When We Were Real

PRE-ORDER FOR APRIL 1, 2025

When We Were Real – A Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Adventure Through a Glitched Reality

🚍 From award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes When We Were Real, a madcap, genre-bending road trip through the glitches of a simulated world, where reality is in question, and the journey is everything.

A Cross-Country Trip Through the Impossible

Best friends JP and Dulin have spent decades navigating life together. But when JP’s cancer returns, Dulin convinces him to embark on one last adventure: a bus tour of North America’s strangest physics-defying anomalies, the so-called Impossibles—glitches that emerged after the world learned it was nothing more than a digital simulation.

Their journey, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, is filled with an eclectic cast of travelers:
🌀 A nun searching for a missing God
📱 A pregnant influencer hoping to make her baby too famous to be erased
🦾 A professor on the run from Matrix-worshipping zealots
🔥 A crew of wild, thrill-seeking octogenarians embracing every glitchy moment

A Search for Meaning in a Digital World

As the group visits surreal sites like a Tunnel outside of time, a zero-gravity geyser, and a cultish motivational avatar, they speed toward their final stop: Ghost City, where the truth behind the simulation—and the nature of their existence—may finally be revealed.

💡 Blending humor, heart, and high-concept sci-fi, When We Were Real is a profound exploration of love, mortality, and what truly matters—even in an artificial world.