When We Were Real

by Daryl Gregory

First published 2025

JP learns his cancer has returned aggressively. His best friend Dulin books them on a Canterbury Trails Tours bus trip to see North America's Impossibles, the reality glitches that appeared seven years ago when humanity discovered they live in a digital simulation. Their fellow travelers include a nun searching for God, a pregnant influencer trying to make her unborn child too famous to delete, randy seniors, and a professor fleeing Matrix cultists. The bus visits increasingly bizarre stops: a Tunnel outside time, a zero gravity Geyser, and a motivational speaker's compound. Everyone heads toward the final destination, Ghost City, where answers about who controls their simulated world may wait. As JP faces his mortality and Dulin confronts what friendship means, both men discover what truly matters in an artificial existence.

Genres: adventure, 21st-century, contemporary-romance, alternate-universe

Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: found-family, friends-to-lovers

Setting: North America

Period: 7 Years Ago

447 pages · Hardcover · S&S/Saga Press

Content warnings: terminal-illness

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