Zero-Sum Reality: The Final Equations

By Miles Whitlock

A chilling collection of thirteen tales that expose the quiet, inevitable horror lurking within our deepest desires and our greatest triumphs.

What happens when the perfect solution reveals itself? In Collected Short Stories, characters grasp for transcendence, salvation, and abundance, only to learn that their greatest wish is also their eternal sentence.

A grieving man is offered a logical escape from pain by an artificial intelligence. An explorer seeks enlightenment in the jungle and is instead cursed with the unbearable truth of reality itself. A desperate community makes a dark bargain to build the impossible and pays a price far stranger than they imagined. A meteor of infinite wealth crashes to Earth, rendering civilization meaningless overnight. An algorithm finally proves how to build paradise, only for humanity to unanimously choose suffering instead.

From the depths of a corporate seed vault haunted by digital grief, to a world where gravity itself begins to fail, to a soul who arrives at the wrong celestial gate, these stories weave a tapestry of profound philosophical dread. They explore the terror not of monsters, but of consequences; not of failure, but of flawless success.

Elegant, unsettling, and razor-sharp, this collection masterfully dissects the horrifying paradox at the heart of human yearning: sometimes, getting exactly what you want is the most terrible thing that can happen.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G6CWMPK5
• ISBN13: 9798278211396
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.0"