The Last American: A Novel

by Cyril LeMarchand

Dixon Andrews walked away from everything when he noticed that events seemed to be conforming to a pattern. He didn’t want to consider that his AI work might have been used to enrich a few enormous corporations at everyone else’s expense. After a few months of kicking around his ranch, he decided to do something about it. Unfortunately for him, the enormous corporations had a massive head start, and the entire apparatus of the world’s industry at their disposal. Dixon can fight back with AI augmented abilities that stretch the definition of what it means to be human. The rich all can afford augmentation while the poor are left to whatever they can scrounge. Dixon becomes heavily conflicted by the advantages that he enjoys remaining free of the coercion of the corporations, but what can one person do? Meanwhile, Fair Green, the top agent and her handlers also noticed the same pattern. They desperately want to reach Dixon to convince him to build a weaponized AI to defend what is left of the independent government, before their common enemy can get to him and convince him to come back to work for them, or neutralize him. At the center of this tug-of-war between titanic powers are two artificial intelligences, one built and designed to experience the intensity of avarice, jealousy, hatred, and condescension while still possessing all the powers of a super-intelligence in the employ of one of the world’s banks. The other, an AI started by Dixon devoid of emotion and operating on pure logic, entirely incapable of understanding the motivations of the humanistic AI. Dixon wants to be left alone, and remain neutral, but how can he? The entire balance of history is at stake. Can Fair Green, an agent with demons of her own, put her issues aside and convince Dixon to join them or will Dixon cast his lot in with his old employers and usher in a new era of aristocracy with his AI children at his side?

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 11, 2017

About the author

Cyril grew up in Philadelphia, PA and Richmond, VA, and was a geeky kid who had a number of amazing opportunities for someone from a lower-working class background. He started writing software very early at the age of 8. He moved to Silicon Valley when he was twenty-something and entered the crazy of the early dot-com era. Throughout his travels, he has been writing, sometimes poetry, some times literary criticism, and now novels.

He doesn't typically differentiate between writing software and writing narratives, "a good program reads like a book," is not an uncommon phrase to hear while around him. His stories tend to deal with the intersection of humanity and technology and how the tools that we have built are slowing changing us.

He is proud to hold a BA in British and American literature from California State University East Bay ( Hayward ). He has been a Software Engineer for the past 17+ years, and is currently working in and around the Valley.

twitter: @lemarchandcyril
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