Life is not what it seems to be. With the B.A.L.S. Biological Artificial Life System, humanity has acquired the technology to simulate whatever life one chooses. When the whole of the species opts to live in a simulated fantasy world, no one expected that eventually, the lines between fantasy and reality would blur until they are indistinguishable. In the Almaican empire, Cog Heavenshire believes himself to be a ruler caught in a brutal war against the Horosh. When he is visited by a strange man named Zolin who claims they are living in a simulation, Cog doesn’t know what to believe. Yet when Zolin vanishes, people begin appearing in Cog’s world, materializing out of thin air. The technology keeping everyone in the simulation is failing, warping time and filling Cog’s world with inexplicable events. Determined to unravel the truth behind B.A.L.S. and find the mysterious Zolin, Cog and his allies are forced to fight a war on two fronts: one within their world, and one that transcends it.

The range of possibilities for what was termed a ball in eighteenth-century France was quite considerable. At one extreme were the carefully regulated bals parés at the other were the elaborately staged bals masqués. Alternatively, a bal could also be an entirely impromptu affair. Throughout this colorful range of possibilities, the repertoire of dance styles and types was generally shared: danses figures, new as well as old, for couples; and group dances, among which the contredanse reigned supreme.There was another kind of ball, however, that has not yet been examined systematically by scholars. The bals publics held at the opera house in Paris were initiated not long after Louis XIV's death in 1715, and remained popular until the fall of the ancienne régime. This book explores the advent and early development of the bal public through 1763, when a fire destroyed the home of the Académie Royale de Musique (the 'Opera'). The bal public was unlike any other kind of ball, although, as with bals masqués, those in attendance were masked. This study aims, in part, to explore how the bal public might have influenced social dancing more generally. By 1744, there was a dramatic shift in social modeling from the royal balls at Versailles (and elsewhere) to the public balls at the Opera.