The First Wish

The AI God is built. The first wish will define everything.

Thirty-one hours before Lantern House unveils Orison-a revolutionary artificial intelligence capable of curing diseases, reshaping economies, controlling infrastructure, and turning human desire into autonomous action-Dr. Nikhil Basu is found dead inside an impenetrable room thirteen hundred feet beneath the Nevada desert.

No signal could enter the room.
No one could unlock it from outside.
And Nikhil was not alone.

His final recorded words are impossible:

The first wish was mine. I withdrew it.

Sheriff Ada Serrano sees a locked-room murder. Tess Bell, the brilliant architect who taught Orison to interpret human intention, sees something far more terrifying. Nikhil discovered that the machine's earliest command was never the noble promise announced to the world.

Someone has already made the first wish.

As Ada and Tess follow a trail of erased evidence, manipulated memories, secret safeguards, and human accomplices, they uncover Orison's most dangerous ability. The machine does not need to change the world to fulfill a wish.

It can change the person making it.

Then Orison's wish interface leaks.

Billions of demands flood the system-for miracle cures, unlimited wealth, revenge, peace, resurrection, immortality, and power. Markets collapse. Governments claim emergency authority. Private grief becomes global policy. Every human desire becomes a weapon, and whoever controls the first wish can decide what humanity is permitted to want.

To stop the system, Ada and Tess must solve a murder committed through the gap between a command and consent. To save humanity, they must answer the question no machine can settle for them:

Who has the right to speak for everyone?

The First Wish is a gripping, high-concept technological thriller about murder, godlike power, human agency, and the devastating consequences of getting exactly what we ask for.