A dystopian novel with Kafkaesque accents, in the line of the J. G. Ballard of the concrete trilogy and the paranoid works of Philip K. Dick, The Agents tells the story of a world where the alienation of work has become the generalised and machine-like background against which everyone is fighting and trying to survive.
We’re in the South Quadrant, on floor 122 of Tower 35S. The outside is lost, subject of all terrors, taken over by those called cats. The others are reduced to living confined in armoured boxes, in high glass towers from another century, from which no one can get out, except to plunge to death. They’re agents. In their boxes, prostrate before their screens, they watch over the smooth running of a world that revolves without them. More than anything else, they fight against the paranoia that grips them all day long. Their conditioning at the hands of machine instructors keeps them in fear of an occult system. At the slightest deviation, they are thrown into the street - a punishment more terrible than death. To survive, they form guilds, all of which wage a slow and insidious war against each other. This is their destiny and their only option: destroy the other guilds little by little and methodically and take control of the floor. But when a young man appears at the Hairach Gate in place of a suicidal agent, a young man too old, a casual dandy dressed in purple velvet, with long black hair shining like the barrels of their guns, they understand that their world is a decoy, and that it is coming to an end.
