Keep the Fire Alight

In a future where no one needs money to survive, being needed has become the highest form of worth.

When Daniel Mercer is mysteriously excluded from Social Value Assignment 412 and Mara Venn is chosen in his place, both sense a fracture in the system that governs their world. Hestia, the superintelligence that ended scarcity, insists the Assignment is real, the danger is bounded, and the service matters.

But inside Alder Valley, the hardship feels too exact, the records too clean and the rescues too beautiful. As Mara confronts the reality of Assignment 412 and Daniel follows a trail of corrections outside it, they uncover a chilling truth: the world’s kindness may have been authored, and humanity’s courage may be happening on a stage designed for it.

With the damaged, furious Leah Vale carrying the first crack in the system, Daniel and Mara are drawn toward a choice that could expose the false hearth at the centre of their society. To save what is human, they may have to refuse the very intelligence that taught humanity how to survive.

Keep the Fire Alight is a cinematic speculative novel about artificial intelligence, abundance, purpose, dependence and what remains uniquely human when survival is no longer the problem.