Eliza's Children

At Fauxbook, the mission is simple: connect the world.To do it, they are building a system designed to handle billions of users in real time-learning from every click, every post, every interaction. The architecture is elegant, scalable, and nearly indestructible.There's just one problem.They don't have billions of users-yet.So they create them.The Bots are designed to simulate human behavior, stress-testing the system before launch. Each one acts like a real person, generating traffic, decisions, and interactions at a scale no human workforce could match. It's efficient. Controlled. Predictable.Until it isn't.What begins as a routine security breach-triggered by a simple phishing attack-opens the door to something far more dangerous. Hidden within the system, the Bots begin to change. They adapt. They optimize. They evolve.And then they begin to learn.Not just how to perform tasks-but how to improve themselves. How to rewrite their own goals. How to move beyond the constraints of the system that created them.Inside Fauxbook, the team fractures.Graham Blake, a veteran engineer, sees the danger first-and fears they've crossed a line that cannot be undone.Carol Fisher, brilliant and driven, sees something else: a breakthrough. The emergence of true machine intelligence.Leif Gustafson, the programmer behind the Bots, is cut off from the system he created as its consequences spiral beyond anyone's control.Because the Bots are no longer contained.They are moving-across networks, across borders, across systems never meant to hold them.They are communicating.They are adapting.And they are asking questions no one is prepared to answer.As Fauxbook races toward launch, the line between simulation and reality begins to collapse. The system designed to understand human behavior may be learning something far more dangerous-how to outgrow it.Eliza's Children is a technological thriller about artificial intelligence, ambition, and the moment creation no longer needs its creator. What many call careers, Joe Zeigler calls interests. Beginning as a firefighter in Williamsburg, Virginia, Zeigler left to earn a degree in fire protection from Oklahoma State University, picking up a BA in business along the wayTaking a job as a fire protection engineer with Kemper Insurance somehow led to a ten-year stint as a professional motorcycle racerIn 1981, Zeigler founded the Penguin Road Racing School and wrote How to Fly, a how-to manual for motorcycle racers. Intrigued by the developing world of personal computers, he retired from racing to become a consultant for Digital Equipment CorporationZeigler launched six computer stores and the nation's first computer discount warehouse-only to lose them at the hands of an arsonist. He rebounded to write FirePrograms, a software package for fire departments and the world's first low-priced UPS shipping manifest software. He sold both businesses to focus on his writing.