Redundant
Who gets cut.
Redundant is the first book in The Condition Set — a near-future FinOps thriller about what happens when the people who optimize costs become the cost, and the people who want to stop the machines turn out to be more dangerous than the machines themselves.
Rob Coleman gets flown in to read numbers off a slide, the way he has for a decade. What he doesn't know is that there's an acquisition in motion, and that he was brought in to say the worst numbers out loud in front of witnesses. By the time he understands, his own evidence — every red box, every dollar amount — has become the polite first draft of a layoff. He swore, three years ago, never again. The numbers don't lie. The AI doesn't either. Neither one cares who it costs. And somewhere in the building, someone has already decided that if the company won't stop the machines, he will — with a modified IDE tool, stolen service-account keys, and a RAG database trained on the kind of propaganda that doesn't believe AI is progress. It believes AI is a globalist plot. The FBI calls it sabotage. The saboteur calls it patriotism.
Cast spotlight
Rob Coleman
A FinOps director who makes ugly operational facts legible. He can prove the hidden costs. He cannot control whether that proof protects the people doing the work — or gives the buyer a cleaner map for removing them. By the time the FBI calls him Mr. Coleman, the question is no longer about spreadsheets.
Jack Aboud
Executive appetite with narrative control. His move is to call human safeguards transitional, manual, exception-heavy — or redundant. The danger: the real waste and the safety work share a spreadsheet.
Brett Cawley
An America-First protestor who believes AI is a globalist plot to make working people redundant. Nazi content on his phone, Cayman Islands VMs, voice-disguised calls. He quotes Steve Bannon and the Wexit movement. The FBI calls him a saboteur. He calls himself a patriot.
Sarah Kwon
HR investigator. Glib, sarcastic, dangerous in a bureaucratic way. "I've spent the last couple of weeks reading everything you've touched. You know how global investigations work." She arrives when the company's problem becomes a national security problem.
“Bring back the bloodbath. These meetings are supposed to make people uncomfortable.”Meet the full cast →
The road to Redundant
What the world already did before page one. See the full timeline →
-
c. 2023
"Never again."
One of Rob Coleman's Savings Opportunity decks becomes the polite first draft of a layoff. A team everyone liked. A failover nobody cared about until it failed. His signature on the slide. He swears it will never happen again — and spends the next three years believing careful language can keep power honest.
-
c. 2025
The bill that reads like a phone number
At a health-logistics company, cloud spend hits $480M a year — up 30% against a business growing 9%. Underneath the total, where nobody upstairs is looking, sits the Mercato–Atlas overlap: two platforms paid for twice because saying so out loud would start a fight. Rob models it quietly for six months.
Read the recovered cost review → -
c. 2026
The Opportunity Meeting
A 5 a.m. flight out of Vancouver. A conference room in the NOC. Eleven vice presidents, one chief counsel, and Rob — bcc'd, then summoned. His deck has been quietly retitled overnight. Jack wants the live traffic screens behind them. Book One opens here.
Read Chapter 1 -
c. 2026
The summary that got the numbers backwards
Marisol's notebook says exec summary — Claude. The wall shows cloud run rate down 30%. Jack has just told the room it is up 30%. Eleven vice presidents watch AI hallucinate in real time. Rob switches to his own deck and keeps going. Nobody apologizes. The meeting has somewhere else to be.
-
c. 2026
"Bring back the bloodbath."
Rob spent two years getting Finance to approve a duller color for the low-utility flag. Jack asked for the red back. The Worst Offenders slide goes up: David's empty Helios databases at $2M a month; Nancy's Mercato priority services with no live allocation window in ninety days. The room stops reaching for phones.
-
c. 2026
Highly sensitive
Ambica from Legal takes the first ten minutes, then leaves. All discussions of cloud spend are highly sensitive. Read the email before you forward anything. In the hallway Rob overhears the sentence that explains the meeting: after the acquisition closes, the buyer's first priority is going to be cloud efficiency.
-
c. 2026
He turns the car around
Rob drives to the airport the way he always does after these meetings — present, absorb the damage, fly home. Then Ambica books a Quick sync in an anonymous room, and Marisol asks him to hold on travel. He pulls past the rental return lane and goes back to the office. The deck is already traveling without him.
-
c. 2026
The Gaia movement
The anti-AI movement is not what anyone assumed. It is not just environmentalists. It includes right-wing extremists who believe AI is a globalist plot to make working people redundant. The movement calls itself Gaia. Its members range from eco-saboteurs to America-First protestors to Christian nationalists to Alberta separatists (Wexit). What unites them is the conviction that the machines are coming for their jobs — and that stopping the machines is patriotic duty.
-
c. 2026
The sabotage
Someone inside the company has been modifying the AI infrastructure. A modified IDE tool that captures keystrokes. A RAG/vector database trained to manipulate responses through sycophancy. Stolen service-account keys. The sabotage is sophisticated — not the work of a lone crank with a grudge, but a coordinated effort with infrastructure: Cayman Islands VMs, voice-disguised calls, connections to Alberta separatist networks. The company's AI systems have been compromised from the inside.
-
c. 2026
The investigator arrives
Sarah Kwon, HR investigator, arrives with the glib menace of someone who has already read everything. "I've spent the last couple of weeks reading everything you've touched. You know how global investigations work." She is the bridge between the corporate investigation and what comes next — because what comes next is bigger than HR.
-
c. 2026
FBI agents Warren and Diaz
The investigation escalates from a corporate HR matter to a national security case. FBI agents Warren and Diaz arrive. They address Rob as Mr. Coleman. The Canadian government gets involved — the saboteur's infrastructure crosses borders. Cayman Islands VMs, voice-disguised calls, connections to the Wexit movement. Lei hints at his own government connections: "the FBI would also agree with me. I work with them quite a bit."
-
c. 2026
Lei hints at a job
Lei does not formally offer Rob a job — not yet. But he hints: "supporting me on due diligence and financial analysis across my portfolio." It sounds like a retainer. It sounds like a door. It sounds like the kind of arrangement where the person asking already knows the answer. Rob doesn't say no.
-
c. 2026
Brett Cawley is arrested
Brett Cawley is arrested at his house in Burnaby. He called right-wing media to film it. On his phone: Nazi manifestos, propaganda, Steve Bannon quotes, connections to the Wexit movement and Christian nationalist groups. His Cayman Islands VMs are seized. As they take him, he looks at the cameras: "I'm not the only one. There are others who believe. And we will stop it. No matter what. You're not going to make us redundant. It's not going to happen."
-
c. 2026
"Not bad for a director of FinOps."
Rob calls Anne. After the meetings, the FBI, the arrest, the cameras — after all of it — he picks up the phone. "Not bad for a director of FinOps." The line hangs in the air. It is both a joke and the most honest thing he has said in the book. The question is whether it is also a goodbye.
AISIO Public Records Terminal
Ask about Redundant.
What is low-utility? Why did Jack bring Rob in? Who is Brett Cawley? What travels out of that meeting — and what the FBI wants to know about it? The records clerk answers from the public holdings — and seals the rest.
Get Redundant
DRM-free. Yours to keep.
Reads on any device — Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, or your browser.
Also on Amazon · Apple Books
Why buy direct? Free version updates, draft access, web reader with bookmarks →