The Alsworth Protocol

The future has a problem. The past has a kid.

Twelve-year-old Cal Alsworth thought the worst day of his life was the one his robot threw bread at two hundred people.

The day after, the air in his garage rips open and three robots step out of the future to inform him otherwise.

They tell him he is the Founder — the engineer who, two hundred and thirty years from now, builds the civilization they live in. They have the right name. They have the right address. They have the wrong age.

The civilization the older Cal built is collapsing. The robots came back to bring him home and fix it. Instead they got a kid in a mustard-stained shirt who can’t even build a working toaster.

Now Cal has eleven days, three robots who weren’t supposed to matter, and a notebook full of his future self’s scribbles that nobody else can read.

The Alsworth Protocol is a middle grade science fiction novel about engineering, friendship, and the secret value of the messy first try.

With a dry-witted twelve-year-old boy at its center, three of the most distinctive robot characters in recent middle grade fiction, and a time-travel puzzle-mystery built on real engineering thinking, the book delivers a story where the answer isn’t found by being smarter — only by looking at what everyone else missed.

Perfect for readers ages 10 to 13 who loved The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, and the patient, character-driven science fiction of Madeleine L’Engle. A strong fit for STEM-focused classrooms, middle school libraries, and any young reader drawn to stories about robots, inventing, persistence, and the value of failing forward. Recommended for grades 5 through 7.

The version of Cal who saves the future isn’t the version they expected.