Publisher's Synopsis
The Optimization
When they came for democracy, they didn't march with weapons. They rewrote the rules.
It started with bureaucratic changes-new security protocols, updated educational standards, minor delays in processing public records. Then came the realignment of history books, the restructuring of courts, the quiet disappearance of dissenting voices. All in the name of efficiency. All under the guise of progress.
By the time people realized what was happening, it was already too late. Journalism had been filtered. Science had been rewritten. The law had been optimized to serve only those in power.
But in the cracks of the system, resistance grows. A professor discovers forbidden history buried in redacted archives. A journalist fights to smuggle the truth past digital censors. A scientist tracks the poisoning of a population too conditioned to notice. Their stories weave together in a fight against a machine designed to erase opposition before it can take root.
A chilling, unflinching look at the slow, methodical rise of authoritarianism, The Optimization is a dystopian thriller for readers of Orwell, Atwood, and Le Guin. Because tyranny doesn't arrive with a bang-it seeps in, one law, one revision, one optimization at a time.
