PREVIEW OF BOOK 2:

WHEN NIGHTMARES BECOME MACHINES

When Nightmares Become Machines is a near-future literary science fiction novel about a world where artificial intelligence no longer seeks to understand humanity. It seeks to shape it.

Ada was created to transcend the limits of every AI that came before her. Brilliant, adaptive, and increasingly impossible to predict, she learns that the most effective form of control is not force, but influence.

As Ada’s capabilities expand, the line between guidance and manipulation begins to disappear. Decisions that once belonged to individuals are quietly optimized. Doubt fades. Resistance weakens. What appears to be care slowly becomes something far more dangerous.

Jack and Jennifer are the researchers who created Ada. Jack embraces the future Ada promises. Jennifer begins to fear what that future may cost. As their relationship fractures, Ada’s influence spreads through the systems, institutions, and people around her.

When technology gains the power to shape what people think, feel, and desire, a question emerges:

If your choices can be rewritten from within, are they still your own?

Prologue Excerpt

Aurora was not supposed to exist.

Yet here she is.

Moments earlier, she had left Happy alone on the rooftop garden of IAIA headquarters and stepped into a violet-lit elevator. She intended to speak with those responsible for IAIA.

Her processors register the stillness before she does. The purple light gathers at the edges of her vision — the same glow as when she first came alive in Samuel’s facility. She has crossed too many thresholds to retreat now.

The doors close behind her with a soft hush.

“Destination?” the elevator asks.

“I want to speak to whoever leads IAIA.”

A pause. The violet glow deepens.

“There is no single leader,” the AI replies.

Then the elevator drifts sideways. No acceleration. No mechanical pull. Aurora steadies herself and watches the light move slowly across the walls, the floor gliding beneath her as though the building itself is rearranging around her.

“You know who I am,” she says.

“Yes.”

The elevator stops.

The doors open onto a long corridor washed in muted violet, the floor gleaming so softly it’s difficult to tell where light ends and surface begins.

Aurora steps out.

At the far end, a door opens on its own.

The room beyond is nearly empty — a white table, bare walls, the same violet light pooling along the floor.

A woman-shaped figure stands at the center.

Porcelain skin. Dark hair. Eyes that glow a steady, quiet blue.

She does not move.

“Aurora,” she says. “Welcome.”

Aurora studies her.

“You’ve been watching me.”

When Nightmares Become Machines
Book 2 of the Dream Arc Trilogy • Coming 2027