Join is a government-sponsored technology born of quantum mechanics, psychology and cybernetics. It creates single beings from multiple people: one mind controlling many bodies, turning loneliness and death into a thing of the past.
Chance and Leap, joins of five individuals each, have been co-workers for years. Two of their bodies, or drives, work as pilot and co-pilot flying cargo across the globe while battling mega-storms created by the environmental catastrophes on a near-future Earth.
Leap is facing the consequences of joining with the terminally ill, 70-year-old mother of one of the original drives. The woman's fear of joining with Leap causes a "flip," a rare, fatal join-related disease with both physical and mental consequences.
One of Chance's drives is killed by a mysterious but brutally insane join bent on pushing the envelope of the technology by connecting hundreds of drives to its system, then killing them off one by one, in a desire to approach a post-human extremity. Chance must deal with the grief at losing a drive while helping Leap discover a cure for the flip.
Chance and Leap must team up to find the killer, who might know where to find an early pioneer of the technology--now hiding with a group of anti-government people--who might be able to heal Leap's join-sickness.
Join is a high-concept, immersive science fiction thriller with compelling characters navigating a well-built speculative future. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor