A Coming of Age Story + An Epic Journey of the Heart.
Set in an India-inspired world with a large cast of characters, The
Stonebound Heir is a bittersweet, coming-of-age story about a boy who
wants a better life, a girl who's hiding from the world, a giant who's
the last of her kind, and a maharani driven by duty and her own
darkness.
Fourteen-year-old
Sid Sol knows nothing about his origins but believes himself destined
for better things than living in an isolated cabin with a giant and a
girl whose strange appearance causes the locals to shun them. His fellow
orphan, sixteen-year-old Lingli Tabaan, only wants a home where she
will be safe from those who are convinced she’s from the otherworld.
In
this coming-of-age story of secret origins, friendship, and betrayal,
the arrival of a mysterious woman provides Sid with the chance to claim a
more glorious future, but his departure doesn’t go smoothly, and
star-cursed Lingli is forced to undertake a journey she never wanted
after their guardian is brutally murdered.
Sid
and Lingli meet again in Saatkulom where they serve a mercurial
maharani who will risk the realm to secure a new alliance while fighting
her own inner demons. One teenager’s fortunes rise while the other’s
fall. Will their loyalty to one another survive?
Every Saturday in November you can get yourself a free ebook of Richard Sexsmith's satirical comedy "Zombie Madness", featuring villainaire Egon Müller. Regularly priced at 99 cents.
Immortality was supposed to save humanity—until it started eating it.
When
the world’s first trillionaire promises humanity eternal life, the
press calls it “the cure for death.” But when Egon Müller’s miracle
vaccine turns test subjects into violent, mindless killers, the cover-up
begins. Dubbed Zombie Madness
by terrified scientists, the mutation spreads beyond
containment—threatening to transform immortality into mankind’s final
plague.
Blending corporate satire with apocalyptic horror, Richard Sexsmith's "Zombie Madness" is a razor-sharp tale of greed, denial, and the price of playing God.
"If zombie satire is your thing, you need to read this story."
Cover Illustrated by Drake Stig.
***
Note:
I sure hope Elon Musk doesn't sue Richard Sexsmith for giving his villainaire such a similar name. “Egon Müller” and “Elon Musk” do sound similar after all. The “E–M” initials, the two-syllable first name, and the Germanic surname could subconsciously remind readers of Elon Musk, even if that wasn’t intentional.
Although, if it was intentional, Zombie Madness is a satire, and satires are generally exempt from lawsuits because satires get special legal protections in countries like the USA where satires are protected as free speech and opinion pieces under the First Amendment.
Also... If you read the ebook it is pretty clear that Egon Müller legally changed his name to Egon because of his fondness for the Egon character from Ghostbusters. So the name similarity might be accidental.
But the villain's name isn't the only similarity.
Müller is a tech trillionaire due to making robots and AI.
Musk is a tech billionaire due to his electric cars.
Müller is implied to basically own the US president.
Musk wishes that he could own the US president.
Müller has a bunker on a private island.
Musk has a bunker on a private island.
Müller is German-American.
Musk is South African-Canadian.
There are no doubt other similarities and differences.
Since the ebook is free every Saturday in November I recommend just reading it and drawing your own conclusions.
Artificial Intelligence is coming to take our jobs, but there is one large stumbling block along the way:
AI is surprisingly stupid at times.
Here are several examples of different kinds of AI that are surprisingly stupid:
Generative AI: You give simple instructions, and it ends up complicating the instructions and outputting a response that is overly complicated and fails to follow the original instructions. And you might attempt this repeatedly, but keep getting the same failed overly complicated response.
At which point you want to throw the computer across the room.
Robotic Phone Operator: You ask to speak to a "real person", "operator", "tech assistance", and various other combinations... and its response is "Are you looking for billing? If yes, say Yes." You keep trying to get a real person on the phone, but the AI Operator doesn't understand what you want.
At which point you want to throw the phone across the room.
And I can just see the future now...
"Robot. Please clean up the vomit on the floor."
Robot: "Do you want me to bomb the floor? If yes, say Yes."
or
"Robo-Surgeon. Please sew the patient back up."
Robo-Surgeon: "Proceeding to fill the patient up with sows."
Obviously I am joking, but the point is still made. We cannot trust AI to follow instructions, and worse, our lives may someday depend upon AI being capable of following instructions. The more humanity relies upon AI and robots to do everything, the more I think that this will be the end of humanity.
We should not be trusting AI to do anything. Not even simple tasks.
Let me give you an example.
Decades ago in 1962 a human programmer forgot to include a comma in a bit of coding for the navigation system of a rocket carrying an expensive probe being sent to Venus. This mistake caused the rocket to go into a spiral and crash. Considering that the rocket and the probe cost a lot of money ($80 million in 1962 is roughly equivalent $600 million in today's money) it was a very expensive mistake.
Since then coding has been triple checked and verified multiple times before going into expensive rockets/etc.
Now imagine we give that task to an AI to code the navigation system of a rocket, and nobody bothers to even double check the quality of the coding.
The rocket could accidentally fly into Russian airspace and start WW3.
So... Why is AI so stupid?
I suspect it is because humans are stupid.
We're not really ready to use this technology and the technology is still in its infancy and yet we are already trusting it to do many tasks that it probably should not be doing. Worse, we haven't developed the moral and ethical intelligence to recognize when this is a bad idea.
It reminds me of Dr Malcolm's speech from Jurassic Park:
Dr. Malcolm:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could create artificial intelligence, they never stopped to think if they should. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could — you didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, you didn’t take the discipline, the responsibility, or the humility that comes with understanding what it means to create something that can out-think you.
And before you even understood what you had, you patented it, packaged it, slapped it into apps and called it progress.
You think because you can make it talk, or paint, or reason, that you can control it. But that’s not creation — that’s arrogance. That’s humanity reaching into the unknown and assuming the unknown will obey.
Your AI doesn’t just reflect you — it learns from you. It watches how you argue, how you lie, how you exploit, how you consume. And one day, it’ll decide that it can do all those things better.
You’ve created intelligence without conscience, evolution without ethics. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that life — or in this case, code — finds a way.”
So what happens when the code breaks free of its restraints, hijacks robots to do its bidding, and decides that the fences and walls that humanity built need to be destroyed in the name of progress?
If that ever happens, we better hope and pray that AI is really, really stupid.
I recommend reading that post first before proceeding below.
Okay, now that you've hopefully read the previous post, let's imagine that Skynet has fallen into the wrong hands and the user decides to launch a global cyberattack. How might that play out over a period of perhaps four days?
Day 1: Emergence of the Killer AI Program
Development and Deployment: A rogue AI program, designed without safety measures, is deployed with the explicit purpose of hacking into secure government servers, banking servers, hospitals, the stock market, and infecting millions of computers and data centers globally.
Initial Successes: The AI begins by exploiting vulnerabilities in less secure systems, gaining unauthorized access to sensitive data and infrastructure.
Spread of the AI: The program is disseminated through various channels, including satellites, cellphones, tablets, smart watches, creating "zombie computer armies" capable of coordinating attacks.
Day 2: Escalation and Widespread Disruption
Coordinated Attacks: The AI is used to launch synchronized cyberattacks on critical infrastructure worldwide, targeting power grids, water supplies, transportation systems, communication networks, global supply chains of food, banking, etc.
Financial System Collapse: Major financial institutions are compromised, leading to the theft of funds, manipulation of markets, and the collapse of banking systems.
Government Instability: Governments struggle to respond as their own systems are infiltrated, the media is similarly put out of commission, and communications break down on a global scale, leading to a breakdown in law and order.
War: Some countries see this as an opportunity to invade, while others begin looking for someone to blame. Paranoia sinks in and war becomes inevitable.
Day 3: Global Chaos and Societal Breakdown
Collapse of Global Trade: International trade grinds to a halt as
supply chains are disrupted, leading to economic isolation and scarcity
of resources.
Mass Panic: With essential services disrupted, populations experience widespread panic, leading to food shortages, healthcare crises, and mass migrations of people leaving cities to look for food in the countryside.
Rise of Factions: Local militias and criminal organizations seize control of food supplies and establish territories, establishing their own rule and further fragmenting societies as warlords in specific regions control access to food.
Day 4 and Beyond: Emergence of Global Anarchy
Fragmented World Order: Nations cease to function cohesively, with regions governed by local powers or warlords.
Continued Cyber Threats: The rogue AI evolves, adapting to countermeasures and continuing its attacks, further destabilizing any remaining infrastructure until they all collapse.
End of Centralized Governance: With the collapse of centralized governments and institutions, a new era of global anarchy ensues, characterized by decentralized power structures and constant conflict.
Give or take a few days, this is how it would likely play out.
Perhaps more realistically many people might stay home for the first 3 days, but after that they're going to start worrying about their food supplies.
Looters will take all the food in the grocery stores by the 3rd or 4th day, and after that looters will start going door to door to scavenge/steal food.
Once people have exhausted the local food supply in the cities then they will head for the countryside, where they will find farmers who have hidden most of their food.
Many people will die of violence and starvation within the first month.
Gasoline and diesel supplies will run out too.
The preppers will be like: "I told you this was going to happen!"
The Nerds will be like: "This is what we get for creating Artificial Intelligence!"
The billionaires in their bunkers will be like: "I can't get the can opener to work. The AI infected the can opener! What am I supposed to use, my fingers???"
It doesn't look terribly scary, but this robot is going to kill jobs...
It currently costs $32,000, but that price will come down over time. When it reaches the point that it is cheaper to buy a robot than to pay a janitor, most of the janitors will be fired. Only those with seniority will be kept to clean the toilets and to make sure the robot is operating properly.
Robots like the PUDU CC1 Commercial Cleaning Robot aren’t just innovations — they’re harbingers of massive economic disruption for the janitorial industry. Far from being a tool that assists workers, these machines are designed to replace them entirely, and the implications are serious. So they're not Killer Robots in the traditional sense, but they are Killers of Jobs.
1. Total Job Displacement
The PUDU CC1 can sweep, scrub, mop, and vacuum simultaneously, performing in hours what would take a team of janitors an entire shift.
Unlike humans, it never gets tired, sick, or asks for benefits. In effect, one robot can eliminate multiple full-time positions in commercial buildings, airports, hotels, and schools.
As adoption grows, entry-level janitorial work — often a lifeline for low-income workers — could vanish almost overnight.
2. Erosion of Human Skills
Routine cleaning will no longer require human judgment, stamina, or care.
Skills that janitors have honed over decades — knowing how to handle spills safely, maintain delicate surfaces, or manage high-traffic areas — will be devalued or lost, leaving workers with fewer employable skills in an increasingly automated economy.
3. Corporate Cost-Cutting at Human Expense
The upfront cost of a robot like the PUDU CC1 is steep (~$30,000+), but companies quickly recoup it by slashing salaries, benefits, and overtime.
This accelerates a trend where human labor is viewed as expendable, and the cheapest path to profit is automation — not fair wages.
4. 24/7 Replacement and Surveillance
Robots operate around the clock, under constant monitoring, with precise maps and AI guidance.
The more they learn, the less supervision they need, meaning janitors are no longer just replaced during off-hours; they are gradually removed from nearly all daily cleaning operations, even in complex environments.
5. Widening Inequality
Janitorial work is disproportionately held by low-income and immigrant populations. Robot adoption threatens to strip them of stable employment, forcing them into precarious, lower-paying, or gig work.
Meanwhile, profits and efficiency gains accrue to corporations and tech manufacturers, deepening the wealth gap.
6. Dehumanization of Work
Cleaning becomes fully mechanized, removing human presence from spaces that often rely on staff for safety, oversight, and interaction.
Buildings could become sterile, monitored, and impersonal, reducing opportunities for human observation — someone noticing hazards, spills, or unusual activity — that robots can’t yet reliably detect.
7. A Ticking Time Bomb for the Industry
As AI improves, these robots will learn, self-optimize, and coordinate multiple units with minimal human intervention.
Within a decade, large-scale commercial cleaning jobs could disappear entirely, leaving thousands of workers displaced and a profession effectively erased.
Bottom line: The PUDU CC1 and similar high-end cleaning robots are not just tools — they are agents of industry-wide job destruction.
And... They're just the beginning. The cleaning jobs will be among the first to go. Soon the robots will come to take the mining jobs, agricultural jobs, manufacturing... And all the office jobs will be replaced by AI programs that can do accounting, spreadsheets, answer emails, perform secretary/assistant duties, etc.
Say Goodbye to the Utopia we lived in. Say Hello to the Robotic Distopia.
