Saviour Machine: Short Stories - Softcover

Poliwoda, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798867945381

Publisher: Independently published, 2024

Synopsis

"Saviour Machine is a dystopian delight - as nightmarish as they get. Poliwoda hits the mark, spinning tales that are darkly inventive yet strangely familiar. He'll not only freak you out, he'll show you where we're headed. This is a must-read survival guide in these tumultuous times..." Greg Kerr

What if the only thing capable of saving democracy… was something that was never human to begin with?

In the title story, Saviour Machine, a deeply divided America turns to an unprecedented solution: an impartial artificial intelligence appointed to govern in the public’s best interest. Free from party loyalty, corporate influence, and personal ambition, the AI President begins repairing a nation crippled by corruption, inequality, and political paralysis. But as ordinary citizens regain hope, the old guard - career politicians, power brokers, and the institutions built to preserve them - plot a quiet war to destroy the machine before it renders them obsolete. What follows is a chilling confrontation between human power and artificial morality, forcing one impossible question: can a system designed to protect humanity survive humanity itself?

In The Resident, a retired government employee abandons modern life and disappears into isolation, disconnected from media, politics, and technology. When a nuclear strike devastates the nearest city, his solitude becomes something stranger, and far more unsettling, than survival.

Factory Outlet unfolds inside a surreal waiting room where ideology, conformity, and modern identity spiral into absurdity in a dystopian satire that feels disturbingly familiar.

In Glitch, a bureaucratic error inside an all-encompassing digital identification system traps an ordinary citizen in a nightmare of confusion, suspicion, and devastating consequences, where proving who you are becomes nearly impossible.

And in Reflection, an isolated man trapped during COVID lockdown finds himself confronting buried family trauma, paranoia, and the psychological weight of isolation in a tense and deeply human thriller.

Darkly imaginative, politically charged, and unsettlingly plausible, Saviour Machine explores the fragile relationship between technology, power, identity, and truth in the modern age. These stories do not ask what the future will look like.

They ask how much of it has already arrived.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798867945381
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 209