The story is set in a futuristic metropolis shaped by advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, yet the heart of the narrative lies in the inner world of a humanoid creation who begins to search for identity, meaning, and connection.
As Eternalus evolves, her interactions with Eliora, a gifted engineer, and Edward, an impassive and powerful person within the tower, draw the story into emotional and philosophical territory that touches on the subject of consciousness and the future of humanâmachine relations.
The book blends imaginative science with a cinematic writing style that focuses on atmosphere, emotion, and the thoughts that shape both human and intelligent systems. This story explores both faces of technology as a threat and as a gift, and follows the ways intelligence, whether natural or artificial, can reach toward truth, love, and a deeper understanding of existence.
This multilayer coverage of technology and holistic approach to the genre may offer something distinctive for readers who enjoy science-fiction that is both imaginative and emotionally layered.
The story is set in a futuristic metropolis shaped by advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, yet the heart of the narrative lies in the inner world of a humanoid creation who begins to search for identity, meaning, and connection.
As Eternalus evolves, her interactions with Eliora, a gifted engineer, and Edward, an impassive and powerful person within the tower, draw the story into emotional and philosophical territory that touches on the subject of consciousness and the future of humanâmachine relations.
The book blends imaginative science with a cinematic writing style that focuses on atmosphere, emotion, and the thoughts that shape both human and intelligent systems. This story explores both faces of technology as a threat and as a gift, and follows the ways intelligence, whether natural or artificial, can reach toward truth, love, and a deeper understanding of existence.
This multilayer coverage of technology and holistic approach to the genre may offer something distinctive for readers who enjoy science-fiction that is both imaginative and emotionally layered.
New York slept, sunk deep into its own dreams, while a heavy grey mist began its deliberate crawl through the streets. Cold lingered on the stones, steeping the city air in damp weight. Each breath of New York unfurled as a ghost of mist. It was the kind of mist that comes before sunrise, half-dream, half-shadow, spiralling itself through hushed avenues and forgotten alleys.
The central boulevards lay drowned in haze; the old lamps strained with fragile effort to push back the darkness, their pale halos trembling, yet the fog pressed closer, swallowing the light as if some vast, unseen beast were devouring it whole. In the narrower alleys the hush grew heavier; walls disappeared into shadow, footsteps had long since faded, and even the stray animals of the night had vanished, as though the city had exhaled and slipped entirely into a dream of fog and shadow.
In the heart of this stillness, in the cityâs forbidden zone, a black monster stood awake and restless. It rose as a massive tower, its walls of reactive glass and calculated steel so vigilant the mist seemed to part around it, as if not daring to touch its skin. The tower loomed black and immense, its skin a restless mirror that shifted with light and temperature, altering its colour and transparency, even pulsing in response to hidden signals, as if the walls themselves carried a breath of intelligent life. Its frame was forged from steel shaped with exacting precision, an alloy engineered particle by particle through complex computation, built for unyielding strength and flawless harmony. This colossal black form stood like a living sentinel in the cityâs heart, patient and watchful, as though it possessed its own awareness, and it was waiting. At its summit, silver domes with an organic yet lifeless design rose and fell in slow rhythm, like the measured breath of a giant brain exhaling thought into the dark.
The 197-storey building bore no sign, no logo, and no marked entrance, an enigmatic mass with no windows visible from outside to hint at the life within. Its only feature was a dim blue glow on the cold glass of its entrance, a single word: âCorporatio.â It was a name that carried a hidden meaning, a whisper of something beyond technology, beyond power, beyond knowledge itself. To government authorities, it was a centre for artificial intelligence research; to passers-by, it was simply suspicious, too closed, too withdrawn. Inside the Glass Tower, behind soundproof walls and bulletproof panes, there was no sound: no passing cars, no hum of hidden machines, not even the faint song of early birds. What lingered there was an erasure, a suspension so total it seemed the world outside no longer existed.
And yet, the monster was not asleep. From the summit of the tower, a signal flashed into the night, a tick of light fading into the howl of the wind. Invisible to human eyes, it spread like the sweep of unseen antennae, traced by every intelligent unit within five kilometres. This was more than light; it was a vigilant pulse, a secret optical language written in laser and infrared, a beacon disguised as emptiness. The frequency and blinking patterns carried messages only machines could decipher. In the vast darkness, the steady tick was a heartbeat that summoned and synchronised, a command more than a signal. Tirelessly, it beat through the air, the living heartbeat of the tower itself, a secret rhythm of life and absolute control. It moved like the probing sense of a sleepless giant, commanding and surveying, its invisible feelers stretched across the city. Unseen by humankind, the flash was in truth the monsterâs own vigilant system, a hidden language of watchfulness and control.
At that hour, while the city still lay in the arms of sleep, only one thing never rested: the feverish hope of creating humanoid robots. This was the forge where the worldâs final masterpiece had not yet been glimpsed, the place where she, the most intelligent and powerful immortal robot, was being crafted. A city on the verge of a new dawn, never again to return to what it once had been.
The world itself, standing at the threshold of the twenty-second century, seemed to don a new garment, modern, radiant, and strange, a face not seen before. Yet even within this relentless ambition, a question lingered like a shadow: why was humanity, on the cusp of a new century, rushing so desperately to craft its most perfect mirror? Was this longing a grasp for survival, a reach for power, or a restless urge to break through the very boundaries of its own being?
***
At exactly four oâclock in the morning, the conference room held its breath. The long table, bare save for the central monitor, gleamed beneath the cold lights. Six senior executives sat in rigid composure, their hands folded with unnatural neatness, their eyes wandering aside, as though the faintest movement might break the fragile balance. The clock on the far wall ticked, each beat magnified by the absence of voices. A throat cleared, but the sound died quickly, swallowed by the walls.
Then the door opened without a sound. Lucien Rhayder entered, a presence always felt before it was seen. He wore a long, straight coat, pressed and disciplined like his own mind, and his stare a presence that cut through the dark. It was enough to make the six executives stiffen; their breaths caught in their chests. Without altering the pace of his steps, he crossed the length of the table, took his place at its head, and spoke without introduction:
âSo, it is still incomplete.â
The meeting was recorded automatically, the conversations traced upon the central monitor, where a fixed message glowed with unyielding light: âResponse Unaligned.â On the surface, the words seemed simple, yet their weight pierced to the core. Eternalus, the machine with the Eternal Operating System, had not managed to align its answer with the question set before it. When asked to define itself, it could only return a void.
For any human, such a question reaches past the surface. One speaks of beliefs, another of memories, another of hopes and dreams. Someone might even say, âI am one who seeks to know the world and its Creator through science and art.â But Eternalus had spoken only its designation, as though identity were no more than a label pressed upon steel.
For Lucien, this was not a mere error. It was a collapse of self-definition, the fragile boundary that separates man from machine. No one responded. Everyone in the room knew that for him, a thing was either whole or nothing at all. He took a few more steps, his eyes fixed on the screen and folded his hands behind his back. His voice, resonant and unwavering, carried through the chamber:
âIf it cannot define itself, then it is not yet human-oid.â
A heavy pause lingered, tension pressing close. Faces remained calm, but no one dared to utter the words âalmost complete.â For Lucien, there was no such thing as almost, only existence or void.
The directors gathered their notes without a word. They moved like pale ghosts, shadows emptied of substance, their voices clipped and hushed.
âResponse UnalignedâŠâ one whispered, his voice as thin as smoke. âIt should have been resolved by now.â
âWe are progressing,â another insisted, too quickly, his tone brittle. âThe patterns are converging. It is only a matter of time.â
A third lowered his eyes. âYou know he does not believe in time. For him, something either exists in full, or it does not exist at all.â
Their footsteps hurried across the polished floor, echoes fading before they reached the walls. Not a single report had spoken of failure, yet failure hung in the air, like grey ash refusing to settle.
Lucien Rhayder did not move. He stood before the fading glow of âResponse Unalignedâ, his gaze sharp and unyielding, the edge of a blade hanging in the dark. At last, he spoke, not to the men who fled like shadows, but to the void they left behind:
âTime is the excuse of those who have no answers. Eternalus is not an experiment. It is evolution itself.â
The directors passed him with lowered eyes, reduced to whispers and outlines. Behind them remained only the figure of Lucien, and the silent judgment of the tower, the sleepless giant.
Later, Lucien returned to his glass-walled chamber, and like an eagle poised above the highest peak of New York, he overlooked the city, a grey ghost dreaming in fog, and saw not what it was, but what it would become: the destiny of Corporatio, and the birth of Eternalus.
***
The mist thinned as the first light of dawn struck the towerâs glass. One man paused in the street and raised his eyes.
âSee how it burns,â he murmured. âAt sunrise, it blazes like a torch in the sky. It almost breathes.â
His companion looked upward. âNot a building,â he said slowly. âA monster. Those six domes turn like eyes that never close.â
âThey are more than eyes,â the first whispered. âCommand centres. Six divisions. Six paths, all reaching toward one dream.â
After a brief moment, the second asked, âAnd what dream is that?â
The answer came low, veiled, almost like a confession. âThey say it is a city within a tower, a hidden paradise. Not only chambers of glass, but places of memory and music, salons and banquets, even a hall where a piano waits to sing of triumph. My acquaintance told me this in secret, as if the words themselves were forbidden. He swore that each dome is like an organ, all bound to one mind.â
The second man gave a hollow laugh, though his eyes did not leave the height above them. âA city within a tower? That is no city that men should enter.â
The first man lowered his voice further. âHe said beneath all this splendour run the true arteries, laboratories without end, ceaseless as veins. He said it was as if they were trying to breathe life into something that should not exist.â
The two stood wordless. Above them, the domes turned on their axis and the body of the tower caught fire in the rising sun, as though the heart of something vast and hidden had begun to stir.
***
A while had passed since nightfall, yet Lucien remained at work in his glass atrium, a vast space of crystalline walls, floor, and ceiling. The glittering nightscape seemed to pour inward, and the city lights coursed beneath him like rivers of fire. With a single motion of his hand, the void around him bloomed into holograms. Whole constellations of light unfolded into detailed views of the laboratories below. Every division lay under his ever-present watch, each one observable in real time or replayed at will from the towerâs hidden core, the control centre that never slept.
The constellations of light shifted, and the atrium filled with visions of the towerâs inner life. Six divisions unfolded before Lucienâs eyes, each distinct yet converging toward the same secret design. Alpha shimmered with language, Delta held memory, Omega burned with judgment, Helix shaped the body, Nova stirred with motion, and Sigma wore the mask of the face. Lucienâs gaze moved across them without pause, as if surveying organs within a single vast body. Independent yet interdependent, each division sustained its part, all drawn to the pulse of a hidden heart, the will to awaken something that might one day look back at him and reply.
Lucienâs stare moved across the shifting constellations of light, and in his reflection, he saw that despite all the brilliance, something was still missing. Each division, on its own, gleamed with completeness; yet, together, they formed only an unfinished, incoherent body. He murmured to the glass, âWith Alpha, Sigma, Delta, Omega, Helix, and Nova at their heights, why does the triumph of creation still remain beyond reach?â
The answer lay not within any one of them, but in a missing link, a hand to bind the scattered parts into a whole. Perhaps an outsider, someone new, who could draw the pieces together.
With a sweep of his hand, the laboratory feeds dissolved, and the files for senior advisor recruitment unfolded across the central display. He could have left the analysis to the system, yet Lucien trusted no eyes but his own. He moved through the profiles slowly, his fingers pausing here and there, as if uncertainty itself resisted his command. Then his lips curved in a deliberate smile. One name shone brighter than the rest, gleaming as though inscribed by destiny: Eliora Jackson. Her résumé carried him back to his own past, to the years after his doctorate. He, too, had searched for a foothold before Corporatio had risen around him like a monument of glass and steel.
In that moment, he resolved to meet her the next morning. With a single firm gesture, he issued two commands, the first an invitation to Eliora Jackson and the second a summons to the six senior directors. The edicts went forth like threads of light, setting the great wheel in motion, a wheel that through a single meeting would change everything. Lucien rose, turning once more to the horizon. The city stretched before him, a festoon of fire in the night, and in its glow, he envisioned the destiny of Corporatio and the awakening yet to come.
Eliora sat alone in her apartment, the city dissolving into a blur of pale lights beyond the window. Her desk lay buried beneath open books, half-written notes, and the weary trace of long hours. She leaned back, rubbed her eyes, and whispered to herself, âWhat is all this for?â
The question lingered, a weight pressing against her chest. She had offered fragments of her mind to systems that judged without faces, without voices. Each rejection became another emptiness, another unanswered line in the story of her work. Her eyes wandered across the clutter until they reached the faint glow of her computer screen. A new message waited there, an iron invitation veiled in a hidden promise. Invitation from Corporatio.
For a long moment, she did not move. Her hand hovered above the mouse, hesitant, as if the simple act of opening it might alter the course of her life. Then she clicked. The words appeared with a clarity sharp as glass: You are invited to attend an interview at Corporatio. Report tomorrow morning. Eliora exhaled, a breath she had not realised she was holding. Her heart stirred in a strange rhythm, fearful yet exhilarated, as if the city itself had finally spoken her name. She closed the laptop and rose, moving to the window. Below, the streets stretched like threads of fire, the same lights she had watched countless nights before. But tonight, they burned differently. In their glow, she no longer saw the city she had known, but the outline of something vast, waiting.
Eternal OS: Love Never Fails by Rezvan Hatami is about Eliora who has just been hired by Corporatio to help oversee the development of their new android, Eternalus. As Eternalus continues developing and evolving she interacts more and more with Eliora and with Edward, a somewhat reclusive engineer assigned to the project. The more Eliora works there though the more she discovers that there is more to the company, the people and the project than she is aware of. Together the three work on pushing boundaries of science, intelligence and the soul as they learn more about themselves and the world around them.
This book has a pretty good premise about the possibilities, both good and bad, of AI and android development. It also delves at least somewhat into the realms of what makes a person human and what constitutes a soul which are some pretty deep and philosophical topics. There are also times where it seems to touch upon other existential topics such as what is love and faith and similar related concepts. The characters are good and seem to be well developed but there is also very little backstory for any of them which is mildly frustrating to see considering just how intriguing some of them are. However, perhaps the biggest issue I see with this particular story is actually the plot surprisingly. As I said before it has a good premise but as I was reading I struggled to identify what the main conflict was for the story. It seemed to be rather all over the place and there was not really one big defining conflict or issue but instead several smaller issues that were not fully defined or explained. There was not one problem or issue around which the story revolved. I am not saying that it wasnât good as I did enjoy reading it but I really struggled to identify what it was supposed to be about. Was it about the development of Eternalus or was it about one of the different relationships or was it about the internal issues of Corporatio? I really donât know as they all were mentioned but none seemed defining or fully explained if that makes sense. It was still good though and has decent potential so I am giving it three out of five stars.
This book is science fiction so it would hold the most appeal for readers who prefer that genre though it may also appeal to readers who like books that grapple with philosophical concepts. It seems to be aimed at adult readers but there wasnât any content that would make it inappropriate for slightly younger readers so anybody older than about fourteen should probably be fine.