Benoît Javaux’s “Heurts Numériques”
It is our pleasure to share with you our Partner Benoît Javaux’s personal work.
His dystopian novel features four characters evolving in a high-tech, dehumanised and totalitarian society. A Non-Productive straining away in the S-21 Solidary Work Bloc. An outdated and ageing priest. An ambitious and secretive political woman. And a senior employee at Mimdplant, a brain implant corporation. Their paths will intertwine as their personal story unfolds, through their search for salvation.
The evils and wars of the past have resulted in a society resting on antagonistic pillars: reduced living space, overpopulation, the obsolescence of humans as economic agents, endemic pollution.
The lack of healthy land has resulted in a stratification of society in space. While most inhabitants live in the underground buildings of urban centres, the highly privileged have isolated themselves in awe-inspiring superstructure buildings. They live in parallel worlds. Human work has been reduced to the extent that Non-Productives have no choice but to resign themselves to a miserable compromise: the loss of their rights while performing * deleterious work of no use in return for payment by the state. Yet people are quiet, anesthetised, overwhelmed by a digital era of immediacy. A disembodied power sternly enforces civil peace with one hand, while the other encourages consumption and vices as a means of social regulation.
Is there any hope left for this society, or must one look elsewhere? Each of the characters will face this question and reach their own conclusions.
The novel is available in French, in Kindle format and here. Enjoy!