A Calculated Life - Tapa blanda

Big business and state institutions are thriving late in the 21st century thanks to a compliant, stratified and segregated workforce. Hyper-intelligent professionals live in affluence within the metropolis while menials live out in the subsidized, but spartan, enclaves. There are upsides for everyone. Advances in genetic engineering have freed the population from addictive tendencies. Violent crime is a rarity. Mayhew McCline, a corporation that detects global trends, recruits a young woman, Jayna, who instantly becomes the firm’s star performer. No one seems to be jealous. After all, she guarantees they all make their bonuses. Despite her flawless track record, Jayna is feeling twitchy. She knows she’s making stupid mistakes. But no one has noticed, yet. Working on a hunch that she’s too sheltered from real-world unpredictability, she embarks on an experiment to disrupt her proscribed daily routine. Unwittingly, she sets a path that leads to clandestine forays beyond the metropolis, corporate disloyalty and forbidden relationships.

Anne Charnock’s journalism has appeared in New Scientist, The Guardian, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune and Geographical. She was educated at the University of East Anglia, where she studied environmental sciences, and at The Manchester School of Art, England. As a foreign correspondent, she travelled widely in Africa, the Middle East and India and spent a year overlanding through Egypt, Sudan and Kenya. Anne contributes to The Huffington Post and blogs about books, exhibitions and science.