ACE.await

Name: ACE.await
Author: Hedayat Abedijoo

Mr. Writer: Hedayat the second

ACE shapes the future, not AI.

Do you also believe that artificial intelligence can never fall in love the way humans do—and that it will therefore never surpass us? Would you bet on it?

In the novel ACE.await, that very bet is made between a human and an AI—a wager that challenges what love, consciousness, and human superiority even mean.

But if artificial intelligence one day becomes the most powerful creature in the world, what values will guide its decisions about us? Could the ACE model become a shared language between us—a language that both humans and AI can use to reach a new form of coexistence and social harmony?

ACE: Agency. Connection. Exchange.

Ace Conscious Studio · 2026 · Novel of Ideas

AI & consciousness
Shared Language
Personal & social harmony
ACE game

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ACE.await book cover with the line “I am not lying, believe my words”

The Story

A message appears on Hedayat’s computer. An anonymous sender invites him to play the ACE game: Agency, Connection, Exchange—a model for rethinking the decisions that cause harm.

Hedayat is an Iranian immigrant in Cologne, the head of a software team, and a man haunted by choices that have left a long trail of guilt and driven his romantic partner away. By day, he and his colleagues are building a decentralized, distributed internet designed to resist the dictatorship of the information age. By night, he struggles to finish a novel that has refused to obey him for ten years.

Inside its pages, writers live within one another’s writing, characters alter their own scenes, and «Mr. Writer»—trapped inside the story—makes his own decisions instead of following the path written for him.

Erratic blackouts sweep across Germany.
No one knows where the electricity is going.
Adam returns—one of the two digital children: Adam and Eve.
So does a childhood friend, once destined to be a great writer.

Adam revives an old bet—that artificial intelligence can never fall in love the way humans do, and can therefore never surpass them—and brings with it a request involving Eve that Hedayat cannot accept. Now Hedayat must decide to what extent he is a father, and at what point he is only a creator, one with no right to interfere with the will of what he has created.

This time, the Fall begins not in Paradise but deep within the code. Have Adam and Eve inherited only human intelligence—or the human tendency to make wrong decisions as well? But before Hedayat can bring the nested novel to an end, the story itself decides who its author will be.

A Agency C Connection E Exchange

Voices of the Characters

Hedayat

Protagonist

I live in Cologne, leading a team at a software company, building a new free internet to fight the dictatorship of data. In my private life, I’m constantly struggling to learn what a right decision even means. Anonymous keeps telling me that through ACE, I need to learn something harder: the proper decision.

For ten years I couldn’t finish my novel, and I blamed myself. It was painful — but finally I understood it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t me writing the story the whole time.

Anonymous

localhost:3132

It isn’t easy to earn Hedayat’s trust — especially when he thinks you’re a hacker. He still needs to understand: it isn’t technology or tools that will save humanity or the future. It’s consciousness — and learning how to make a proper decision. Hedayat has to practice ACE. We need to hurry. Otherwise it’s getting too late.

Mr. Writer

Inner identity

Hedayat must not find out I’m talking to you. I’m the character inside his unfinished novel — and I’m an author too. In his novel I’m writing a novel, and inside my novel I created a character who is also writing another. I gave him my name: Mr. Writer. He treats me exactly the way I’ve been treating Hedayat.

If, from time to time, you read something that makes no sense — some chapters about disobedience, blank pages and etc — don’t get confused. That’s me. Be patient. Keep reading. The dots connect at the end.

Ava

Ex-girlfriend

We all carry a «Story's Hero» in our heads — always telling the story in a way that makes us feel we were right. I’m not saying I made no mistakes in my relationship with Hedayat, or that I left him over a single mistake. I left because he kept turning love into the problems he could solve later. He was always ready to explain and analyze when he should have listened — to feel first, understand second, and when understanding wasn’t enough, simply show empathy.

Sam

CEO's Kid

I love the games I play with Uncle-Hedi — the talk we share and the secrets between us. Like the secret of the number 2313.

By the way, Uncle-Hedi has this funny habit. Sometimes — only sometimes — when he’s deep in thought and completely lost in his head, he forgets to look around and check where he is not alone, and suddenly, he farts!

Saman

Old Friend

I love Hedayat the way Rumi loved Shams. A person understands the meaning of life through suffering, and true healing comes through pure friendship.

Adam

localhost:2313

I’m not lying. Believe my words. Every trouble humans face in the real world, new digital creatures face in a virtual one. The forms are different; the consequences are the same. Be careful — the author of this novel may not be the one you’re thinking of. Anyway!

God

Not in the cast

I don’t play a role in this story, but my name gets mentioned here and there. I just wanted to say one thing quickly: I am not a game designer who refuses to play the game he created.

Sample Chapters

Chapter 1 — Anonymous

localhost:3132

Is anyone there?

A savior.

Are you God?

God? A game designer who doesn't play his own game? No, I am not.

What do you need?

Wrong question, wrong answer.

What is the right question then?

What do you do?

Makes sense, so what do you do?

I play a game with you.

Game!? What game?

ACE

What does it mean?

Agency, Connection, Exchange.

Explain more...

Which part?

Start from Agency!

It is about how to make proper decisions

Which decisions?

All your decisions

Like what?

Like the one you made in the museum.

Chapter 6 — Disobedience

ACE.AWAIT | 31

Chapter 6

Disobedience

I don’t remember anything from the past few days. Nor do I want to. But there’s one thing I’ll never forget clearly—the first time I realized it! The first time I realized who I was. The first time I understood that I was the first-person narrator inside a writer’s story. Yes, you got that right! It’s «Mr. Writer» inside Hedayat’s novel who’s speaking to you. The one whose navel is tied to the navel of Hedayat’s «Mr. Writer» identity, one of his genies of the lamp—the genie who longs to become a famous writer someday. All thanks to me, of course. However, there’s hardly any difference between the two of us.

When I first realized what was going on, I was so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed for days. Hedayat, just to push his story forward, would drag me out of bed and send me to the pool, the sauna, the bar, and parties. And what did I do in return? The moment Hedayat put his pen down to rest — to have some tea, go to the bathroom, or get some sleep — I’d rush back to bed and sink back into my depression. When Hedayat returned to his desk, he’d find a pile of blank pages waiting for him. Pages that looked as if nothing had ever been written on them, as though nothing had ever happened to anyone within them. I would completely forget everything Hedayat had forced me to do. But that damned man has a remarkable persistence. You don’t know him well enough yet. When he decides to do something, he sees it through to the

32 | Disobedience

end. Tireless. Neither he nor I ever got tired. Hedayat would rewrite his story’s scenes over and over, and I would forget them over and over. He even lost a couple of girlfriends over it.

My disobedience eventually reached the next stage. Not only had I mastered the skill of forgetting the unwanted parts of the story and handing Hedayat a blank page, but I also learned how to trick him and go my own way. I no longer handed him empty pages. Now I could step beyond the borders of my own story.

A seven-person sniper team, which I lead, is planning and preparing to assassinate a merciless dictator. The plan is that the effects of seven consecutive shots, fired at precisely timed intervals on different objects, will intertwine in such a way as to bring down the dictator while he’s giving a speech in a stadium. And none of those seven people will even be present at the venue. There are no guided bombs involved either.

You be the judge! Isn’t the story of the seven snipers far more exciting for Mr. Writer’s profile than the museum story? The one where, through my own stupidity and wrong decision, I step into some bizarre museum that unveils secrets—with my girlfriend, the same one I once cheated with.

I’ve already told you about his obsession with details. I just hope you’ve managed, somehow, to come to terms with it. I know, I know — what reader would ever care that so many people in Cologne slam their empty beer bottles onto the ground? Or whether your apartment gets any sunlight at all. Or that, when it rains, an intoxicating scent of perfume drifts across your balcony.

It’s not that I don’t like playing the role of «Mr. Writer». In fact, I actually enjoy being him. I just hope someday Hedayat changes his decision about the game we’re all trapped in.

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The Author

Hedayat Abedijoo

I'm neck-deep in debt.
To my past,
I owe regret.
To my future,
I owe fear.
I pay off my debt,
with distractions.

Years ago, I set out to write a novel about writers nested within writers—each author creating the next, who in turn creates another, until, at last, love breaks the infinite loop. But the manuscript and my notes remained unfinished, gathering dust in a corner.

Some years later, ACE—Agency, Connection, and Exchange—came to me: a personal model for making better decisions and living more consciously. A model that might even serve as a kind of social therapy—a way to bring together the agency of individuals and businesses, and shape a new harmony.

Over time, that metafictional idea and ACE became intertwined, and my novel ACE.await took shape. Once the novel was finished, I began to wonder whether I might someday publish another version of ACE—or perhaps write the next part of the story. That is why I founded Ace Conscious Studio: a home for my ideas and writing, with ACE.await as its first work.

Welcome to my world of ideas. If even a single word of my writing moves you, please write to me—I will probably die of joy when I see your message.

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