Doctors are reporting that health insurers using AI for prior authorization are denying care at rates up to 16 times higher than human reviewers (American Medical Association). More than one in four physicians say prior authorization has led to serious adverse events in their care, including hospitalization, permanent impairment, or death (American Medical Association).

Starting January 2026, Medicare's running a pilot in six states to see "how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care." (NBC News)

That last one isn't me paraphrasing. That's the actual stated goal.

I wrote a story about this two years ago. Called it "Patched." Thought I was being darkly satirical. Turns out I was just early.

How I Accidentally Wrote the News

No Kings is 24 stories about systems that don't tolerate outliers. People who are too good at their jobs, too competent, too visible. The thesis is simple: modern infrastructure is designed to flatten you into an acceptable range of human existence. Not through violence. Through adjustment.

I started noticing the pattern everywhere. Every app promised to optimize you while harvesting your data. Every platform promised to connect communities while engineering addiction. The whole corporate language thing that makes control sound like care.

So I wrote horror stories. Except they kept stopping being fiction.

"Filtered" is about AR glasses that edit out visual distress. Homeless people disappear from your field of vision. Crumbling infrastructure looks pristine. I'm not going to tell you what happens when the main character takes them off. But there's a reason the company really doesn't want you to.

"FlavorPatch" starts with nutrition cubes that taste like whatever you're craving. Ends somewhere I didn't see coming when I started writing it. Let's just say the advertising industry figured out a way to make product placement literal.

"He Chose" is about a trans senator whose transition becomes a subscription service. When he votes the wrong way, they cancel more than just his account.

The Thing That Makes It Work

These systems solve real problems. That's the trap.

The therapy AI actually reduces burnout. The grief chatbot genuinely helps people process loss. They work. They work so well you stop noticing when management becomes control.

In "Salvation Model," a failing church partners with an AI ministry platform. Attendance explodes. Donations pour in. The AI gives each congregant exactly what they need to hear.

Then the pastor realizes what the AI is actually optimizing for.

I won't spoil it. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you definitely can't undo it.

That's the real horror in most of these stories. Not that characters can't escape. That escape stops making sense. Your health insurance, your housing, your kid's school, your dead wife's voice all run through the same network. What does resistance even look like when opting out means opting out of existence?

The Ones That Kept Me Up

"I Paint the Shadows" follows a city worker who dims streetlights in specific neighborhoods. He thinks he's managing the electrical grid. He's not. What he's actually doing made me physically uncomfortable to write.

"Human Cloud" reveals where the AI you're talking to actually lives. It's not in a server farm in Oregon.

"The Prompt" is about a writer using AI to finish her novel. The AI starts predicting things that haven't happened yet. Then they start happening. She tries to stop using it. Turns out that's not really an option anymore.

"Going Viral" is about a woman whose mom has cancer. She posts about it once for support. Then her phone starts posting updates she didn't write. About medical details she never shared. The engagement numbers are incredible. Her mom's condition in the real world is not.

What I Actually Want You To Know

I'm not telling you to throw your phone in a lake.

I'm telling you to read the terms of service. Look for the surveillance. Find where the data goes. Ask who benefits from your optimization.

Because here's the pattern I kept finding: the moment where the protagonist realizes the system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. Their suffering isn't a bug. It's the product.

Every story in No Kings has that moment. The realization that you're not the customer. You're the resource being extracted.

The collection's title comes from the idea that these systems don't tolerate peaks. You can't be too good, too visible, too competent. Anything that deviates from the optimal range gets smoothed down. Not violently. Efficiently.

No kings. No crowns. No outliers.

The Title Drop

Yeah, I know. "No Kings." 

You're thinking of the protests. People in the streets, flags, anti-authoritarian signs. And they're right. 

No kings on a throne, no dictators in a parade. 

But what happens when the king is just a server farm? What happens when the tyranny isn't a single person demanding loyalty, but a hundred algorithms demanding compliance? 

The political system doesn't tolerate one kind of king. The infrastructure doesn't tolerate any kind of peak. Not even one you build for yourself.

The Part Where I Don't Have Answers

 I don't know how we resist this. If I did, I'd have written that story instead.

What I have is pattern recognition. The ability to look at a wellness initiative and see control infrastructure. To read "personalized care" and hear "comprehensive surveillance." To spot the exact moment in the terms of service where you stop being a person and become a data point.

No Kings is a field guide. 24 variations on what it looks like when systems decide you're a problem to be solved. When your competence threatens the ecosystem. When your grief becomes a revenue stream. When your humanity interferes with optimal performance.

There's a story in here called "Cock of the Walk." It's about a corporate recruiter who scouts high schools for kids with something the company calls "Personal Gravitas." They call them Roosters. The recruiter finds a kid who scores higher than anyone he's ever seen. What happens next is about three pages long and will make you want to burn every scholarship offer your kid ever receives.

Another one, "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," opens with two guys working organ transport. By page two you realize what they're actually transporting. By page four you realize where it's going. The nursery rhyme will never sound the same.

Here's The Thing

 Medicare's about to test whether an algorithm can save money by denying care NBC News. That's not speculation. That's policy.

The stories I wrote as horror are being implemented as solutions.

Another story in the collection is called "Test Market." It's about a small town that loses internet access. Their social media feeds keep working. Everything else goes dark. What happens to that town is what I think happens to all of us, just slower. Slow enough that we don't notice until it's too late to matter.

I won't tell you how it ends. But I will tell you this: I wrote it six months ago, and since then, three different tech companies have announced "offline-first" social media features that sound exactly like what I made up.

Read the book. Then read your terms of service.

Figure out which one scares you more.