NUMERIKA

Darling, this isn't hell. Just another rotting country!   Numerika is the feature country of my novel, Radiation Rat. A desolate wasteland of destructive biomes: salt flats, deserts, bogs and char pits. No healthy flora or fauna survive anywhere but the Heirlooms, small swaths of former national parks since walled off by Government to supply their singular export.   Here, human life is few and far between. Guards turned caregivers of the Heirlooms. Or the Power Plants, the only towns to survive Numerika's environmental collapse by being built around nuclear power plants -- the only source of power and energy for the entire country. Most life is found in the Organs. Enormous, tightly packed cities connected to one another by arterial highways that, beyond the few charging stations, cut through vast nothingness.   Numerika sits in a state of power struggle. Foreign power and trade still belongs to Government, an illiberal democracy that has been collecting their strength and money to focus on the rising nuclear tension with multiple other countries. As such their grip on their own country has weakened. Allowing the Barren Reformation, a conglomeration of gangs, to have taken over nearly every corporation and business of any size within the Organs. Through the last decade, Government and the Barrens have created an uncomfortable truce and trading system, holding one another's necessities hostage whenever the other makes a bad move.   And then within the underground, nearing an apparent six years of age and showing no signs of stopping comes AM. A hacker -- or a hacking group -- dedicated singularly to the dissection and destruction of Government no matter the apparent costs.