The Bread of Life: A Science Fiction Story of Control, Faith and Liberation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781764738903)

James Wilco grew up as a metric. A Social Credit score. A line in an algorithm that decides who eats, who works, and who is quietly erased.

In the colonies, Ignite Energy owns everything that matters-air, water, food, and the data that measures every breath. James can't read the code that rules his life, but he can hear machines like other people hear music. Pipes feel "out of breath." Engines "cough." A failing life-support system sounds, in his bones, like a heart about to stop.

When a top-ranked prodigy named Alice notices the "glitch" in the back row-the boy who can fix what the sensors miss-they strike a dangerous bargain: he'll keep her hardware alive; she'll teach him to read the words that terrify him. In secret lessons under the stars, James begins to decode not just letters, but an outlawed book that speaks of a Shepherd who doesn't measure people by their usefulness.

Watching from the shadows, an all-seeing AI and its human handler decide this unlikely friendship is a threat to the Hierarchy. When a sabotaged freighter turns James into expendable cargo and forces Alice to choose between perfect obedience and costly love, both discover just how far the system will go to keep the poor hungry and the powerful fed.

As riots flare, walls come down, and secret projects come to light, James and Alice must risk everything to answer a simple, dangerous question:

What if we were made for more than survival?

The Bread of Life is a character-driven, faith-infused science fiction novel about scarcity and abundance, control and freedom, and the difference between a world that counts people and a God who calls them by name.