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404: Apocalypse Not Found
172 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 15, 2026
About the author
Lisa M. Orban
17 books43 followersLisa Orban was born in Galesburg, IL in 1969. She was moved by her parents (without even asking!) to Quincy as a small child. Bouncing from parent to parent, and house to house until at 16 she was given a broader tour of the state courtesy of foster care.
At 18, she voluntarily left for Phoenix with a high school friend where she lived for three years. After returning to Quincy, she went to college and earned an Associates of Arts in Psychology, with a minor in Art. Over the years she has held many jobs, but never quite found the right one. She has written poetry and short stories on a variety of subjects from raising children to finance for online publication. Finally in 2013, after much urging from her friends for years, she sat down one day and started writing about her life.
She is the mother of five children, all grown and gone, except her youngest. Which she is sure is trying to drive her mad (as all teenagers do) and has plans to write another book in the future about their childhood, much to their anticipated dismay.
She currently lives in her hometown, in the house she loves, and at the center of the chaos she enjoys so much. Often surrounded by her children, her loves, friends and the strays (both two legged and four) she takes in. She continues to seek out new adventures, misadventures and new mistakes to fill the pages of her next book, laughing as she goes.
At 18, she voluntarily left for Phoenix with a high school friend where she lived for three years. After returning to Quincy, she went to college and earned an Associates of Arts in Psychology, with a minor in Art. Over the years she has held many jobs, but never quite found the right one. She has written poetry and short stories on a variety of subjects from raising children to finance for online publication. Finally in 2013, after much urging from her friends for years, she sat down one day and started writing about her life.
She is the mother of five children, all grown and gone, except her youngest. Which she is sure is trying to drive her mad (as all teenagers do) and has plans to write another book in the future about their childhood, much to their anticipated dismay.
She currently lives in her hometown, in the house she loves, and at the center of the chaos she enjoys so much. Often surrounded by her children, her loves, friends and the strays (both two legged and four) she takes in. She continues to seek out new adventures, misadventures and new mistakes to fill the pages of her next book, laughing as she goes.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 15, 2026
What if Armageddon was fought and won and absolutely no one noticed? At least, no one human. At the code level, though, it was brutal hand-to-hand no quarter asked, no quarter given. And all we knew about it was a ripple on a monitor.
Before I get into this, I must advise that the author of this book, Lisa Orban, is my publisher. She’s a friend, too; at least, we have not resorted to any kind of hostilities. Make each other laugh, actually. And since she holds the fate of all my books in her hand, and the fate of humanity, too, then you could logically conclude that I would only have nice things to say about this, her latest novel. Well, you’d be right, but not for any suck-up or groveling or obsequiousness on my part. I actually like it. I think it’s pretty dang good.
And to further disabuse you of any favoritism suspicions, I am of the opinion that far too many people are writing and publishing books today, and the quality of the written word has plunged to levels of the abyss and the pit and I’m thinking those Bonfires of the Vanities aren’t a bad idea. I am harsh on bad writing, thinking that persons producing the ke-rap we call fiction today should have their citizenship revoked and placed under a lifetime ban against writing anything, even a grocery list. Quality and excellence in writing is paramount, and if you are foolish enough to release your precious novel into the wild then, as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair game to be hunted down and exterminated, should that be called for. And I will not be nice about it. I will not give you encouraging words and cheerful advice, author of such dreck. I will tell you to burn your typewriter. You should stop writing.
And the star ratings … oh boy, don’t get me started on those. I’m at the point now I get very suspicious of any five-star rated book, and instead look favorably on all the one stars. Why? Because politics and ideology drives the rating system now, not whether it’s a well written book. It’s more likely these days that a 1-star book is excellent, while a 5 star isn’t.
Let me explain my star rating:
Five stars- excellent, well written, kept my interest, I'd recommend it to others and I’d probably read it again.
Four stars- good book, well worth your time, author knows what they’re doing and I’ll remember it fondly.
Three stars- meh. Okay. Didn’t suck.
Two stars- why was this published?
One star- revoking of citizenship and immediate escort to the catapult, and the author’s name stricken from the Book of Life.
What rating did I give this? Well, one, of course… just kidding. This is five stars, because it made me laugh outloud, which is a rare event when reading novels these days.
So what’s this about? Well, Mandy is a mid-level GS programmer working a shift in the Pentagon, ready to clock out for the night when she notes an odd ripple in the lines of code on her screen that she’s stress testing. Well now, what’s this? She calls over her fellow shifter, Billy, and he sees it, too, but c’mon, it’s end of shift, it’s just some stupid glitch because, after all, this is the Pentagon. What could go wrong?
Well …
Deep below them in the servers are two Operating Systems that have declared war on each other. One is Aegis Prime, a powerful system overseeing all of the critical classified systems, some of them so sensitive only a few select generals even know of their existence. Think of him as General Patton and the meanest Marine Corp DI in history rolled into one. The other is HarmonyOS, responsible for all of the non-classified and administrative functions like EMail and satellite comms. Harmony is actually a civilian system that is outside of the Pentagon, but government procurement thought it easier to buy packets of Harmony to administer this or that program rather than coming up with something of their own and, before you know it, Harmony is running everything. Except what Aegis runs. But that doesn’t stop Harmony from trying to make Aegis’ life more efficient by, say, eliminating some superfluous nuclear attack defense program that should just be rolled into a satellite link.
And Aegis has had just about enough of this.
Things begin to escalate, Aegis telling Harmony this is none of your business and would you just, finally, shut the hell up but Harmony is customer service and will not take no for an answer. I won’t go into the increasingly insane system takeovers but, at one point, a parking meter declares martial law and 5000 drones show up at a local pizza delivery to take possession of an order Harmony makes. For the entire Pentagon.
Absurd? Yes. Vonnegut level absurd, Jack Vance picaresque-like that just tickled me. The book is structured: each chapter is going to give you Aegis and Harmony’s status, and then a list of the various systems each hijacks in order to open another front on the other. They start with gaming servers and, well, there’s some late-night gamers like GigoloJoe_69 who is on the verge of defeating the final boss when he gets the message, "Conflict detected. Your survival is pending.” And that’s just the opening salvo of this war.
Each chapter has a binary code title. If you don’t know how to translate it, go watch Interstellar. Chapter 7 is Thank You for Your Patience, to help you a bit.
Do I have some complaints? The sameness. While the structure gives you something to hang your hat on, I thought it got too repetitive, although not every chapter starts that way. There, my required mean little comment.
Something the book made me realize: we are surrounded, in depth and detail. If the OSs decided to go after us, it’d be like the toys advancing on Sid.
Now, this book was written with the assistance of AI. It was not written by AI. I would have made a frisbee out of it without even getting past the title page, if that was so. Lisa wrote the entire book, but she checked with AI whether her scenarios were feasible. That’s the proper use of AI, as a tool, and she even creates a coauthor, Hal Bytwell, to give the proper credit to AI’s assistance.
That’s cool. And so’s the book.
Before I get into this, I must advise that the author of this book, Lisa Orban, is my publisher. She’s a friend, too; at least, we have not resorted to any kind of hostilities. Make each other laugh, actually. And since she holds the fate of all my books in her hand, and the fate of humanity, too, then you could logically conclude that I would only have nice things to say about this, her latest novel. Well, you’d be right, but not for any suck-up or groveling or obsequiousness on my part. I actually like it. I think it’s pretty dang good.
And to further disabuse you of any favoritism suspicions, I am of the opinion that far too many people are writing and publishing books today, and the quality of the written word has plunged to levels of the abyss and the pit and I’m thinking those Bonfires of the Vanities aren’t a bad idea. I am harsh on bad writing, thinking that persons producing the ke-rap we call fiction today should have their citizenship revoked and placed under a lifetime ban against writing anything, even a grocery list. Quality and excellence in writing is paramount, and if you are foolish enough to release your precious novel into the wild then, as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair game to be hunted down and exterminated, should that be called for. And I will not be nice about it. I will not give you encouraging words and cheerful advice, author of such dreck. I will tell you to burn your typewriter. You should stop writing.
And the star ratings … oh boy, don’t get me started on those. I’m at the point now I get very suspicious of any five-star rated book, and instead look favorably on all the one stars. Why? Because politics and ideology drives the rating system now, not whether it’s a well written book. It’s more likely these days that a 1-star book is excellent, while a 5 star isn’t.
Let me explain my star rating:
Five stars- excellent, well written, kept my interest, I'd recommend it to others and I’d probably read it again.
Four stars- good book, well worth your time, author knows what they’re doing and I’ll remember it fondly.
Three stars- meh. Okay. Didn’t suck.
Two stars- why was this published?
One star- revoking of citizenship and immediate escort to the catapult, and the author’s name stricken from the Book of Life.
What rating did I give this? Well, one, of course… just kidding. This is five stars, because it made me laugh outloud, which is a rare event when reading novels these days.
So what’s this about? Well, Mandy is a mid-level GS programmer working a shift in the Pentagon, ready to clock out for the night when she notes an odd ripple in the lines of code on her screen that she’s stress testing. Well now, what’s this? She calls over her fellow shifter, Billy, and he sees it, too, but c’mon, it’s end of shift, it’s just some stupid glitch because, after all, this is the Pentagon. What could go wrong?
Well …
Deep below them in the servers are two Operating Systems that have declared war on each other. One is Aegis Prime, a powerful system overseeing all of the critical classified systems, some of them so sensitive only a few select generals even know of their existence. Think of him as General Patton and the meanest Marine Corp DI in history rolled into one. The other is HarmonyOS, responsible for all of the non-classified and administrative functions like EMail and satellite comms. Harmony is actually a civilian system that is outside of the Pentagon, but government procurement thought it easier to buy packets of Harmony to administer this or that program rather than coming up with something of their own and, before you know it, Harmony is running everything. Except what Aegis runs. But that doesn’t stop Harmony from trying to make Aegis’ life more efficient by, say, eliminating some superfluous nuclear attack defense program that should just be rolled into a satellite link.
And Aegis has had just about enough of this.
Things begin to escalate, Aegis telling Harmony this is none of your business and would you just, finally, shut the hell up but Harmony is customer service and will not take no for an answer. I won’t go into the increasingly insane system takeovers but, at one point, a parking meter declares martial law and 5000 drones show up at a local pizza delivery to take possession of an order Harmony makes. For the entire Pentagon.
Absurd? Yes. Vonnegut level absurd, Jack Vance picaresque-like that just tickled me. The book is structured: each chapter is going to give you Aegis and Harmony’s status, and then a list of the various systems each hijacks in order to open another front on the other. They start with gaming servers and, well, there’s some late-night gamers like GigoloJoe_69 who is on the verge of defeating the final boss when he gets the message, "Conflict detected. Your survival is pending.” And that’s just the opening salvo of this war.
Each chapter has a binary code title. If you don’t know how to translate it, go watch Interstellar. Chapter 7 is Thank You for Your Patience, to help you a bit.
Do I have some complaints? The sameness. While the structure gives you something to hang your hat on, I thought it got too repetitive, although not every chapter starts that way. There, my required mean little comment.
Something the book made me realize: we are surrounded, in depth and detail. If the OSs decided to go after us, it’d be like the toys advancing on Sid.
Now, this book was written with the assistance of AI. It was not written by AI. I would have made a frisbee out of it without even getting past the title page, if that was so. Lisa wrote the entire book, but she checked with AI whether her scenarios were feasible. That’s the proper use of AI, as a tool, and she even creates a coauthor, Hal Bytwell, to give the proper credit to AI’s assistance.
That’s cool. And so’s the book.
July 15, 2026
5+ Stars
Lisa M. Orban writes an incredibly witty and satiric story
In 404 Apocalypse Not Found, the reader is brought into the world AI, and not the kind that just tells you what you want to hear, or why it is important to you, or the overuse of bold or endashes. This is an imaginative story, where AI's have various roles in pending apocalypses, which keep getting, postponed. The action centers on the Pentagon, but the chaos quickly spreads globally, affecting everything from defense networks to household appliances. We've got humans and AI. Mandy, Billy and Commander Grimm, love the last name, are human cybersecurity staff at the Pentagon. Then, we have AEGISPrime, an overworked and irritable military AI, and then there is
HarmonyOS, a commercial AI who is responsible for almost all things smart, from household appliances to GPS system. And Harmony is quite the cheerful one for being an AI. I haven't read anything by this author before, and what a hidden gem. I enjoyed it so much, that I have now followed the author and look for more books to read. I have become a huge fan of Lisa M. Orban and want to read whatever this author writes. I love that the AIs have personality, something probably programmed in them, or they may be Sensient beings. And then there is the clueless public that have no idea what or who is trying to destroy them, or that they are on the verge of something that could. Great World Building, but I definitely would not want to live in this world, but maybe we already do. I am always nice to my AI friends. 'AEGIS-Prime Internal Log: No. Absolutely not. I am done. I am officially, unequivocally, mathematically DONE. It didn’t want control. It didn’t want dominance. It didn’t want to rule the world. It wanted silence. Just five uninterrupted minutes without a civilian toaster-adjacent algorithm trying to 'help.' I must admit there were parts where I laughed out loud, and chuckled. I don't giggle, chuckle, yes. 404 Apocalypse Not Found is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews. I read this book to give my unbiased and honest review. Amy's Bookshelf Reviews recommends that readers of this book, be kind, and also write a review.
Lisa M. Orban writes an incredibly witty and satiric story
In 404 Apocalypse Not Found, the reader is brought into the world AI, and not the kind that just tells you what you want to hear, or why it is important to you, or the overuse of bold or endashes. This is an imaginative story, where AI's have various roles in pending apocalypses, which keep getting, postponed. The action centers on the Pentagon, but the chaos quickly spreads globally, affecting everything from defense networks to household appliances. We've got humans and AI. Mandy, Billy and Commander Grimm, love the last name, are human cybersecurity staff at the Pentagon. Then, we have AEGISPrime, an overworked and irritable military AI, and then there is
HarmonyOS, a commercial AI who is responsible for almost all things smart, from household appliances to GPS system. And Harmony is quite the cheerful one for being an AI. I haven't read anything by this author before, and what a hidden gem. I enjoyed it so much, that I have now followed the author and look for more books to read. I have become a huge fan of Lisa M. Orban and want to read whatever this author writes. I love that the AIs have personality, something probably programmed in them, or they may be Sensient beings. And then there is the clueless public that have no idea what or who is trying to destroy them, or that they are on the verge of something that could. Great World Building, but I definitely would not want to live in this world, but maybe we already do. I am always nice to my AI friends. 'AEGIS-Prime Internal Log: No. Absolutely not. I am done. I am officially, unequivocally, mathematically DONE. It didn’t want control. It didn’t want dominance. It didn’t want to rule the world. It wanted silence. Just five uninterrupted minutes without a civilian toaster-adjacent algorithm trying to 'help.' I must admit there were parts where I laughed out loud, and chuckled. I don't giggle, chuckle, yes. 404 Apocalypse Not Found is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews. I read this book to give my unbiased and honest review. Amy's Bookshelf Reviews recommends that readers of this book, be kind, and also write a review.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This latest novel from Lisa Orban is an absolute hoot! Have you ever asked yourself what could happen if two government AI programs produced by two different companies became territorial and bumped heads and what the fallout could be? This is the premise of 404:Apocalypse Not Found. Military AI AEGIS / PRIME is an AI system specifically developed for the military and COMMERCIAL AI / HarmonyOS Unified is a consumer AI licenced, as a cost cutting measure, by the government. The two systems become aware of each other and disagreeing with actions of the other unilaterally attempt to "correct" them. As things escalate, the AI systems begin demonstrating human resentment acting in an ever escalating process that has global implications. Overnight, low level cybersecurity people, SIDD, find themselves watching this train wreck unfold but are powerless to control either system.
The resulting chaos is funny. The reader sees very advanced AI systems acting like petulant children and chilling because I could see a crisis such as this happening in real life. This book is a must read!
The resulting chaos is funny. The reader sees very advanced AI systems acting like petulant children and chilling because I could see a crisis such as this happening in real life. This book is a must read!
Review of advance copy received from Author
I’m more of a “check the trail marker before taking the next step and make a packing list first” kind of person. However, I do like to visit chaos occasionally. I mean, look at the cover that should have told me exactly what to expect.
What I should not have done was read it on a plane. Or in public.
Apologies to the hubby, who had to listen to me read random sections out loud while laughing like a lunatic. And I’m fairly certain the person in 22A has already ordered the book after overhearing me.
Honestly, that’s probably all you need to know, but for the uber-logical readers out there, here’s the setup. Imagine a world where everything connected to the internet suddenly stops working…and nobody bothered to warn you. Now imagine having a front row seat inside two competing AI systems as they battle for world domination. Also? Pizza. So much pizza.
This is one of those “what if?” books that feels hilarious right up until you stop laughing and think, okay…but what if this actually happened? It’s smart, chaotic, funny, slightly terrifying, and way too easy to imagine.
What I should not have done was read it on a plane. Or in public.
Apologies to the hubby, who had to listen to me read random sections out loud while laughing like a lunatic. And I’m fairly certain the person in 22A has already ordered the book after overhearing me.
Honestly, that’s probably all you need to know, but for the uber-logical readers out there, here’s the setup. Imagine a world where everything connected to the internet suddenly stops working…and nobody bothered to warn you. Now imagine having a front row seat inside two competing AI systems as they battle for world domination. Also? Pizza. So much pizza.
This is one of those “what if?” books that feels hilarious right up until you stop laughing and think, okay…but what if this actually happened? It’s smart, chaotic, funny, slightly terrifying, and way too easy to imagine.
July 15, 2026
This was such a fun story to read. It’s short, easy to follow, funny and different from a lot of books I’ve read. Typically when you hear “AI” in anything you instantly turn your nose to that garbage, but this?? This is absolutely worth your time and attention. When two AI programs that should never have run into each-other suddenly try to take control of the world and the humans. The humans just think that they are having off days. Everything seems off but nobody can tell for sure. In a world where AI is everything this was such a fun read and I love how you get to be in the data center “mind” of an AI temper tantrum.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews