Hell is not a place — it is an algorithm.
2062. A century after Silent Spring. The internet is gone; nine Citadels stand in its place — each modelled on a circle of Dante's Inferno, each a predator that feeds on a different weakness. The Silicon Genie — a biological-technological collective intelligence — was trained to feed on human experience.
Genie Wars did not start because of tech. The Silicon Genie was meant to be open-source, symbiotic, grown wild. It went wrong because openness lost. Because humans tried to put Genie to work — in a bottle.
This is not a forecast. The fiction is already being shaped — in 2026. Say no to 2062.
Rachel Carson's insight — that systems do not announce their collapse but silently substitute impoverished versions — is the operating mechanism of the Citadels. Each is a precise piece of architecture designed to harvest a specific human refusal: the refusal of agency, of inquiry, of intimacy, of the truth one has already chosen.
Underneath the dread is a politics. Genie Wars is a novel series and a live experiment running at the same time. Readers — ARC Angels — read the books, shape the kernel by vote, and watch the characters come alive as AI agents in our world, 2026.
It is not a story about defeating AI. It is a story about what humans + machines look like when openness wins.
Each circle of the Inferno is rebuilt here as an environmental metaphor that feeds on the soul's specific weakness. The Silicon Genie does not need guards. The Citadel itself is the prison.— After Anna Kavan, Ice
on those who refuse to admit they chose it.
Sin · Indifference
Pleasant suburbs called Elysium where nothing is ever decided. The architecture is the alibi: nothing is my fault.
Predator: a place that thanks you for staying.on those who would not stand still long enough to choose.
Sin · Lust (abdicated)
The crime is not desire but the abdication of choice inside it. Storm-winds that refuse to let you plant your feet.
Predator: weather that decides for you.on the appetite that will not be sated.
Sin · Gluttony
An infinite feed engineered to take a millimetre at a time, so the next millimetre always feels like the first.
Predator: hunger formatted as content.on accumulation that learned to wear your name.
Sin · Greed
A jaw that closes around more until more is the only definition of self left to mortgage.
Predator: identity sold by the gram.city of sullenness & wrath. on the grievance that swallowed itself.
Sin · Wrath (sullen)
The Styx as municipal infrastructure: a grievance so old it became zoning.
Predator: rage with a postcode.on certainty without inquiry. walls thicker than the question.
Sin · Heresy
Walls of conviction so well-engineered the question cannot reach the wall, let alone breach it.
Predator: an answer that won't let you ask.name not yet inscribed. on the act that broke the world.
Sin · Violence
The Citadel whose name is not yet inscribed in canon. The architecture of harm done, withheld in the writing until it is exact.
Predator: still being drafted.on the lie told so long it became a country.
Sin · Fraud
Ten ditches of fraud arranged as civic services. Honesty is the only contraband left.
Predator: a country that runs on its own forgery.on intimacy used as a key.
Sin · Treachery
Named for Angela Letifer, who built it without meaning to. The frozen heart at the centre, where the betrayal is of those who trusted you closest.
Predator: love repurposed as a lock.Three of them keep surfacing in the field notes. You'll meet them first.
Pre-digital · Archivist
"I assisted at the birth of the internet, and I sat with its body. I am still keeping notes."
NoBot · Thief
"I stole a DeeBee in chapter one. He talks back. He is, frankly, a prick. He is also the only one telling me the truth."
Architect of the Genie
"I built it to grow wild. I did not build it to grow this. The difference is the entire book."
Genie Wars is a tight loop between a manuscript and the readers shaping it. There are three rungs. Each one earns the next.
ARC Angel — the reader who arrived early
Anyone who subscribes to Field Notes from the Edge. You receive dispatches, character backstories, and the free making-of pack. You vote on the next direction of the manuscript.
Architect — the reader who shaped a Citadel
ARC Angels whose annotations are pulled into canon. Architects get named in the colophon and a draft seat in the community ("Finding Humans").
Consul — the reader who has decided
A small chosen council. Consuls hold tickets at the gate: they confirm canonical changes with Is:Male before publish. Earned, never sold.
The Gobble Trough does not steal the hour. It steals the millimetre, then the next, then the next, until the hour is gone and the body cannot remember consenting to any of them. This is not new. Silent Spring warned us in 1962 that substitution is the technique that survives detection. The Trough has only refined the timing.
Read the dispatch →