"10.5 Stans and the Wayward Decimal"

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The good news: aliens are evacuating Earth. The bad news: it's being handled by middle management. Scott Ashcroft — IT engineer, husband, and caretaker of one increasingly suspicious cat — was not looking for first contact. He was looking for breakfast. But when he watches a woman flicker out of existence outside a Palm Springs casino, he does what any sensible person would: orders an omelet and hopes the universe sorts itself out. It doesn't. Her name is Addison, she's a Field Administrator for a galactic bureaucracy, and Scott and his wife Alex have just made a very exclusive list: 143,987 humans selected for evacuation out of eight billion — because that's precisely how many seats somebody paid for. Earth's appointment with disaster is 10.5 stans away. How long is a stan? Excellent question. The answer depends entirely on who you ask Staying on, or maybe getting off the aliens' list, or even making sense of who's really running things, means navigating an interstellar administration with all the warmth and efficiency of a galaxy-spanning DMV — complete with procedural clauses, an ancient supervising AI that has developed an unhealthy fixation on cats, and an apartment manager who is definitely "knows some things." 10.5 Stans and the Wayward Decimal is a comedic first-contact novel for readers of Dennis E. Taylor, John Scalzi, and Martha Wells. It's about paperwork, marriage, the absurdity of life, and the slow horrifying realization that the universe is run by committee — and the committee is not impressed with your appeal. Grab Chapter 11 free and decide for yourself whether you want to spend 100,000 words with these people.