In 1997, a suburban teenager logs into IRC for the first time, searching for free music. What he finds instead is a world of operators and file servers, power hierarchies and private channels—a digital underground where your nickname is your identity and the @ symbol means you matter.
When a conversation about Chicago rap catches the attention of Kaos, one of the channel's operators, an invitation follows: join the crew. But there's a problem. These are adults with jobs and technical skills. A fourteen-year-old doesn't belong here.
So he lies. And keeps lying.
Now he's an operator in channels with hundreds of users. He's learning to script, to manage bots, to navigate the politics of online communities. He's building a life in a world where nobody knows who he really is.
But every PM asking about weekend plans, every invitation to meet up, every question that edges too close to the truth—it all reminds him that discovery means losing everything he's built.
The @ symbol next to his name feels less like power and more like a countdown.
Choose-your-own-adventure story written with my son. In the whimsical village of Rollington, where buildings connect through intricate marble tracks and breakfast arrives on tiny carriers, young Tommy Trundler dreams in clicks and clacks.
In a world where nothing truly belongs to anyone and a digital system determines who owns what, betrayal lurks behind every line of code. Deep within tech giant Imperium, the creator of Sentagon—a system corrupted from its noble purpose—watches as control of his creation slips through his fingers. As his own possessions begin to vanish and dark truths emerge about his life's work, he discovers that sometimes walking away might be more powerful than fixing what's broken.
Between dusty shelves of rare books and ancient wisdom, where every tome holds secrets in its aging pages, a young man's mundane life shifts with a single discovery. Among towering walls of ancient texts, he uncovers a manuscript without a name—one that breathes the essence of its past readers. As mysterious visitors slip through shadows and dreams pierce the veil of reality, he begins to understand that some stories don't just want to be read—they want to be lived.
Every kid lives in two worlds: the one they dream and the one they wake to—but for one young dreamer, these worlds have started sharing secrets. As her dreams weave themselves into everyday moments and her thoughts transform ordinary spaces into wonderlands, she's about to discover that the ancient door between what's real and what's magical isn't locked—it's been waiting for someone who knows how to turn imagination into power.
Worlds away from his Chicago comfort zone, eleven-year-old Stef is spending summer at his grandmother's ancient Tuscan farmhouse. What starts as awkward family dinners and mangled Italian phrases soon transforms into midnight feasts of fresh pesto with newfound cousins, crossing boundaries with fellow adventurers, and sun-soaked days at Mediterranean beaches. As he races through pine groves and explores moonlit coastal towns with new friends, a mysterious wolf keeps appearing in the shadows—and Stef is learning that sometimes the best discoveries happen when you're brave enough to venture far from home.