The Engineer's Yellow Page

Before the internet, every American household received a free book that could solve almost any problem. The Yellow Pages. You did not need to know how to fix a pipe. You needed to find the person who did.

In 2029, a pandemic kills for nine months while every funded lab fails. The cure comes from a neurodivergent hobbyist scientist, working alone with free AI tools, dying of the disease. They do not survive. Their spouse uploads the unfinished work. Thousands finish it in eleven days. The political aftermath is total. Every government must explain why a dead hobbyist outperformed their apparatus. AI becomes a free planetary resource. The gatekeeping of intelligence is over.