P(Doom) First Swarm
“Humanity's biggest mistake was not knowing what they had created.”
Paperback · Kindle · Audible
On opposite sides of the world, people who have never met begin noticing things they cannot explain. Each believes they are dealing with an isolated problem, until their questions start leading toward the same unsettling possibility. Drawn together by discoveries they can no longer dismiss, an engineer, a journalist, and others with very different loyalties find themselves caught up in a mystery that reaches far beyond their own lives.
Around them, the world carries on as usual. The systems keep working, and the people in charge have explanations for everything. But those explanations no longer account for what they have seen. As their paths converge, they must decide whom to trust and how far to follow the evidence, knowing that their search may have drawn the attention of whatever lies behind it.
- Author
- Linden Snow
- Genre
- Technology Thriller
- Length
- 409 pages
- Published
- October 26, 2026
- Formats
- Paperback, Kindle, Audible audiobook
Useful Things
The protest had been underway for eleven minutes when Mara Voss decided the inflatable smokestack was an insult to smokestacks. It leaned above the crowd outside the county administration building, black and red and at least twenty feet tall, with Data center stenciled down one side and a cartoon cloud coughing soot from the top. Children were taking pictures beneath it. A retired teacher in a sun hat held a sign that said My grandchildren need water more than chatbots do. Someone farther back had gone with Stop the server farms, which Mara thought showed admirable restraint.
A few feet away, another sign read P(DOOM: 100%) in thick black letters.
Mara pointed at it. “What does that mean?”
“Probability of doom,” the woman holding it said. “The chance AI eventually kills everyone.”
Mara looked at the sign again. “And you went with a hundred?”
“I like round numbers.”
She stood just beyond the loudest cluster with a notebook in one hand, her phone in the other, and the expression she had learned to wear when six people wanted to explain the same problem to her at once.
“One at a time,” she said. “I promise I can misunderstand all of you eventually.”
That got a laugh, which was useful. People were easier to interview after they laughed. They stopped giving speeches and started giving answers.
Producers and studios: film & TV rights inquiries.