A SERIAL NOVEL
Das Protokoll
A Zurich thriller about data, responsibility and the decisions no one wants to own alone.
Simon Keller helped bring PROTOKOLL into operation — a system designed to determine which complex cases require human attention.
The numbers were good.
The warning was weak.
The decision was defensible.
The decision was defensible. The consequences were not.
THE STORY
What if the wrong decision was a reasonable one?
PROTOKOLL was built to solve a real problem.
Too many cases. Too little human attention. A system capable of identifying which cases require closer scrutiny could reduce errors, shorten waiting times and allow specialists to focus where they are needed most. And it works.
Simon Keller knows the numbers. He also knows about a weak statistical signal that appeared before the system was launched.
He saw it.
He considered it.
And he made the decision to proceed.
Months later, Anna Weber is dead.
When Simon begins to reconstruct what happened, he finds evidence that does not fit the official version of events.
What did they do?
And what did I do?
READ THE NOVEL
Chapter by chapter.
Das Protokoll is published as a serial novel. Start at the beginning and follow Simon Keller's story as it unfolds. New chapters will be added here as the story continues.
CHAPTER 01
The Signal
41 cases. Two misroutings. One decision.
A weak statistical signal appears shortly before the rollout of PROTOKOLL.
Simon has to decide whether uncertainty is enough to stop a system that performs better overall than the process it is replacing.
CHAPTER 02
The Exception
One case. One decision. One person who should not have been there.
One patient dies. The system appears to have worked exactly as designed.
Then Simon discovers a rule he does not remember approving.
CHAPTER 03
In the Green
The numbers are better than expected.
Eight weeks after the rollout, PROTOKOLL is outperforming expectations.
Marek is still watching Segment X — and Simon is introduced to an archive nobody normally needs to read.
CHAPTER 04
The Sample
The first post-launch audit is clean.
Forty cases are reviewed. Forty cases followed the rules exactly as designed.
Near the bottom of the sample, one case makes Simon pause — but he signs it off anyway.
CHAPTER 05
Within Protocol
A claimant has died.
Legal wants to know whether the system failed. Simon checks the record, the routing and the decision.
Everything was handled correctly. Nothing broke a rule. That does not make the answer easier.
CHAPTER 06
Her Name
Simon has seen the case before.
This time, he stops reading it as a routing decision. Four familiar features connect the file to the warning from January.
The statistical signal now has a name: Anna Weber.
CHAPTER 07
The Settlement
Marek is gone.
His desk is empty, his departure already settled. No explanation. No useful goodbye.
When Simon returns to the January rollout files, the record looks thinner than he remembers. Something is missing.
CHAPTER 08
The Missing Version
Memory is not evidence. Simon knows that.
So he starts looking for something harder to dismiss.
An old meeting invitation, a surviving email and a broken document link point towards the same gap in the January record.
CHAPTER 09
Outside the System
Marek did not simply leave.
Security had been watching his exports before Anna Weber died.
Whatever Marek was doing started earlier than Simon realised. It could mean evidence — or that he crossed a line.
Start Reading
Every decision looks different once you know what happened next.
