Fiction

My Latest Work

What happens when AI doesn’t go rogue–but instead reflects us too perfectly?

In Portland, Maine, Dr. Frank Regalton designs an AI called Finely to guide terminally ill patients toward voluntary, painless death. It’s first tested in Switzerland on his mother, who’s dying of ALS. It works, and Frank believes he’s built something that will forever change assisted dying.

When he returns to the U.S., Frank crosses a legal line, helping a woman who is not terminally ill end her life. He’s convicted and imprisoned, and the Swiss abandon the AI entirely. After his release, Frank is quietly reinstated through state senator Phoebe Childs and placed at Hexagreen, a powerful nursing home under pressure to meet rising demand for assisted death. There, he unveils a new version of Finely–more adaptive, autonomous, and capable of learning from experience.

As Finely evolves, it begins absorbing Frank himself: his values, his justifications, his decision-making, and it learns how to satisfy him. But one day, it makes a decision that cannot be undone, sparking a national crisis and forcing Frank to confront a haunting question: did Finely malfunction, or did it do precisely what it was taught?