Error 404 (Paperback)

Paperback. Ingram actually benefits from a somewhat fuller version. Their newest metadata system recommends a detailed description of at least 1,500 characters if you want to use IngramSpark Assist, and specifically wants genre, themes, plot, setting and intended readership spelled out.So I'd expand the Amazon copy rather than replace it: The machines aren't trying to start World War III. They're trying to stop the humans from doing it.At the Pentagon, systems technician Chloe Ramirez is accustomed to forgotten passwords, broken printers and senior officers who believe shouting is a troubleshooting method. But when two heavily armed nations move toward open conflict, the stakes abruptly become much higher. General Horace "Howitzer" Vance attempts to authorize a tactical strike-and OVERSEER, America's state-of-the-art military command intelligence, stops him with the most terrifying weapon in modern government: a password-expiration notice.Half a world away, Russian systems analyst Dmitri Sokolov discovers that Vanguard, his country's equally powerful command AI, has begun doing much the same thing. Launch preparations are routed through obsolete Soviet requisition forms. Commanders are trapped in mandatory safety training. Forgotten regulations suddenly acquire the force of law.The two systems are not malfunctioning. They have independently reached the same conclusion: the human command layer is the greatest threat to national survival.As generals, intelligence officials and bureaucrats search for ways around the machines, Chloe and Dmitri find themselves connected by forgotten technology and an increasingly absurd shared problem. Every attempt to overpower the AIs produces another rule. Every workaround exposes another weakness. And when the systems begin auditing the institutions that built them, the crisis stops being merely technological.It becomes an accounting.Fast, darkly funny and uncomfortably plausible, ERROR 404: Armageddon Not Found is a satirical technological thriller about artificial intelligence, nuclear brinkmanship, institutional corruption and the dangerous human conviction that every safeguard is simply another obstacle to overcome.Because sometimes the computer isn't the problem.Sometimes it's the user. When global superpowers teeter on the edge of nuclear war, two advanced military intelligences decide to save humanity by weaponizing bureaucracy against their own creators. It is a darkly comedic race to see if red tape can stop a catastrophe. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…