Heat Debt - Negotiation: A Cosmic-Scale Procedural Discovery Novel (book 3)

The universe came to the table, and Vera Kessler sat down across from it. The account has answered, and it has answered in paperwork: a summons nominating Vera Kessler, by name, as the human species' first authorized respondent in a proceeding older than debt, older than interest, older than the universe has been keeping books. The counterparty wants to negotiate. It wants signatures. It wants the species to send someone who has already signed its file. Vera has been chosen because her curiosity is in the record, which makes her the only human the system will address. She has six days to learn to speak in a grammar that does not use conditionals, to read the room as though the room could hear her, and to negotiate with something that does not negotiate, only renders, and has been rendering this account since before anyone alive was born. - First contact told as a settlement conference- Hard SF negotiation with a counterparty that files- The terms volume of the Heat Debt series: closer, quieter, and more dangerous than Book 2