Toronto, the near future: a city ruined by greed. Homeless citizens fill parks by the thousands, their spaces artificially heated in the winter months-their lives in the hands of a power company that has ceased all communication.
Otis Colip is one of those homeless. He had a good life once: nice house, brilliant wife, a prominent job maintaining a fleet of corporate androids. As tempers in the park flare and scavengers big and small begin squeezing his community, he must make his stand. Driven by a deep desire to return to his old life inside the biometrically locked city, he takes on a risky job-one with an all-or-nothing price tag.
Recalling such classics as Phillip K. Dick's
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
as well as contemporary dystopias like Eric Barnes'
The City Where We Once Lived,
Margaret Atwood's
The Heart Goes Last,
and Adam Sternbergh's
Shovel Ready,
Optimal Power
is a story in which access is everything, and the keys belong to thieves, hackers, and CEOs.