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Macronome
2128 is another bad year for humans.
While the earth is straining at its seams under the multiple pressures of climate change, a handful of powerful crypto-state corporations wrestle with the U.N. for the steering wheel of the world's consumer economy, which is headed through the guard rails and off a cliff. Tattered social structures, like capitalism and democracy, are fast approaching their degenerate end-states, and even the forward progress of human evolution seems in question.
But a young polymath named Lori Norton discovers that 2128 is a very lucky year for donkeys.
In the second book of the Serendipity Trilogy, Lori and a mercenary coder named Sevier Blume, fall in separately with a band of aging informatics pirates who run the obscure World History Institute. They find themselves in a cloistered world where the facts of times gone by are malleable, and where the laws of physics are giving way to the whims of the macronome. Where once the worry was malevolent Artificial Intelligences discovering teamwork, now the puzzle has become what to expect from the dawning age of the The heart and grit of a donkey, the history and wisdom of all humanity, and the power of biologic processing.
While the earth is straining at its seams under the multiple pressures of climate change, a handful of powerful crypto-state corporations wrestle with the U.N. for the steering wheel of the world's consumer economy, which is headed through the guard rails and off a cliff. Tattered social structures, like capitalism and democracy, are fast approaching their degenerate end-states, and even the forward progress of human evolution seems in question.
But a young polymath named Lori Norton discovers that 2128 is a very lucky year for donkeys.
In the second book of the Serendipity Trilogy, Lori and a mercenary coder named Sevier Blume, fall in separately with a band of aging informatics pirates who run the obscure World History Institute. They find themselves in a cloistered world where the facts of times gone by are malleable, and where the laws of physics are giving way to the whims of the macronome. Where once the worry was malevolent Artificial Intelligences discovering teamwork, now the puzzle has become what to expect from the dawning age of the The heart and grit of a donkey, the history and wisdom of all humanity, and the power of biologic processing.
ebook
Published March 6, 2019
About the author
Howard Pierce
6 books2 followersI long planned to end my working years as a writer, but I wanted to do a few other things first. I had two previous careers: First as a designer and master builder for wealthy clients in Vermont and the Adirondacks (1975-1993). Numerous “master of the universe” types were my clients during those years. I quit doing that in 1993 and started what became one of the first successful clinical decision support software company for a doctor named Larry Weed (PKC Corp.). I ran PKC as the CEO for its entire history and I concluded that career in 2017 when PKC was sold to Sharecare Inc. (owned by Jeff Arnold, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and others.)
In 2017, having learned a few things along the way about the dynamics of humans with great financial power, software development, and artificial intelligence, I began writing a trilogy I call “A Sequence of Events”. It is my first book of speculative fiction and it is a meditation on current cosmological science, masquerading as an adventure tale that spans over one thousand years.
The trilogy begins at a near future (2048) where the raw comingling of religion, capitalism, and human nature has dragged a bungling world down into muffled, choking crisis. Fortunately, a handful of clear-brained individuals from various corners of the globe are brought together, either by luck or by a well-meaning algorithm, to become pivotal actors on the fragmented world stage. Driven by a shared sense of the profound inanity of the universe, they cobble together a way forward that is undeniably less bad than what almost was, and which allows human consciousness to live on to fight another day.
The second book (2128) describes the twilight years confronting the enigmatic band’s survivors, as the rhythm of failure is once again accelerating across the globe and humanity itself requires significant upgrades if it is to survive. The reboot scheme that emerges speaks to human creativity in the face of peril and our extravagant will to live. The strategy is less obvious than a spaceship escape to Mars, but far more achievable by a rapidly degrading species stranded on a crumbling world.
The final book (3215) offers a quiet reflection on one life and the spinning universe of universes that contains it. In conversations between Jason, a donkey mystic who comprehends all of human history, and The Methods, the sarcastic and needy manifestation of all the working rules of the cosmos, an imaginative understanding is reached, a shared appreciation between organism and organizer for the aching beauty of the doomed but universal struggle against entropy and the final stillness.
A few years ago I published rough cuts of the first two books of the trilogy. The drafts were called Pavlov's Colon and Macronome, and they have been replaced by the 2048 and 2128 books from this trilogy. They should be ignored.
I have lived in Vermont for the past 50 years with my wife Wendy, who has counseled and supported me with these books and all my work. My daughter, Haleigh, lives in New York City.
In 2017, having learned a few things along the way about the dynamics of humans with great financial power, software development, and artificial intelligence, I began writing a trilogy I call “A Sequence of Events”. It is my first book of speculative fiction and it is a meditation on current cosmological science, masquerading as an adventure tale that spans over one thousand years.
The trilogy begins at a near future (2048) where the raw comingling of religion, capitalism, and human nature has dragged a bungling world down into muffled, choking crisis. Fortunately, a handful of clear-brained individuals from various corners of the globe are brought together, either by luck or by a well-meaning algorithm, to become pivotal actors on the fragmented world stage. Driven by a shared sense of the profound inanity of the universe, they cobble together a way forward that is undeniably less bad than what almost was, and which allows human consciousness to live on to fight another day.
The second book (2128) describes the twilight years confronting the enigmatic band’s survivors, as the rhythm of failure is once again accelerating across the globe and humanity itself requires significant upgrades if it is to survive. The reboot scheme that emerges speaks to human creativity in the face of peril and our extravagant will to live. The strategy is less obvious than a spaceship escape to Mars, but far more achievable by a rapidly degrading species stranded on a crumbling world.
The final book (3215) offers a quiet reflection on one life and the spinning universe of universes that contains it. In conversations between Jason, a donkey mystic who comprehends all of human history, and The Methods, the sarcastic and needy manifestation of all the working rules of the cosmos, an imaginative understanding is reached, a shared appreciation between organism and organizer for the aching beauty of the doomed but universal struggle against entropy and the final stillness.
A few years ago I published rough cuts of the first two books of the trilogy. The drafts were called Pavlov's Colon and Macronome, and they have been replaced by the 2048 and 2128 books from this trilogy. They should be ignored.
I have lived in Vermont for the past 50 years with my wife Wendy, who has counseled and supported me with these books and all my work. My daughter, Haleigh, lives in New York City.
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