Of the City of the Saved...

Of the City of the Saved...  is a novel by Philip Purser-Hallard, originally published by Mad Norwegian Press, and part of the Faction Paradox fiction universe.

The novel concerns Laura Tobin, a private investigator investigating a murder in The City of the Saved. All well and good, except the city is actually a galaxy sized conglomeration at the end of the Universe, in which every human being or pseudo-human being who’s ever lived currently resides.

Oh, and in the City, all murders are impossible...

FOR HUMANITY, THE WAR IS OVER.
We all remember Resurrection Day.

Even now, three centuries later, we cannot forget that awakening: our bewilderment, our terror and our joy. Each of us had experienced death, imagining ourselves bound for oblivion, Heaven or Nirvana, according to taste. Instead, we found, each member of the many human species – from tool-wielding australopithecines to posthuman philosopher-gods – had been harvested, gathered here by the Founders’ unfathomable technologies.

Reborn in our countless immortal bodies, we were given the freedom of the City of the Saved. A single conurbation as broad as a spiral galaxy, she has been our sanctuary from the ravages of the War. That monstrous conflict between inhuman cultures cannot touch us here: we live our afterlives beyond the end of time, in perfect safety.

We may be certain, therefore, that these rumours of a murder (the brutal stabbing of a City Councillor, no less!) are nothing more than lurid fabrications. The supposition that the murder weapon is missing, or that it could have been – as hysterical conjecture has claimed – a “potent weapon”, capable of injuring a Citizen within the haven of the City, is equally absurd. The idea that a guerrilla war has already begun in one of our less harmonious enclaves need not be dignified with refutation.

Please go about your business, Citizens, as normal. We are perfectly safe, here in the City.

Humanity has never been safer.