Earthly Playing Field

A speculative novel of love and revolution set in a sci-fi present. Roma has a steady job, a mortgage, and a surrogate family in Queens. But as she moves through her daily routines, the powerful Empire that rules her world bares its teeth elsewhere–crushing freedom movements across the planet, including the Punjabi farmers’ uprising where her younger brother struggles on the frontlines. Roma’s life is upended when her older brother entrusts her with a strange gift: an ordinary-looking plant that manifests as a sophisticated bioengineered technology. The ‘cell’ opens a portal for an extraterrestrial spirit-body bearing news of a liberated future–and the potential to hack AI warfare–propelling Roma and her family into the core of a rising resistance. As present and prophecy converge, Roma grapples with her troubled faith, ruminating on mystic poetics and anticolonial legacies while yearning for a bewitching woman whose heart will only ever belong to the revolution.