Simulacra: CHEAT

The market is rigged. But not by banks. By the universe itself.

Adrian Shaw has a secret. He cheats at reality.

On paper, he’s a brilliant but unremarkable AI scientist, grinding away at an optimization startup. Off the books, he’s discovered something else entirely—a hidden "backdoor" in the universe that lets him nudge probability, rewrite outcomes, and quietly correct the parts of life that offend his sense of order.

At first, it’s harmless. A job interview goes a little better than it should. A trader’s algorithm misfires in just the right direction. A friend survives a car accident that should have been fatal. The world doesn’t notice. The math holds. And Adrian tells himself what any good cheater tells himself: I’m not hurting anyone. I’m just fixing the bugs.

But every edit leaves a fingerprint.

Patterns accumulate. Systems strain. Soon, Adrian isn’t the only one looking at the numbers.

A ruthless hedge-fund prodigy, a government black program, and a shadowy online collective all start hunting the anomaly in the data—the invisible hand that keeps tilting the game. To them, Adrian isn’t a man; he’s an exploit. A weapon. Proof that the world is malleable.

As markets buckle, wars twitch off-script, and entire lives pivot on his sleepless choices, Adrian realizes he’s crossed an invisible line. He’s no longer testing a trick; he’s running an unsanctioned experiment on eight billion people.

The more he "fixes" things, the worse the cascades get. Every solution spawns side effects he didn’t foresee. Every mercy has a cost he can’t fully calculate.

To protect the people he loves—and the fragile fabric of a world he’s already bent out of shape—Adrian has to answer a question the math can’t settle for him:

If you really can cheat reality, where does responsibility end?

Simulacra: CHEAT is high-concept, character-driven speculative fiction about power, probability, and the first step from an ordinary human to something dangerously close to a god.

PERFECT FOR FANS OF BLAKE CROUCH, TED CHIANG, AND NEAL STEPHENSON.