In a dystopian near future, free speech is a distant memory and all news is censored. Journalists live in exile in last remaining safe havens like Prishtinopolis from where they organize info-revolutions. They are hunted and eliminated by cybernetically enhanced agents called arbiters.

Follow the Arbiter as he crosses the border as part of a covert mission. He must work blind, with his cybernetic implants turned off to avoid detection, but more importantly, trying not to cause a diplomatic incident between the two neighboring countries — a techno-dictatorship and cyber-libertarians.

This bilingual publication — in both Albanian and English — goes beyond a serialized cyberpunk novel. Its content is a hybrid between an artist’s book, a zine, a work of science fiction, a collection of essays, and a multimedia experiment.

Fiction

You already read the first episode in a book format? Have a look at an early release of chapters from episode 2.

• Broken Signals
  “Commence Operation Moebius,” said Colonel Hana Uka. “Affirmative, Colonel,” responded Major Ardi, her second in command, as he disappeared amid the swarm of soldiers barking out unintelligible orders.  With greying “regulation” cut and a stoic face weathered from combat, tragedy, and experience, Major Ardi projected a calm demeanor that often ranged on the unemotional. He… Read more: Broken Signals
• The Kaçak Syndicate
  As the Arbiter walked down the steps of “The Collective” he increasingly heard the humming and buzzing of the crowd. The bar was full, and the previously laid back and talk-therapist-like bartender was now taking orders and serving with the efficiency of an industrial robot.  As the Arbiter stood at the entrance observing the crowd,… Read more: The Kaçak Syndicate

Nonfiction & Essays

You liked the essays in the book? Here’s a sneak peek of some fragments that didn’t make it in the book.

• Sci-Fi in Kosovo: Dystopias as a Utopian Project
  Sci-Fi in Kosovo: Dystopias as a Utopian Project  By Artrit Bytyci why (waste time to) write sci-fi in kosovo When I wrote my first “big” work of science fiction during my high school years, it coincided with a time of great changes, all of which revolved around the Kosovo war. From starting high school in… Read more: Sci-Fi in Kosovo: Dystopias as a Utopian Project
• The Power of Our New Gods
  “The Arbiter” also explores new types of power — that of Artificial Intelligence, more precisely. “God is dead — we have killed him.” And in its stead we have invented an all-knowing and all-seeing God whose spirit resides in the machine, in some distant server in the cloud.
• Corporate Dictatorships of our Information Age
  Instead of our promised cyborgness, our promised symbiosis between human and machine, we were turned into cyber-dope-fiends, whose only preoccupation became to get that dopamine reward in our brains, no matter the content of the information. It became irrelevant what kind of content you viewed as long as the chemical cravings of your brain were satisfied.