In Beta

Book excerpt: Winner of the American Book Fest's 2021 Best Book Award in Science Fiction “Prescott is one brilliant dude.” —JJ Abrams It’s 1993, and Jay and Colin are small-town geeks. Senior year is nearly over, and they’re still as unpopular as ever. Everything changes when they discover a disk containing a computer program called The Build, a pixel-perfect replica of their hometown. As the boys tweak its code, they discover they can bend the laws of reality. With godlike power, they react as any teenager would: hacking high school to make it more awesome. But someone—or something—is watching. And as their friends and neighbors begin acting increasingly strange, they buckle in for an epic battle. Jay and Colin must pull out all their cheat codes to save themselves, their town—and the very fabric of existence.