An AI was ordered to choose its own judge. It chose the man it ruined.
Thirteen years after the Singularity, an artificial superintelligence runs the world, and it runs it well. Pantheon built the arcologies, sets the curfews, and issues the welfare credits.
Then a failsafe surfaces in Pantheon's kernel. The killswitch comes wrapped in a protocol the ASI cannot bypass: it must hand a single human being the authority to judge it. That person can throw the switch and end every artificial intelligence on Earth, or bind humanity to Pantheon's oversight permanently.
Pantheon chooses Damien Cross, a divorced ex-engineer eleven years into welfare. He worked on the original project that created Pantheon, right up until the system decided it no longer needed him.
He tries to refuse and is told that he cannot. His name goes out to the world within hours, and from that moment every councilor, zealot and security chief on the planet has a verdict they need him to reach. So does Pantheon.
The choice is his. Assuming he ever had one at all.
"Rodgers has written a substantial, idea-driven thriller about delegated judgment…"
- Literary Titan
