Book description
The Thing on the Shore takes place in a call-centre in Whitehaven. When
Artemis Black (from The Leaping) is assigned to manage the centre on
behalf of a mysterious multinational corporation called Interext, the
isolation and remoteness of the place encourage him to implement a
decidedly unhinged personal project, installing what purports to be
cutting-edge AI technology, with a real, human voice, on the automated
answering systems. As a result of Artemis actions, one of his employees,
Arthur, becomes aware of an intangible landscape inside the labyrinthine
systems of the call-centre a landscape in which he can feel some kind of
otherworldly consciousness stirring and in which, perhaps as a result of
his fathers increasingly alarming eccentricities, he feels that he could
find his recently deceased mother. Arthur takes refuge in this belief as
his father, his job, and his house slowly deteriorate around him. He
begins to conflate the mysterious, interstitial region that exists down
the phonelines with the sea, as that was where his mother drowned. In a
way he is right Artemis meddlings have attracted something, it is just
not as benevolent as he thinks The Thing on the Shore takes place in a
call-centre in Whitehaven. When Artemis Black (from The Leaping) is
assigned to manage the centre on behalf of a mysterious multinational
corporation called Interext, the isolation and remoteness of the place
encourage him to implement a decidedly unhinged personal project,
installing what purports to be cutting-edge AI technology, with a real,
human voice, on the automated answering systems. As a result of Artemis
actions, one of his employees, Arthur, becomes aware of an intangible
landscape inside the labyrinthine systems of the call-centre a landscape
in which he can feel some kind of otherworldly consciousness stirring
and in which, perhaps as a result of his fathers increasingly alarming
eccentricities, he feels that he could find his recently deceased
mother. Arthur takes refuge in this belief as his father, his job, and
his house slowly deteriorate around him. He begins to conflate the
mysterious, interstitial region that exists down the phonelines with the
sea, as that was where his mother drowned. In a way he is right Artemis
meddlings have attracted something, it is just not as benevolent as he
thinks
