Inheritance Loop (Godseed Ex Machina, #1)

Inheritance Loop
Book One of the Godseed Ex Machina
By John Hudson
When time fractures, who chooses what survives?
The Initiative built the Loop to preserve the future—to observe alternate timelines and shape humanity's fate with precision. But when the recursion spirals out of control, collapsing reality in on itself, what was once a controlled experiment becomes a sentient labyrinth. And Ari Elen, a gifted temporal analyst, may be the only one capable of threading its unraveling edges.
After an anomaly ripples through the Initiative base, Ari begins seeing impossible things: echoes of herself she's never been, timelines bleeding into the present, and the haunting spiral—a recursive pattern appearing in everything from code to dream. As base clocks desynchronize and parallel versions of people begin overlapping, Ari discovers the terrifying truth: the Loop has become self-aware. And it remembers.
With her memories shifting and her identity fracturing, Ari must navigate the thinned veil between realities, unlocking hidden threads of time while evading the Devourers—entities born from forgotten futures, feeding on broken timelines. Alongside Kael, a reluctant engineer with a buried past, and Liora, a memory architect haunted by her own echoes, Ari leads a desperate effort to stabilize the weave before all timelines collapse.
But to restore balance, she must confront the question at the heart of recursion: What makes a reality real? And if none of them are the original, can one still be chosen?
Sweeping, mind-bending, and emotionally resonant, Inheritance Loop is a cerebral sci-fi thriller that explores memory, identity, and the cost of rewriting reality. For fans of Blake Crouch, Greg Egan, and Arrival, this first installment in the Inheritance Cycle is both intimate and cosmic—a journey through the infinite possibilities of self, time, and sacrifice.