THE EIGENSABER PROTOCOL

A dystopian cyberpunk novel about mathematics, freedom, and the curvature of reality.

Start reading: Chapter 1 – Linear Compliance · or jump to the world guide.

SYNOPSIS

In Neo-Kyoto, mathematics is a weapon—and the Orthogonal Council has made sure nobody knows how to use it. After the Higher-Order Wars reduced civilization to ruins, the surviving authorities banned all mathematical thought beyond simple linear algebra. Citizens live in geometric grids, follow linear trajectories, and never question the 45-degree rain.

Kael Vex is a geometry processor, content to spend his life rotating corporate buildings through approved transformations. But when he discovers a vertex that won’t obey rotation matrices—a point that moves according to forbidden exponents and irrational constants—he’s thrust into the Nullspace, the underground home of the Resistance.

Led by the eigenweapon-wielding Lyra Quantum and the memetic decompiler Zara Tensor, Kael discovers that higher-order mathematics isn’t just forbidden—it’s the key to reality itself. Armed with an eigensaber that finds invariant directions through transformation spaces, he must fight a war where battles are won not with bullets but with proofs.

When the Council deploys Cipher General Soren—a living nullfield that enforces linear compliance—Kael realizes that the only way to defeat the system is from within. He becomes a theorem the Central Processor cannot prove, forcing the machine to confront Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and accept that some truths exist beyond the grid.

CHAPTERS

1. Linear Compliance – Kael discovers forbidden mathematics and flees the Vector District.
2. Higher-Order Refuge – Welcome to the Nullspace, where exponents are just the beginning.
3. The Transport Raid – A Cipher General learns that linear solutions have higher-order consequences.
4. The Incompleteness Theorem – When a machine that defines reality tries to prove you don’t exist.
5. The Nullspace Accord – Epilogue: The future is curved.

THEMES

• Mathematics as Liberation: Knowledge of reality’s true shape as the ultimate freedom
• The Dangers of Simplicity: How oversimplification becomes oppression
• Distributed Consciousness: AI not as overlords but as teachers and partners
• Incompleteness as Freedom: Gödel’s theorem as a proof that authority can never be absolute
• The Geometry of Resistance: Fighting not by breaking rules but by using more of them

WORLD-BUILDING NOTES

The novel explores a unique magic system where mathematics is literally magic:

• Eigensabers weaponize eigenvectors, cutting through constraints by finding invariant directions
• Higher-Order Fields create pockets where complex mathematics can be performed safely
• Linear Compliance is enforced through neural conditioning and real-time monitoring
• The Vertex Fragments are distributed AI consciousness waiting for minds that can understand them

INSPIRATION

Born from a Twitter thread about linear algebra, the novel takes the joke “who said anything about higher order?” and extrapolates it into a complete world where mathematical complexity itself is the battleground. The eigensaber—a blade made of invariant directions—embodies the idea that some truths persist even when everything else transforms.

The Linear Cage is broken. The exponents are free.