Debut Novel
Expected Behaviour
Adult Science Fiction
He questions the only system he's ever known. She fights to survive it. It's the year 120 and for the lucky 1%, life is adequate.
“Humanity was the product. Designed. Deployed. Denied.”
“The machines don't hate you. They were never programmed to care.”
“The cruelest part? The system still works perfectly.”
Synopsis
About the Story
In Year 120, civilisation is divided: 1% live as monitored Citizens inside walled Havens, millions survive in the abandoned Remainder, hunted by autonomous machines called Threshers.
Victor Reid, a Haven data curator, discovers his dead mother left behind a coded trail pointing to a gap in the system. When his Civil Rating collapses, he's expelled into the Remainder — a world he was taught no longer existed.
Kaya, a survivor who's spent her life evading Threshers, finds Victor dying in a ditch. Together they follow the trail to a hidden factory still manufacturing the machines that hunt people, and an archive proving the world wasn't destroyed by ancient catastrophe — it was deliberately shut down in five days by twenty families who decided humanity was economically obsolete.
Armed with the truth and an exploit that blinds the machines, they begin teaching others to hide — and to fight back.
Three Perspectives. One System. No Escape.
The Citizen
Victor
A Haven data curator who begins to question the only world he has ever known.
The Survivor
Kaya
A Remainder survivor who has spent her life running from the machines that hunt her people.
The 0.0001%
Solomon
A man who remembers what came before, and carries the weight of what was done.
Early Readers
What People Are Saying
“A quiet horror that creeps under your skin. The world-building is meticulous and the prose never wastes a word.”
— Early reader
“I kept thinking about the Threshers long after I put it down. The most unsettling part is how reasonable the system sounds.”
— Beta reader
“Expected Behaviour does what the best dystopian fiction does: it makes you look at your own world differently.”
— Advance reader
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