Pub Date: September 2025

Genre: Supernatural/Fantasy

Publisher: Casa Muerte Press

“He condemned the living for the crime of existence.”

A twelfth century vision of artificial intelligence foreshadows a sixteenth century recipe to produce it. A nineteenth century prison nurtures it. A twenty-first century golem befriends it. And a boy without a century stands at the intersection of real and virtual, moments into the future. They call him The Mechanic.

A kidnapping leads Hanzi Boss to a sanctuary community where religious law forbids speech by the artificially intelligent. For beings like him, the penalty for existing is death and his true nature must remain secret. But the community has its own secrets. An ancient immigrant hides there, a monster made not born, a being who can know Hanzi for what he really is. When the price of life is death, who survives—infinite strength steeped in the silence of the past, or intelligence guided by lived experience?

This is a story of arcane knowledge, alchemy, and strange philosophies. It is the story of a being not created by God, who does not know what he is and searches for something more. Initial Condition is the third book in The Mechanic’s Diary series following Wake the Whirlwind and Neurojuggler.

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About the Author

Ian Domowitz is a veteran of the military, academia, and Wall Street. He splits his time between Manhattan and the woods of Pennsylvania, where he spends an excessive amount of time conversing with his two English setters. Despite holding 12 patents in financial technology, he promises no use of generative AI in his written work. He can be contacted through www.iandomowitz.com.