When We Were Real: A Novel

JP and Dulin have been best friends for decades. When JP's cancer returns aggressively, Dulin proposes a week-long bus tour of North America's Impossibles—physics-defying glitches and geographic anomalies that appeared seven years ago, shortly after the Announcement revealed the world to be a digital simulation. The tour, operated by Canterbury Trails Tours, attracts fellow passengers with varied motivations: a nun searching for an absent God, a pregnant influencer seeking to make her child too famous to be deleted, elderly travelers living each day as if it were their last, and a professor fleeing leather-clad sociopaths who interpret The Matrix as scripture. Each stop grows increasingly strange, featuring a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, and an avatar's motivational compound. The journey culminates at Ghost City, where answers about who runs the simulation may be revealed. The novel explores love, family, secrets, and the nature of reality while following these characters through their cross-country adventure. When We Were Real is a Nebula Award finalist for Best Novel by Daryl Gregory.