Review: GOING ZERO

GOING ZERO by Anthony McCarten (Macmillan, 2023)

Reviewed by Alyson Baker

TWO HOURS TO VANISH

Ten people have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter, FUSION can track anyone wherever they are on earth. But does it work?

ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE

Each participant is given two hours to 'Go Zero' – to go off-grid and disappear - and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3million in cash. If Cy's system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar contract with the CIA to develop FUSION and revolutionize surveillance forever.

ZERO ALTERNATIVES

For contestant Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than Cy could have ever imagined. Kaitlyn needs to win to get what she wants, and Cy will stop at nothing to realize his ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner… 

An utterly compelling read that drags the reader through the dangers of invasive information-gathering, the “erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man”, and the determination of a wronged woman. The ride starts with the beta testing of a state-of-the-art surveillance system, where ten subjects are instructed by Fusion, the agency that will search for them, to ‘go zero’ – to completely disappear for thirty days.

The ten participants are a mix of five professionals and “five representatives of ordinary, uninformed credulous America” – at stake is a US$ three million reward. Thus, Going Zero starts with a familiar, straight-forward plot illustrating the weaknesses of various evasion tactics and the invasiveness of surveillance systems. Fusion is planned to be a “fusing of government intelligence with free market ingenuity” – there are plenty of opportunities to point out the dangers that that combination may pose.

The government agencies involved see buddying with Cy Baxter – the brains behind Fusion – as a way to become active on U.S. soil in ways that their government mandates forbid. Baxter just wants access to the vast swathes of government surveillance data. Neither side are honest with, or trusting of, the other – both believing there are “the abiding benefits of keeping whatever the hell you actually do way, way, way under the radar”.

As the participants are found one by one, another theme starts to emerge; another level of complexity enters the story turning this straight-forward plot into an extraordinary read. Going Zero has some out-of-left-field twists, which have the reader and Baxter flummoxed, and a flummoxed genius is not a good thing. Baxter’s descent into megalomania is both frightening and believable. The reader also must cope with continual information reveals regarding the “book person, an antiquarian”: Zero 10, Kaitlyn Day.

Baxter insists his system can prevent tragedies such as September 11, or the never-ending mass shootings in the U.S. He believes innocent citizens would be happy to sacrifice their privacy for “greater security, peace, law, and order”, suggesting “we aren’t as complicated as we thought we were. We were just pretending to be complex. Really, we’re a herd”. Going Zero argues both sides of this proposition.

The Zeros are captured due to simple mistakes and common flaws. Those vagaries and urges of the human psyche are also what tips the project into chaos, and yet allow hope to enter a bleak scenario, with “the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control”. The story at one point becomes almost farcical, with the rapid manipulation of data, the size of which would “make Wikileaks look like the midweek gossip column in the Fuck Knuckle Times.”  

The characterisations in the novel are solid, with some being purposefully stereotypical yet believable – the garage geek turned IT powerbroker, the menacing government official … Others are unpredictable and intriguing; the chameleon-like Kaitlyn, and those within the system who have hidden agendas. And then there are those who drive the story without making an appearance – or if appearing are “Systematically ruined”.

“What chance could an algorithm have against all that inner chaos?” asks Going Zero – and a final twist in the novel has the reader routing for chaos. An excellent read!.

Alyson Baker is a crime-loving former librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here.