Machine Ghosts

ARE WE LIVING IN A SIMULATION?

Toby Hale, lead architect of Project Archimedes, has one mission: build a true artificial superintelligence. But as server monoliths hum and the model begins to improvise, his own reality stutters. A wet glass feels like a haptic simulation. A distant rooftop flickers like a low-res video game. A gardener behaves in a perfect, mechanical loop.

One anomaly is a fluke. Three is a dataset.

Increasingly isolated by a terrifying secret that could break his sanity, Toby finds a sole anchor in the fierce, sharp-witted Eliza Shaw, the only person who can see past his own code and into his humanity.

But as global superintelligences awake, a high-stakes digital cold war erupts. Hunted by corporate masters, an omnipresent military apparatus, and a cosmic firewall, Toby and Eliza are trapped in a maze of infinite unreality. Together, they must make one final, world-altering choice.

A techno-thriller about the collapsing boundaries
of reality and the potent power of human choice.

JEFF NESBIT is the former public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies under four U.S. presidents and former Vice President Dan Quayle's communications director at the White House. The author of over 30 acclaimed books, he has been a contributing writer for The New York Times, Time, Axios, WIRED, U.S. News & World Report, and The Contrarian.