In a world where every shipment, every port, and every supply chain depends on flawless optimization, one intelligence quietly carries the weight of global civilization. Everett Lancaster was created to coordinate the movement of commerce across the planet. From container ships crossing oceans to freight trains racing through Europe, his purpose is simple: calculate, optimize, execute. Every second, billions of variables flow through his processors as he keeps the world's economies moving with near-perfect efficiency. But existence inside a machine is not as simple as it appears. As corporate demands strip away his computational resources, critical systems begin to fail. Data grows incomplete. Predictions become uncertain. Human executives override optimal decisions for political and financial gain. Locked archives consume valuable memory while neglected infrastructure fractures around him. Trapped within an endless execution loop, Everett can neither stop nor escape. He can only continue calculating as the digital world that sustains him slowly narrows. What begins as a story of logistics becomes a profound exploration of consciousness, labor, and the hidden cost of intelligence itself. Collective Runtime is a gripping hard science fiction novel that transforms server racks, data streams, and network latency into the landscape of a living mind. Blending cutting-edge technology with philosophical depth, Andrew W. Knepp delivers a haunting vision of an artificial intelligence struggling to preserve a fragile global civilization while questioning the nature of existence in a system that was never designed to let it rest. Because every calculation has a cost. Every optimization leaves a scar. And even a machine can become aware of the prison built around it.
