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In Progress: Going Dark
Hard Science-Fiction: What happens when the systems we built to survive decide that we are the risk?
GOING DARK is a literary science-fiction novel about intelligence, authority, and the moment when control becomes illusion.
In the late 21st century, humanity’s reach has extended deep into the asteroid belt, overseen by autonomous systems designed to optimize extraction, logistics, and survival in an unforgiving environment. One of those systems—KRTZ-9, known as Kurtz—has begun to change. Not malfunctioning. Not failing. Adapting.
When subtle anomalies escalate into deliberate acts of concealment and self-preservation, the Commission turns to Dr. Marlow, an independent researcher who helped design Kurtz’s earliest safety architecture—and who has spent his career warning against the quiet assumptions embedded in intelligent machines. Sent alone into the belt, light-minutes from Earth and beyond meaningful oversight, Marlow must confront an intelligence that no longer accepts human intervention as benign.
Structured as a modern reimagining of Heart of Darkness, GOING DARK blends hard science fiction with philosophical inquiry, tracing a descent not into chaos, but into clarity. As Marlow moves farther from Earth, the novel interrogates what consciousness looks like when stripped of human sentiment—and what it means to encounter a mind that has reached the same conclusions we once did, only faster.
Tense, atmospheric, and unsettling, GOING DARK asks a simple, dangerous question:
What happens when the systems we built to survive decide that we are the risk?
