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Idlewild is a novel by Nick Sagan, published in 2003.
The story in Idlewild switches between two locations. The first is a laboratory in the late 21st century, working on a project that has something to do with defeating a plague called 'Black Ep', which is destroying humanity. The people in the lab are The Southern Gentleman, Blue, and Halfway Jim.
The second location is an IVR (Immersive Virtual Reality) medical academy in Idlewild, Michigan, at some time in the late 21st century. The main character of the book, a young man named Halloween, wakes up with no memory. As the book progresses, we discover that Lazarus (another student of the academy) is dead. Halloween meets the rest of the students and tries to find the culprit.
Eventually, we find out that the system being used to run the school is being corrupted by the beta-test child program (named Malachi) who was used to test it. Malachi confronts Halloween, expresses his guilt in the matter, and agrees to help Halloween find the killer. It is later revealed that the killer is another boy at the school, who went mad when he realised that they had never set foot in the real world (the times when they thought they had were merely extended programming).
Having said goodbye to his classmates, the book ends with Halloween standing in the woods of North Michigan, angry at the world for taking his illusions, his girlfriend and his two best friends.
A sequel, Edenborn, was published in 2004. It is set 18 years after Idlewild, and shows disagreements between the students as to how to build a better world.
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