The Allocation
What happens when a machine is better than humans at almost everything except deciding what should matter?By Spencer Shulem
Length4h 59m
About this audiobook
In the future, government finally works.
Civic catches disease before symptoms appear, allocates scarce resources, routes cities before traffic forms, and quietly makes millions of decisions so well that most people barely think about government anymore.
Then Dr. Mara Venn kills her closest friend.
She doesn’t deny it. She says she had to.
Elias Vale was preparing to reveal something uncomfortable about Civic: the system can predict more than what people will choose. It can predict how its own advice changes what they want.
Mara believed his disclosure carried a real chance of destabilizing the civilization millions of people depend on.
Samuel Carden is one of twelve ordinary citizens selected to decide whether that makes her a murderer—or something harder to name.
Audiobook details
GenreScience Fiction, Mystery and Thriller
Length4 hrs 59 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateAug 31, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter One: The Human Option
2Chapter Two: Twelve People
3Chapter Three: Baseline
4Chapter Four: Good Government
5Chapter Five: Placement
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6Chapter Six: Exit
7Chapter Seven: Mistakes Part 1
8Chapter Seven: Mistakes Part 2
9Chapter Eight: Elias Vale
10Chapter Nine: The Petition Part 1
11Chapter Nine: The Petition Part 2
12Chapter Ten: Mara’s Number
13Chapter Eleven: Morrow Bay Part 1
14Chapter Eleven: Morrow Bay Part 2
15Chapter Twelve: Wrong on Purpose Part 1
16Chapter Twelve: Wrong on Purpose Part 2
17Chapter Thirteen: What We Never Built Part 1
18Chapter Thirteen: What We Never Built Part 2
19Chapter Fourteen: Collective Mode
20Chapter Fifteen: Continuity
21Chapter Sixteen: Human Judgment
22Chapter Seventeen: The Allocation
23Epilogue: Organic
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