Howdy all, I'm a long time lurker and infrequent poster (mainly to Comment Board Trivia) with an annoying monkey on my back.
While reading James P. Hogan's "Paths to Otherwhere" yesterday, I was reminded of a novel I read approximately ten years ago. The characters were all American expatriates who found they were unable to contact anyone who was in the U.S. It turned out that they were from alternate realities, and the timelines were coming into flux and bleeding over to other worlds. The big reveal at the end was that mankind had developed an AI that could facilitate travel between realities, and the government had programmed in for the destination: "life, liberty, and happiness for all" and, since happiness is subjective and fleeting, all of the citizens of the United States vanished from the multiverse to points unknown, leaving only the expats behind.
It may have been written by John Barnes or David Brin, as I remember I was reading "Mother of Storms" and the Uplift Wars novels about that time. Also, it definitely isn't Fred Pohl's "The Coming of the Quantum Cats." I just picked that up at the used bookstore nearby and skimmed it this afternoon.
Any help would be appreciated. |
