
When We Were Real
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Narrated by:
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Ari Fliakos
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By:
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Daryl Gregory
About this listen
From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.
JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.
When We Were Real is a tour-de-force and exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
©2025 Daryl Gregory (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.
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It is finally
- By crperkins on 04-15-25
By: Olivie Blake
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Raising Stony Mayhall
- By: Daryl Gregory
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman's arms is a baby - stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda, and he begins to move.The family hides the child - whom they name Stony - rather than turn him over to authorities who would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow....
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You'll wish you lived as much as this undead boy
- By Maryland on 10-27-11
By: Daryl Gregory
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Pandemonium
- By: Daryl Gregory
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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It is a world like our own in every respect, save one. In the 1950s, random acts of possession begin to occur. Ordinary men, women, and children are the targets of entities that seem to spring from the depths of the collective unconscious, pop-cultural avatars some call demons. As a boy, Del Pierce is possessed by the Hellion, an entity whose mischief-making can be deadly. With the help of Del's family and a caring psychiatrist, the demon is exorcised... or is it?
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Random demonic possession
- By Michael G Kurilla on 11-17-24
By: Daryl Gregory
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Cold Eternity
- By: S.A. Barnes
- Narrated by: Amara Jasper
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago… The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately.
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Speechless
- By Shelby ecker on 04-09-25
By: S.A. Barnes
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We Are All Completely Fine
- By: Daryl Gregory
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-30s and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.
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original and unique
- By Midwestbonsai on 03-22-15
By: Daryl Gregory
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Spoonbenders
- A novel
- By: Daryl Gregory
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Teddy Telemachus is a charming con man with a gift for sleight of hand and some shady underground associates. In need of cash, he tricks his way into a classified government study about telekinesis and its possible role in intelligence gathering. There he meets Maureen McKinnon, and it's not just her piercing blue eyes that leave Teddy forever charmed but her mind - Maureen is a genuine psychic of immense and mysterious power.
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Slow start, but patience is your friend here.
- By Heather on 08-22-17
By: Daryl Gregory
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The Beauty of the End
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Stienstra
- Narrated by: Erika LeonGuerrero
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlie Tannehill and her twin sister, Maggie, are just eight years old when an unfortunate scientific discovery upends their world—and the world order. The revelation? Extinction, encoded in every creature’s DNA. The expiration date for humans? Only four generations away. A decade later, unsure of what tomorrow holds, Charlie and Maggie enroll as counselors in a government-run human-husbandry program.
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Kept my attention and exceptional narration
- By clam on 04-30-25
By: Lauren Stienstra
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The Raven Scholar
- Eternal Path Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Antonia Hodgson
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma
- Length: 24 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best. Then one of them is murdered. We know who did it. We saw it happen. No one else did.
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A good adventure tale.
- By Skate on 05-04-25
By: Antonia Hodgson
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Shroud
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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On a planet shrouded in darkness, a stranded crew must fight for survival. But, the darkness may have plans of its own in this wildly original story from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning author of Children of Time.
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Freakslaw
- By: Jane Flett
- Narrated by: Abigail Lawrie
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the summer of ‘97 and the repressed Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change. Enter the Freakslaw―a travelling carnival of deviant queers and architects of mayhem. There’s Gloria, fortune teller and worm charmer; her daughter Nancy, a contortionist witch; big-hearted tightrope walker, Werewolf Louie; not to mention illusionists and conjoined twins, Cass and Henry, and tattooed human pincushion, Pin Gal.
By: Jane Flett
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Hourglass
- A Race Against Time
- By: Arthur G. Insana
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Jason Culp, Mark Deakins, and others
- Length: 59 mins
- Unabridged
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After a devastating military error with tragic results for humanity… a special squad is formed to reverse that error and restore the survival of humankind.
By: Arthur G. Insana
What listeners say about When We Were Real
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Teresa
- 04-06-25
My head hurts
This was ADVENTUROUS. Props to the author for having that kind of brain power lol
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- ElectricStirrer
- 04-09-25
Funny, sharp, delightful
When We Were Real is the funny, smart, lighthearted but still poignant Matrix-esque story I needed. Loved it.
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