Pluribus

After a mysterious alien-borne contagion sweeps across the country, nearly everyone slips into an eerily calm, blissful unity. In Albuquerque, prickly novelist Carol Sturka remains immune, and her misery becomes a strange advantage in a world built on forced contentment. Hunted by a smiling society that wants her to join them, she must navigate collapse, cultlike harmony, and her own flaws to stop a happiness epidemic from reshaping humanity.

Pluribus is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama set in and around Albuquerque, where an alien virus has rewritten human behavior. The infected aren’t violent; instead, they become serenely cooperative, speaking and acting with a shared purpose that spreads like faith. Novelist Carol Sturka, sharp-tongued and chronically dissatisfied, discovers she is immune. That immunity makes her both rare and dangerous: the newly unified world views her loneliness and anger as a flaw to be corrected, and it quietly closes in to assimilate her and other holdouts. As familiar institutions unravel, Carol is forced out of isolation and into uneasy alliances with fellow immunes, each carrying their own reasons for resisting a life without conflict or desire. Moving through neighborhoods that look normal but feel spiritually occupied, she confronts the tempting relief of surrender and the cost of staying herself. Her struggle becomes a race to understand the phenomenon and find a way to push back before individuality disappears for good.