The Forge of Mars

Cayce Pollard (pronounced 'case") is a legend in the field of market research, paid handsomely to recognize cultural and social patterns that corporations can turn into cash. Google her and you find 'coolhunter," and you may see it suggested that she is a 'sensitive" of some kind, a dowserin the world of global marketing. The truth, according to her friends, is that her sensitivity is closer to allergy, a morbid and sometimes violent reactivity to the symbols of the marketplace. Hired by Blue Ant, the world's hippest ad agency, for the sort of high-corporate re-branding she's known for, a more intriguing project emerges when the head of the firm asks her to determine who's producing a mysterious series of video fragments that have gripped the imaginations of people around the world. The source of this footage, carefully concealed, has so far proven untraceable. For Cayce's worryingly brilliant employer, the footage is the most effective piece of guerilla marketing ever devised. For Cayce herself, the footage has a powerful emotional resonance as she attempts to come to terms with the apparent death of her father - a former U.S. security expert with ties to the intelligence community - in the collapse of the World Trade Center. But what if the sense of nascent meaning that she and others perceive in the footage is only an illusion of meaningfulness - in other words, faulty pattern recognition? As Cayce begins her hunt for the mysterious 'maker," she enlists the help of an odd array of characters, including a young Polish sculptor who works in primitive personal computers, an alcoholic ex-NSA guru hidden away in a rusting house-trailer in the British countryside, an attractive Chinese-American hacker-entrepreneur whose loyalty she questions, and her fellow footage-enthusiast Parkaboy, whom she's come to know (but only, so far, virtually) on a web site devoted to discussion of 'the footage." When her rivalry with a fellow worker at the advertising agency ta