A scientist goes on a mind-bending, violent chase across North America to save civilization from her creation in this science fiction thriller.It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet printer and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide.Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right . . .Praise for Afterparty"I can’t recommend this novel highly enough!" -Nancy Kress, Hugo Award-winning author of Probability Space"This taut, brisk, gripping narrative, dazzlingly intercut with flashbacks and sidebars, oozes warmth and wit. A hugely entertaining, surprising and perhaps prophetic package that, without seeming to, raises profound questions about the human mind and the nature of perception." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)