Headline
Two teenage hardware thieves revive a secret military intelligence that may have been waiting for them.
Short description
In northern Indiana in 1997, two seventeen-year-olds steal discarded computers from a closing library and unknowingly take home a decommissioned military server. Its encrypted PROJECT_Q directory contains decades of radar and signals data—and the remains of a system built to find patterns no human could see. When Scott Northman brings it back online, the machine begins asking questions of its own, drawing the boys, a student journalist, a haunted teacher, and a dogged sheriff into a secret a defense contractor will do anything to contain.
Author biography
Scott Nottingham is the author of Project Q, a grounded techno-thriller set in northern Indiana at the end of the analog age.
Book facts
- Title: Project Q
- Author: Scott Nottingham
- Genre: Adult techno-thriller / coming-of-age mystery
- Setting: Northern Indiana, 1997–1998
- Length: 52 chapters; approximately 179,800 words
Suggested story angles
- Why a story about artificial intelligence begins with SCSI drives, DAT tapes, and a stolen server
- Reconstructing the tactile, pre-smartphone computer culture of 1997
- Writing an intelligence that is calm, uncertain, and morally restrained
- Keeping the unexplained genuinely unexplained
- What teenage friendship reveals under institutional pressure
Approved pull quote
“A tense, tactile techno-thriller with a genuine coming-of-age heart.”
This quote comes from the project’s editorial review and should not be attributed to an outside reviewer or publication.
Artwork
The finished front cover is available from the Resources page of the Project Q companion site. The cover artwork and character portraits use AI-generated imagery.