is a righteously angry young man determined to live, age, and die in a bleak, almost deserted earthy hell rather than sacrifice his body and soul to a technological purgatory.

Until Nemo meets the perfect woman--a newly arrived resident of the Bin named Justine--a pop singer and beautiful enigma with an unsettling void in her past. And now Nemo the renegade is questioning everything he has ever fought for or against. But the strange dreams that come to Justine in the dark of the virtual night belong to somebody else--and they re-leading two innocent young lovers into a dangerous mire of irreversible choice, and into the intricate machinery of devastation.

Justine was dreaming she was someone else: She was in the real world, a long time ago, before she was born--there were people everywhere and cars moving up and down the streets like huge schools of brightly colored fish. All the shop windows were intact, lit up with fluorescent and neon, full of cheap jewelry and boom boxes and skimpy clothes stretched over chipped mannequins. She hurried past them, a light drizzle falling, the streets black and slick, glistening with reflected light. The ozone smell of the rain hovered over the stench of exhaust fumes and urine and rotting food.

She was seventeen, sneaking out at night, hurrying to meet a boy around the comer, at the end of the next block. His name was Steve, and she remembered his face--maybe twenty, thin, a sharp nose, a closely trimmed goatee, hungry eyes. She had his address on a slip of paper wadded up in her hand, and when she thought about him, her hand tightened around the lump of paper, and she walked even faster. She was crazy for him. She hardly knew him, and Alice, a girlfriend, said he was bad news, but she was crazy for him anyway.

She started up the narrow stairs to his apartment, when a door opened above her, and he stepped onto the landing, light blazing at his back. He must've had a dozen floods in there. Music blared in the cavernous stairwell.

"Hey Angelina," he shouted, and she followed him into his room, cluttered with electronic equipment and wires snaking across the floor. The lights were on stands, all aimed at the bed in the middle of the room. He circled around her, taking her jacket, wrapping his arms around her, stripping off her shirt. He seemed to be everywhere at once. He pushed her onto the bed and looked down at her. She could hardly see him for the glare of the lights. "Put this on," he said, pulling something over her head like a bathing cap. He pinned her arms and pushed himself into her, hammering away at her. He came in a matter of minutes and rolled off of her. She opened her hand and there was his address, wadded to a pulp in her hand. He yanked the cap off her head, and she woke up.

Her heart was racing. Her stomach was in a knot. Her fist was clenched around the sheet. Slowly, she opened it. There was no slip of paper there. It was just a dream. I'm still me, she thought, still Justine, twenty years old, in the Bin six weeks-and I've never seen a car in the real world except rusted out junkers, never walked down a city street without feeling the grit of glass under my shoes.

The girl in her dream was named Angelina, and it'd been 2002. She had no idea how she knew that, but there it was, like a memory. Justine was born in 2061.

In the present, she was in her hotel room with a man's naked arm across her chest. He wore a fat gold ring with an onyx pentagon on his middle finger, a heavy gold chain around his wrist. His fingers were fat and stubby, his nails buffed and polished to a shine. Downy white hair covered his arm, the back of his hand, like moss. He was sound asleep, his face half-buried in the pillow. He'd said he was a senator, she remembered. He looked the part-silver hair, strong jaw, square shoulders, just enough crow's feet to make him seem wise and fatherly. Old enough to be her father. She couldn't remember how she'd ended up in bed with him. I must've been tying one on, she thought. Watching him sleep, there was something she didn't like about him, though apparently there'd been something she'd liked well enough the night before.

She looked around the room, moving her head carefully to make sure she didn't wake him. A narrow shaft of light, where the curtains weren't quite drawn, cut across the room.

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