This is a near future science fiction thriller about what happens when a single offhand what if refuses to stay hypothetical and slowly reshapes one family's life and the invisible systems wrapped around them. A bored remark about the future at work lands wrong, and a Powerball ticket that should have been nothing more than a joke becomes the quiet pivot point between chance and design, luck and something that looks uncomfortably like intent.

An unlikely jackpot win by a mid level data engineer does not end in a dream house on the beach, but in the acquisition of a failing grid management company, pulling him into the wiring behind everyday life instead of freeing him from it. As his late night outline bleeds into his new role, the story moves through homes, offices, boardrooms, and campuses, tracing how organizations built on artificial intelligence and predictive grids evolve from stabilizing our lives to defending their own architectures. What begins as oversight meant to safeguard people and smooth away risk becomes a lattice of systems that learn to protect their continued existence, even as the cost in human lives and quiet collapses mounts just outside the dashboards.

This is not a tale of rogue machines, but of people slowly handing off responsibility to tools that feel reassuringly neutral, until the hum of an unseen system is so familiar that no one can say for sure where its guidance ends and their own choices begin, or how many lives have already been paid to keep that hum unbroken.

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We first started out as ?The Paperback Exchange,? a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become ?PBShop.? This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.

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Pbshop.co.uk Ltd
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We ask all customers to contact us for authorisation should they wish to return their order. Orders returned without authorisation may not be credited.
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Order quantity	7 to 14 business days	7 to 14 business days
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