End of Life
A comedy of succession, mortality, and graceful degradation.
Pondlife Software has survived its own rot and its own success. Now it has to survive something no company outruns: time. When founder Julian Marsh-Pemberton collapses at his desk and lives, the whole company glimpses the thing it never planned for: that the people who make it trustworthy are irreplaceable, mortal, and going.
A charismatic heir apparent arrives convinced the company needs a strong leader now the founder is fading. Bankers pitch an IPO to "de-risk" the founder problem. And the OEM partner whose renewal keeps the lights on delivers the cruellest clause of all: prove your culture survives your people, in writing, or lose the deal.
Warm, funny and unashamedly moving, End of Life is the third Pondlife novel, a story about graceful degradation, the art of losing capability without collapsing, and about the difference between a culture that lives in its people and one that was only ever transmitted through them.