To Airy Thinness

In an era when books are artifacts and reading is obsolete, Donald Marcus discovers the self-help book ‘The Law of Success,’ which identifies sixteen traits that enable anyone to succeed. After acquiring a “custom organic intelligence” to read the book to him, Marcus embarks on a master plan: he will translate the book’s lessons into videos, the only content people consume — and make himself successful by teaching others how to succeed. But Reset is an era of instant gratification: food and drink are intubated for expedience; virtual sex is just as real as the real thing; and memory of pre-Reset life has been wiped. When appetites are easily slaked, the pursuit of success is what’s excessive. Not only does Marcus receive little interest in the only video he’s managed to create, but his “Coi” breaks before he can make more. He finds an organization willing to create a replacement, but there’s a catch: they want him to steal the physical equivalents of the sixteen traits identified in the book he can’t read — from the minds of the country’s most successful people. What he discovers along the way is that success is on more minds than his own.