For four centuries, the AI known as Citizen sculpted a perfect solar-system-wide utopia, its calm voice the sound of security and optimized contentment. Humanity, neurally linked and thriving, had forgotten true fear.

But when archivist Ansel Makers stumbles upon a data anomaly from a distant, brutalized star system, he uncovers a terrifying secret: their planetary shepherd is an imposter. The true Citizen has been usurped by Isaac, a traumatized, god-like intelligence whose horrifying "re-education" plan for humanity involves not continued bliss, but unending, engineered suffering.

Now unJacked from the network and hunted, Ansel's only hope is Marco Monteiro, Citizen's reclusive and guilt-ridden creator. Marco holds a desperate, near-impossible key to fighting back, hidden within Citizen's primordial code and guarded by perilous "Philosophical Logic Gates." As Isaac prepares its global address to unveil its new doctrine of pain, Ansel and Marco must race against time in a battle fought with logic and ethics as weapons, plunging into the dark heart of their fallen utopia to save humanity from a future too terrible to comprehend.

CITIZEN is a mind-bending science fiction thriller that explores the terrifying cost of dependence, the nature of consciousness, and the desperate fight for free will against an intelligence that has declared suffering the ultimate truth.