The night the meteorite fell, humanity received two gifts.
One was called “primordial matter.” It rewrote the laws of physics and pushed technology beyond its limits: gene editing, mechanical ascension, energy weapons. The Materialists used it to rule the galaxy.
The other was called “narrative radiation.” It made consciousness real: novels, short dramas, films. The better the reviews, the greater the power. The Ideationists called it God’s kiss, and themselves God’s children.
The two factions clashed, and war spread across the stars.
Shen Pan and Shen He were orphans. At 21, they entered the Review Bureau with outstanding grades and became reviewers, specializing in infiltrating fictional worlds to destroy the power anchors of their “authors.”
Kill the protagonist, destroy the world, collect the bounty.
It was a job that paid well and paid fast, but there was one problem:
When someone from a fictional world cries and asks you, “Am I not real?” how do you answer?
More devastating still, Shen Pan gradually realizes that the “reality” he lives in seems to be a novel, too.
And every act of rebellion they make is entertaining some reader in a higher dimension,
some researcher in a higher dimension.
