Distress

Greg Egan's audacious voice and literary scope create a fragmented futuristic world where technology and bio-engineering threaten humanity's very existence.
It is the year 2055 and the battle of the sexes has seven combatants rather than two. "The illusion of empathy" has been dispensed with, and a few idealistic souls try to create a Utopia with pirated technology. But a wired journalist, Andrew Worth, doesn't want any part of the pop-'Frankenscience' regularly dished out to the masses. To get the real sbacksy, he goes to Stateless to cover the Einstein Centenary Conference where academic science is ready to reveal the ultimate breakthrough.
Unfortunately Academia's facade of civility is dangerously cracked with a seething maelstrom of plotting, assassination attempts, and rebellion and Worth is dragged down into the nightmare. The world's only hope for survival lies in Violet Mosasa's development of a final Theory of Everything but whether it will lead to the total destruction of Life As We Know It or the complete re-making of the Universe may be a risk too dangerous to take.
"Hot new writer Greg Egan is on his way with considerable velocity."
Gardner Dozois
After developing a lengthy exposé on "frankenscience," SeeNet reporter Andrew Worth is burnt out. So burnt that he passes up a plum assignment covering the new disease "Distress." Instead, he asks for a lower-key job profiling Violet Mosala, a scientist who earned a Nobel Prize at the age of 25 and who is about to announce her version of the Theory of Everything. The TOE is an attempt to explain how all scientific theories fit together, but it may actually be the catalyst that created the universe, making Violet the "Keystone" of the universe. So much for the quiet assignment ...