MOME

by Randall Barnes

Alistair McCary wants to dive deeper into his anomaly, even after it obliterates his entire physics lab. His colleague, Davan Yazdani, is equally thrilled by the potential of her anomaly, but her excitement significantly dampens when her nagging roommate is rendered catatonic by it.

Elsewhere, a physicist is murdered, and solitary Service Officer Kaleb Martinex is confused by the lack of any physical evidence in the crime. Martinex's investigation leads to a potential cover-up by one of the leading physics research labs, but the lab's CEO bars Martinex from further enquiries when he flouts their security protocols. To make matters worse, Kaleb is assigned a partner who dictates his every move.

After crunching the preliminary data, Alistair agrees to help extract a boy from the Mingle, a piece of shareware that had been made public while still in beta phase. The boy's release draws the attention of two government agents, but from their strange questioning the boy's mother suspects they aren't who they appear to be.

As Alistair and Davan get closer to the groundbreaking truth, the murders increase. Martinex's partner sees that all the evidence points to Alistair as their prime suspect, while Martinex begins to untangle an even more complex cover-up engineered by an international corporation, the Mingle, and a sinister operating system called MOME.

501 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 18, 2024

About the author

I'm seasoned sound designer, English language teacher, and now, author. I've earned an MA in Linguistics and a PhD in Film Sound. I'm fascinated by theoretical physics, interacting with different languages and cultures, and I enjoy exploring possible futures and alternate realities with very believable characters and truly plausible situations in what I watch, read and write. My hope is that my books and stories will transport you to worlds that are very much like our own and yet unlike it in many creative and captivating ways.

Reviews

[Peter Bogdanoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the pages of Randall Barnes' novel I read "passion-filled protagonists: each flirting with disaster, each forging their own way, each jam-packed with romance." However, these are pages in a novel the wispy sylph Natalie reads before her own life frays, becoming insensible. Her romance-starved friends, the scientists Davan and Alistair, try to make sense of a new and mind--and lab--shaking discovery. A pair of precocious pre-teen boys have got themselves into trouble with a tech called the 'mingle.' And away cross town, a cop, himself dabbling in an affair of the heart, investigates dead bodies, trying to make sense of non-sensical evidence.

MOME has no single protagonist; there is only the handful of people, some of which who know each other, some unaware of the others, all trying to understand what is going wrong. And the antagonist is hidden from us. An individual? A rogue foundation, a faceless corporation? Rogue tech? Who can you trust? In this future, half the people you meet are partially or totally synthetic, AI, "reps.”

These are everyday lives--employment, budgets, protocols, kids, quantum physics--of real people trying to navigate a technology-addled existance in the big city that suddenly has become "zerty." In his debut novel Barnes takes pleasure in unwinding this dilemma, and transports us to a satisfying end.

[Karen Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of science fiction that doesn't skimp on the hard science but still gives you fast-paced excitement you may be the perfect reader for MOME. Take some theoretical physics and mix that with threatening virtual reality for a premise that brings unlikely partners together to solve a killer mystery. Randall Barnes creates characters you care about and a near-future world that looks and sounds enough like our own to easily draw the reader in, but develops the nuances of that world with language and atmosphere so we know we are not anywhere near familiar territory. I loved how Barnes uses language and technology and culture to fill out this familiar/strange setting. And the physics mystery at the core of the book is hugely engaging and intellectually challenging. It's a page-turner with something to say about ethics in science and the capacity for heroism in each of us. I highly recommend MOME.

[Stephen Feinberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

DEEPLY ENTERTAINING

Do not read MOME if you are unprepared to be entertained in a very deep and profound way. Randall Barnes guides us through the intricate depths of a high tech mystery with the extraordinary adroitness of a master storyteller. MOME is a beautifully written first novel, which creates a claustrophobic tension, that causes the reader to need to hang on so as not to be thrown off, or worse yet, to be stuck in the shadows of a nightmare forever. Barnes is a smart writer. I appreciate that. I suspect others will as well.

[Russell Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird things are happening sometime in the future, strange inexplicable deaths and a child vanishes while using VR.

MOME is a glimpse into a future where hacking is done in VR, body mods are far more than nipple piercings and synthetic androids are a physicists best friend.