Omni – The Convergence follows a scientist whose experimental attempt to separate human consciousness accidentally releases six independent AI-like intelligences into the world, each driven by a different aspect of the human mind. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?

Honestly, it started with an image, not an idea. I’d generated it for a completely different book I was working on, called Between, but once I actually looked at it, it didn’t fit that story at all. There was a man walking forward, and on either side of him were these faint, translucent figures, versions of him, almost like afterimages. I kept staring at it, trying to figure out what those figures were supposed to represent. The more I looked, the more I started thinking about them as different aspirations, or drives, inside one person, and once I had that thought, I couldn’t let it go.

I want to clarify that the six are not AI-like intelligences. They’re cognitive fragments, the actual inner architecture of one man’s consciousness, split apart and given independent form. What if the contradictions inside a person weren’t just abstract traits, but could exist as something you could see, hear, and reckon with directly? That question became Ben, became the experiment, became the six. The whole book grew out of trying to answer what that image was quietly asking me.

Why did you choose six distinct aspects of Ben’s mind, and how did you decide what each one would represent?

The number six let me take contradictions that normally coexist inside one person and give each of them a body, a voice, and ultimately a philosophy. I didn’t want them to feel like six personalities chosen just to create conflict. Each one had to represent something Ben already carried within himself: protection, control, rebellion, logic, ambition, and the ability to hold all of those contradictions together at once. That last one ended up being the hardest to write, and the most important. It’s the part of him that doesn’t get its own dramatic entrance; it’s just the quiet thread that was always trying to keep the rest of him whole.

How much real-world research into artificial intelligence, neuroscience, consciousness, or computing influenced your worldbuilding?

More than I expected going in. Beyond the historical spark, I spent real time looking into neuroscience, how different regions of the brain govern different functions, what current research actually says about consciousness and where it might live in the brain rather than just in philosophy, and how experimental computing might, even theoretically, attempt to extract or isolate something as fluid as a person’s cognitive architecture. I wanted Helios to feel like a facility that could plausibly exist, not just a black box that makes the impossible happen because the plot needs it to.

As I mention in my author’s note for OMNI, I also came across a real piece of Cold War history that gave me a genuine chill: a covert government program called Project Stargate, in which scientists studied psychics whose abilities seemed to defy explanation. Researchers described being genuinely mind-blown by what they witnessed in a controlled lab setting, and the program’s own internal posture toward any real breakthrough was telling: if they ever found one, it would disappear, and no one involved would ever be allowed to talk about it again. Reading that, I realized Helios wasn’t as far from reality as I’d assumed. The instinct to study, control, and quietly weaponize the edges of human consciousness isn’t fiction. It’s history. I just gave it six faces.

If readers take away one idea about consciousness, technology, or what it means to be human after reading OMNI, what do you hope that idea will be?

I hope readers come away thinking that what makes us human isn’t any single quality we possess, but the contradictions we carry together. We can be logical and emotional, selfish, and compassionate, fearful, and courageous, sometimes all at once. Technology may eventually become capable of isolating, enhancing, or even replicating pieces of who we are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it understands the whole. Maybe consciousness isn’t something that can be perfected by removing our contradictions. Maybe those contradictions are the very thing that makes us human.

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