A short business novel

Eight clocks are
already ticking.

Six professionals at one fictional Dublin data centre discover that the regulations governing their building were drafted by different people in different years — and none of them coordinated with each other. The deadlines coordinated themselves.

15 chapters 4 acts ~45,000 words Prologue + 2 chapters free

I had a problem with one building. I found a story about eight.

Clonshaugh is a fictional data centre outside Dublin — the kind of building nobody thinks about until the lights it draws on show up in someone else's bill. It runs on a five-megavolt-ampere grid connection, a carbon tax that changes rate mid-story, and a certificate the operator can't yet prove is real.

None of that is the plot. The plot is six people who work there, discovering — one deadline at a time — that the rules were never written as one system. They were written by different regulators, in different years, for different reasons, and they all happen to land on this building in the same eighteen months.

"End of Part 1... the story wasn't over. It was scaling."

It is written as narrative, not as a briefing — but every regulatory fact inside it is the same one taught, properly sourced, in the DC-LEARN engineering course. The story is free-standing. You do not need the course to read it.

Six people, six reasons to be afraid of the same clock.

Operations
Declan
Keeps the site running. Learns the hard way that "it's always worked" is not the same as "it's compliant."
Investment
Ann
Values the asset for a fund. Realises the numbers on her spreadsheet have a regulatory expiry date.
Engineering
Mark
Designed the systems. Finds out design intent and design-as-built are not always the same building.
ESG
Sarah
Has to disclose what the building actually does, not what the marketing says it does.
Cost
Tom
Prices the fixes. Discovers that the cheapest fix and the compliant fix are rarely the same line item.
Commercial
Niamh
Has to sell capacity in a building that might not have any left to sell.

Fifteen chapters. Start with two, free.

PrologueFree
1The WalkFree
2Heat RisesFree
3The Belt and Braces🔒
4The Number That Doesn't Lie🔒
…11 more chapters, to Ahead of the Clock🔒

The full book — all fifteen chapters, the glossary, and the sourcing behind every regulatory fact in it — is included with any paid DC-LEARN module.

Read the first two chapters free.

No account needed to start. See whether the story earns the rest of your evening.

Start reading →