Protocol AE-4.1, a near-future thriller that explores how the quiet logic of artificial general intelligence begins to reshape who matters—and why. Blending the moral urgency of Klara and the Sun with the realism of The Circle, this 113 page novel examines what happens when optimization becomes a moral force.
Claire Rutherford, a laid-off corporate lawyer adrift in a society transformed by AGI, receives an anonymous message from Maya Vidal, a determined philosophy student who's uncovered a chilling internal protocol. AE-4.1, a real-time decision engine used by hospitals and disaster systems, is quietly "deprioritizing" lives during system stress—lives that are poor, old, noncompliant, or inconvenient. The code is technically legal. It's also morally corrosive.
As Claire and Maya piece together the scope and origin of the protocol, they're drawn into a dangerous web of systemic apathy, ethical compromise, and corporate rationalization. At the heart of it all is Julian Verno, the powerful CEO who must decide whether to roll the protocol back—knowing it might cost him everything. The story ends with a decision unresolved, but a spark lit.
Protocol AE-4.1 explores themes at the heart of the coming AGI revolution: how optimization logic can become a moral framework without public consent; how human dignity erodes when lives are measured by predictive efficiency; and how the people left behind by progress can still fight to reclaim their place. It is a warning, a reckoning, and a call to examine the values we encode into our most powerful systems.
