Orange City

Hidden away from the rest of the world is a city that offers a fresh start to people selected to enter it: convicts, individuals with physical deformities who have been pushed aside, and others who live at the edges of ordinary society. Every newcomer is given work and lodging, but the arrangement is permanent, and no one who arrives may ever leave.

The community answers to a grotesque ruler known only as "Man," whose body is fitted with mechanical limbs that move like living ones, giving him a spider-like silhouette. Residents obey him without question and labor to strengthen the settlement they call the Promised Land, since anyone who resists risks being cast out into the Empty Zones.

Graham Weatherend has spent a decade in advertising when he is assigned to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. The first taste of its orange flavor hooks him, and the drink's effects bring on erratic swings in his mood that gradually open his eyes to the confinement he has accepted as reality.