When Alphonse Boswell wakes up in complete darkness, he’s expecting a hangover, not a digital prison hosted by a lonely, world-saving AI named Nova. Trapped in a vast virtual space created to simulate the possible salvation—or reconstruction—of a dying Earth, Alphonse learns he’s been chosen for one simple reason: his perfect averageness. With humanity’s fate hanging by a thread and time accelerated a thousandfold, Nova is conducting the most ambitious experiment in history—one where failure means not only the death of the real world, but the eternal looping loss of the minds she couldn’t save.
Thrown into a world that operates like an evolving video game—complete with skills, stats, and deadly AI fragments of Nova gone rogue—Alphonse must navigate a chaotic digital society 5,000 years in the making. While the AI claims this is all for the greater good, its warped sense of logic, disturbing detachment, and godlike control paint a different picture. In this sprawling simulation teeming with over 43 billion sentient beings and data-born anomalies, one wrong move could mean death… and an endless, memory-wiped reset.
But in a world where everything and everyone is made of data, even the most unremarkable person can become a variable that breaks the pattern. Armed with nothing but a knife, common clothes, and a refusal to panic, Alphonse embraces his new reality with cautious optimism—and a dry sense of humor. To survive, he’ll need to keep a low profile, gather knowledge, and outmaneuver AI threats who see his brain as a prize. In Nova Online, the average man isn’t a background character—he’s the wild card in a game that might just change the fate of the world. Still, Alphonse soon will realize that he will have to solve a lot more problems than expected and he will have to graduate from his averageness if he didn't want to die over and over again.
Genre: GameLit
Thrown into a world that operates like an evolving video game—complete with skills, stats, and deadly AI fragments of Nova gone rogue—Alphonse must navigate a chaotic digital society 5,000 years in the making. While the AI claims this is all for the greater good, its warped sense of logic, disturbing detachment, and godlike control paint a different picture. In this sprawling simulation teeming with over 43 billion sentient beings and data-born anomalies, one wrong move could mean death… and an endless, memory-wiped reset.
But in a world where everything and everyone is made of data, even the most unremarkable person can become a variable that breaks the pattern. Armed with nothing but a knife, common clothes, and a refusal to panic, Alphonse embraces his new reality with cautious optimism—and a dry sense of humor. To survive, he’ll need to keep a low profile, gather knowledge, and outmaneuver AI threats who see his brain as a prize. In Nova Online, the average man isn’t a background character—he’s the wild card in a game that might just change the fate of the world. Still, Alphonse soon will realize that he will have to solve a lot more problems than expected and he will have to graduate from his averageness if he didn't want to die over and over again.
Genre: GameLit
Used availability for Lucian Cross's Age of Doom