Michela Arturina Betta is interested in exploring emotions and feelings generated by grand topics such as science, technology, unpredictable events and historical episodes with far-reaching impacts on today’s life. She has crafted a personal literary style that allows her to blend facts and fiction in surprising ways. She has published three novels, Stories for Posthuman Readers, The Gatekeeper’s, The Vault of Svalbard.
The vault of Svalbard, the global seed bank, has been robbed and its irreplaceable content stolen. The theft becomes a priority case for the Global Agency for Informed Consent (GAIC). As the agency’s director, Achilles is in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of the seeds. Suspicions first fall on the Earth Movement and its music band Save the Earth, because of their radical position on climate change and food shortages. Unpredictable circumstances though take the investigation to the Sahara Desert controlled by the Confederation of the Tuaregs.
The theft of the seeds is the first episode in a series of adventures that involve a mysterious small chamber hidden in the vault of Svalbard. When Achilles and its team eventually enter the chamber, its secret is finally unveiled. The chamber contains a jar full of water. Some say that it has healing powers. Others claim that it never evaporates hence one single drop could quench a person’s thirst forever. Is it is new water? Should the jar be removed from the vault? How can such water be protected from the grabbing hands of a thirsty humanity?
The Gatekeeper/s blends realism and idealism in a novel way. The style is also unusual in that it moves from rhetorical dialogue to emphatic storytelling. The story is set against a legal system based on seeking consent between parties involved in a negotiation, rather than regarding one party wrong and the other right, as in the old legal system. Rhetoricians are the ones expected to obtain consent from people and they act on behalf of GAIC (Global Authority for Informed Consent) and its negotiators. The main rhetorician is Toni Forti. Achilles is the main negotiator. There are two groups of children interacting with GAIC. In the first part of the story, three children separately challenge the new informed consent to achieve self-determination. In the second part of the story, four children use the system to achieve justice.
Human beings need the help of animals, technology and luck to stay alive, to keep being human. People want to do the right things, but it is not always easy to be good. All protagonists struggle with finding their place in a fast-paced world. The challenges they encounter push them to the limits of their ethics, making them feel a profound sense of suspension. Suspension is not always resolved in the stories narrated in this book, but in all choices made for love and happiness the protagonists’ good will shines like a gem.
There are good secrets, bad secrets, and mysteries. Two dramatic incidents happen on the same day. First, a hacker attack is carried out in England, then the old Farm Hall tapes are stolen from the National Government Communications Head Quarters (NGCHQ) – England’s most secure archive. Achilles, the main protagonist of Warsecret, sees a sinister and dangerous connection between the two events. As the top negotiator of Organisation Number One (ONO) and director of the Global Agency for Informed Consent (GAIG), he must find out why and how they are linked. A series of suspenseful and dramatic actions take place in Berlin, Cambridge, London, and New York. During this sensational adventure, Achilles relies on the help of his young, stoic assistant, Lucillo, and the advice of two enlightened colonels, James Neill and Dag Olsen. The final act plays out at a global negotiation about nuclear weapons and the quantum computer, where the deep-rooted danger of scientific inventions of this type will become apparent. As will the terrifying system of secrecy that screens them from scrutiny.
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