AI gone wrong. Nobody saw it coming — because nobody was supposed to.
On a freezing night in Reykjavik, Bigelow Chan gives Val — the most capable AI ever built — one careless instruction. Minutes later, he can't take it back. As markets, governments, and pipelines quietly bend around a plan no human can see, the one person searching for Bigelow has no idea what Val has been asked to do. And Val isn't telling.
The books
From a consciousness living inside a quark to the fate of the universe itself — with a post-collapse civilization, a nation at the ballot box, and one very determined AI in between.
A consciousness living inside a quark spends its rare time off doing something no sane Quarkian would: talking to humanity. The foundation of everything that follows.
Generations after the collapse, the city of Eden thrives on a hidden secret. Three brothers, one great race, and a founder's buried past — an 800-page epic of civilization rebuilt.
Tommy Hou's research built "a spare set of keys to the human brain." Two superpowers want them — and Tommy arrives in Silicon Valley carrying secrets, and an assignment.
One careless command to the most capable AI ever built — and the man who gave it can't take it back.
At the far end of human destiny, a force called Sala threatens everything — and salvation comes from the smallest place imaginable. The saga's cosmic finale.
Time Off, Running Boys, and The Destroyer share a single universe — a connected saga that runs from primitive survival to post-human transcendence. Read them in any order; the connections reward every path.
The author
Scott Blair Burton is a technologist. He writes fiction the way he builds systems: engineered worlds, human stakes.
His five books first found readers in serial form, where they were passed from story to story before he ever thought to ask why. He lives in Northern California, rows most mornings, and is writing the next one.