In the near future, an art-school dropout, an AIDS baby, a tech-activist, and a blogger live in a world where an online identity is at least as important as a physical one and getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment.

"In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak bearing similarities to the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic, a city at the tip of Africa is losing its mind-complete with hallucinations, paranoia, and good old-fashioned ghost sightings. Is it the result of secret government experiments, an episode of mass hysteria, the effects of trauma, a sign of the end times? In a quarantined city in which the inexplicable has already occurred, rumors, superstitions, and conspiracy...