the hAPPening

Book excerpt: Is life hAPPning without you? In a remote wasteland in Kenya, e-Trax has discovered a vast, near-surface deposit of a rare earth metal that’s going to revolutionize energy-storing technology. Everything, from electricity to electric vehicles, is about to get cheaper, cleaner, and a whole lot more powerful. The discovery is going to improve the fortunes of humanity, and of e-Trax. There’s only one problem: the deposit isn’t in a wasteland. It’s in a national park. Park ranger Moja has spent a lot of time and resources to escape her past and the sophisticated, online world of hAPPn, the largest social media app ever. But when she learns about the proposed mining project, she realizes that e-Trax is misleading hAPPn’s 3.7 billion users in order to hide their destruction of the park. But she can’t stop the megacorp alone. So she resurrects a dangerous ghost from her past to recruit Eva, hAPPn’s Chief Growth Engineer, and Jamaal, an e-Trax geologist – neither of whom want to hear that the jobs they love are enabling the devastating environmental damage that their bosses are helping to cover up. Moja, Eva, and Jamaal will lose everything they love if they insist on pursuing the truth. Will they give up life in a perfect virtual world in order to protect the only reality that humanity has left?