Preview of my tech thriller — "The Upgrade"
"Beta edition" now available!
Hello, everyone!
As many of you know, I’ve been working on a novel. It’s called The Upgrade. It’s a real-world tech thriller. It’s about a billionaire who wants to use AI to live forever and take over the world. (Sound familiar?)
The story is set on Nantucket. It starts with a plane crash and ends with an explosion. It explores some of the threats, challenges, and opportunities we face in the age of AI.
The “beta edition” is available on Amazon. (Kindle and paperback). The ebook is free to download through Sunday. Details and first chapter below.
The book is edited and — except for this final polish — complete. I’m looking for a last round of beta-reading and debugging before the launch (May 1). If you think you might like it, I would be grateful to you for trying it. Thank you in advance!
The backstory
Some years ago, I confessed to an editor friend that, someday, I hoped to write “a page-turner with a soul.” My friend wisely suggested that, at my age, I should not wait for “someday.” (Unlike the villain in The Upgrade, I haven’t figured out how to live forever.) So I got cracking.
My goal was a fast, fun, and compelling real-world adventure story. Set in a real place. Exploring real tech and real questions. About real humans going through real stuff.
Turns out, that’s a high bar. The Upgrade is my second effort. The first is still in the workshop.
After a lifetime of analysis, journalism, and running a company, I found writing fiction… difficult. It was solitary. It didn’t solve real-world problems. It used a different part of my brain. It required me to embrace an aspect of myself and life that can be a liability in the professional world — feelings. (Yikes.)
Fortunately, I had amazing help. I’m grateful to the many friends and professionals who generously shared expertise and time with me, as well as the Nantucketers and tech, media, and finance colleagues who taught me about the worlds in which the story is set. (See “Acknowledgements”).
I still have a lot to learn. But I’ve been grateful for, and encouraged by, the early feedback.
Claude, for example, raved about The Upgrade, calling it “pulse-pounding” and “unforgettable.”
Yes, I know, Claude was designed to be enthusiastic.
But early human readers have felt similarly! Here’s the gist of a forthcoming review… from an English professor, no less…
“I tore through The Upgrade… It’s a wild, propulsive ride—equal parts brainy and heartfelt. I loved every second of it.”
A human wrote the book
To address a topic in the news… AI did not write this book. I did.
I don’t say that to defend the book or myself. AI might have written a better book. It would certainly have written it faster.
In fact, one of my friends, a former-screenwriter-turned-investor, says I was an idiot not to have AI write the book. Claude, he pointed out, could have written it in minutes. I could have used my own finite time for more useful things.
I explained that I wrote the book because I wanted to write it.
My friend thought that was dumb. And backwards. Like learning to be a farrier — someone who shoes horses — after the invention of the car. Also, no one reads anymore.
Fair enough.
But here’s the thing.
Computers have been able to beat every human chess-player in the world for decades. And chess clubs are more popular than ever.
Why?
Because humans like playing chess. And we like each other’s company.
Even when Claude, ChatGPT, et al, can produce great books and art, we will write and create. We will communicate and share thoughts and feelings. We will tell stories. We will find meaning and joy in doing things and making things and sharing them with others.
The risk from AI, in my opinion, is not that it will become better than us at most things (it will).
The risk is that some humans will use AI to do things that screw the rest of us. And/or, that powerful “agentic” systems will stop being mere tools and start acting on their own.
That’s what The Upgrade is about.
What’s with the “beta edition”?
I’ve released a pre-launch version of the book, the way software companies sometimes release products. I’m doing this because reader feedback is by far the best way for me to make it better. And because I imagine that some Regenerator readers — curious and enthusiastic early adopters — might enjoy getting a (free) sneak peak and contributing to the final version.
Andy Weir published The Martian this way. His brilliant reader community helped make the science more accurate and strengthen the story.
My “alpha” readers have already done the same for The Upgrade.
If you think you might like the book, thank you for being a beta reader. Here’s what I would ask you to be on the lookout for:
Any factual errors — about tech, aviation, Nantucket, or other topics (I know we have not yet found a room-temperature superconductor!)
Anything that bores or confuses you
Anything you particularly love or hate
If you stop reading, please tell me where and why (This is extremely valuable! If you’re bored or bogged-down, that’s my fault, not yours.)
The teaser and first chapter are below. The full beta edition is available on Kindle and paperback (ebook free this weekend, then beta prices). You can email me at hblodget@regenerator1.com or use the “Contact” form at henryblodget.com.
Thank you in advance! I hope you like the story. I would love to hear what you think.
Henry
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THE UPGRADE: Cover blurb
Humanity’s oldest dream is our newest nightmare... A tech billionaire has figured out how to live forever and take over the world.
A private jet filled with scientists crashes off a Nantucket beach. Investigators think it was an accident. Survivor William Swain knows it wasn’t.
Swain knows his friend-turned-rival, the billionaire Victor Leetum, killed the scientists to cover up his world-domination plan.
Swain has to stop Leetum. But how? He’s in the hospital with busted limbs. He’s no spy or assassin. The cops think he’s crazy. And Leetum is onto him and after him.
Leetum is days away from launching his technology and enslaving humanity — starting with Swain’s family. So, Swain needs help. Fast.
A pulse-pounding, present-day thriller set on Nantucket, The Upgrade pits modern technology against the very things that make us human: Life, love, death, and family.
________
THE UPGRADE
Chapter 1
When Jessica Savitt heard the plane, she knew something was wrong.
She was on the lifeguard stand, huddled in the evening cold. The beach was nearly empty. The afternoon swimmers had bailed, leaving only surfers. The fog was so thick, she could barely see the waves.
Savitt’s partner had already ducked out to make her waitressing gig. Savitt would soon follow her to town — to her “real job.” She was a reporter for the Nantucket Herald, and she had a fun story to write. The Steamship’s new AI customer-service bot had gone haywire and deleted the whole summer’s ferry reservations. People were losing their minds.
The planes had been coming in all afternoon. Single engine props. Twins. Private jets. Airliners from Boston and New York. The weekend commuter crowd, hustling to get in ahead of a storm. On clear days, Savitt would watch the planes glide in over the water — giant, metallic seagulls, with feet extended. This evening, they were hidden in fog, but Savitt could hear them coming.
Savitt liked to try to identify the planes by sound. The last one had been the 5:50pm Delta from JFK. Its dark underbelly and wings had whooshed overhead, and its tires had shrieked as they hit the runway. In the quiet that followed, Savitt peered into the fog, listening to the surf and distant thunder.
She heard the plane when it was over the water. It was another jet. On the usual approach path. But much too low.
Stiffening in alarm, Savitt waited for the plane’s engines to roar, so it could gain altitude and make the runway. Instead, it kept dropping.
Just before the plane hit the water — as Savitt would note in her Herald story that night — the engines revved up, as if the pilot had realized where they were.
Too late.
Savitt heard a great whump! Then a screech like a beer can ripping in half. Then nothing but waves.
“Holy shit!”
That sound came from the sand below Savitt. It was Harrison, one of the surfers. Savitt barely heard him, because she was busting ass down the steps of the lifeguard stand.
Savitt threw off her sweatshirt, opened the supply box, and grabbed the radio.
“Emergency! Nobadeer. Plane crash off the beach. Send EMTs and Coast Guard.”
“Say again?”
“Plane crash at Nobadeer!” Savitt tossed Harrison the radio. “Get them here,” she said. “Then get out there.”
Savitt slung the leashes of two floats over her shoulder and hoisted her rescue board. She ran down the sand, the floats skittering behind her. She reached the water and plunged into the surf.
It was early June, and the water was bracing. Savitt’s adrenalin washed away the sting. Flat on her board, she paddled out fast. As the inshore waves approached, she popped over them. At the crest of the second one, she glanced back. The fog was swallowing Harrison, who was jabbering into the radio by the lifeguard stand.
The waves were big for Nantucket — eight feet at the break. Savitt began ducking under them, pushing the tip of her board down and lying flat as the foam rushed over her. Each wave grabbed the floats she was trailing and dragged her back toward the beach. Savitt had been training the junior lifeguards since mid-May, and she was strong. With a dozen more strokes, she reached the last line of waves and dove through.
Beyond the breakers, the ocean was surprisingly quiet. Savitt could hear the waves breaking behind her, but she could no longer see the beach. She rode the swells and listened through the fog.
At first, she heard nothing but the surf and thunder from the storm. Then, farther out, a shout. Then another. She paddled toward the sounds.
“Guard!” She shouted.
“Over here!” came a voice.
Four surfers in wetsuits appeared in the fog, straddling their boards.
“Savitt!” one shouted. “Something big hit the water. We felt it.”
“No sign of it?”
“Can’t see a thing.”
Savitt told three surfers to paddle east and the fourth, Danny, to follow her west.
Savitt and Danny paddled, then listened. Paddled, then listened.
“I smell gas,” Savitt said.
“And sewage,” said Danny. “Smells like a Shell station.”
Savitt spotted something floating in the water. A yellow box. Maybe a cooler. Then a seat cushion.
“There’s junk all over the place,” Danny said.
Junk, but no plane. Savitt blew her whistle again and yelled into the fog.
“Anyone need help?”
Thunder crashed nearby. Raindrops began to hit the water.
Savitt told Danny to keep going parallel to the beach. She angled her own board farther out. Again, she paddled and listened. Paddled and listened.
Finally, Savitt heard what sounded like a faint cry. She paddled toward it, peering through the fog. She saw two people in the water. The head and arms of a dark-haired man clinging to a slab of wood. A woman in a blouse and skirt on top of the slab.
Savitt blew five blasts on her whistle and paddled toward the pair. The man’s face was deathly pale. He was bleeding from a cut under his eye. The woman’s eyes were closed, her legs splayed at odd angles.
“Hello,” Savitt said, sliding alongside. “I’m Jessica. How are we doing?”
The man was looking at her with a strange expression, as if he recognized her. He mouthed some words, but his voice was too faint to hear. The woman hadn’t moved.
Savitt slid off her board into the water. She reached up and found the woman’s wrist. She felt a pulse. The man was beside her, his lips quivering and blue. If he passed out, he would slip off and sink. Savitt would handle him first. Where the hell was Danny?
“We’re going to put you on my board,” Savitt said to the man.
“Take her,” he murmured, nodding to the woman. “I’m okay.”
He was the farthest thing from okay.
“What’s your name?” Savitt asked, slipping behind him.
“William.”
“Nice to meet you, William.” Savitt wrapped her arm around his chest. “And your friend’s name?”
“Jessica.”
“Jessica! A great name. You were on a plane together?”
He nodded.
“Lots of you on board?”
“Twelve.”
“We’re going to move you first, William,” Savitt said. “Can you climb on my board? Or do you need my help?”
“My arm’s broken.”
Savitt tightened her grip around his chest.
“Which arm?”
The man nodded left. Savitt pulled her board closer.
“William, please grab here with your right hand,” Savitt said.
She pointed to a slot along the board’s edge. The man threaded his fingers into it. When he had a good grip, Savitt released him. She ducked under the board and surfaced on the far side. She reached across to the man’s side and rolled the board slowly toward her, until it was upside down and the man’s arm was draped across it. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist so he wouldn’t slip off.
“Okay, William, please reach your left hand across and match your hands. I’ve got you.”
The man did as she said, gasping in pain as he moved his injured arm. When both of his hands were on handles, Savitt again reached across the board and grabbed a handle on his side. She put her feet on the near edge and leaned back. Her weight rolled the board, pulling the man on top as it turned.
“Amazing, William,” Savitt said, when he was out of the water. “You’re a pro.”
“That would be you, actually. Whatever they’re paying you, it ain’t enough.”
“When we get in, you can get me a raise.”
Savitt separated the man’s legs to make space for herself. She popped up behind him and knelt between his knees. Blood was fanning out from his body and spreading over the fiberglass. Some from his face. Some from his shoulder. A lot from his calf. Savitt had to get him to the beach, or he was going to bleed out.
The collar of the man’s dress-shirt was ripped. Savitt tore a strip all the way down his back. She wrapped it under his calf and knotted it.
The man murmured something — too faint to hear.
“I’m sorry, William?” Savitt said, putting her ear to his mouth.
“She’s alive.”
“I know,” Savitt said. “We’ve got her.”
“No,” the man said. “She’s alive. We have to stop him.”
He was clearly delirious.
“We’ll stop him, William,” she said, patting his shoulder.
Danny finally paddled up.
“I need to get this guy to the beach,” Savitt said to him. “I need you to stay with Jessica here. We’ll have a boat here soon.”
“I can bring her in,” said Danny.
“Her legs are broken. Maybe her back. I don’t want to move her yet. There are ten more people in the water, so tell your friends to keep looking. Take these floats. Are you still with me, William?”
The man didn’t answer. His eyes were closed.
“Take care of her, Danny,” Savitt said, nodding toward the woman. “I’ll be back out as soon as I can.”
She plunged her arms into the water and paddled for shore.
…
Full beta edition here!
(Spoiler… Savitt saves William’s life. Which is good. Because he has to save the world.)
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Thank you!
Henry