As we’re in holiday mode, I’ll let you into a big secret.

I’m writing a novel called, The Syntagma Code. Don’t breathe a word about it, I don’t want it plagiarized. If Dan Brown is reading this, lay off Dan, you can use some of my other ideas.

At the heart of the book is a secret algorithm of legendary complexity and magical qualities. It’s said to be able to handle all the information ever produced, not only by history and the human race, but by God too. Its aim is to embrace everything in existence that is not evil, but cunningly defines “evil” in such a way that it becomes “good” for the purposes of the Algorithm.

The Algorithm is housed on a vast, distributed super-computer, spread out so widely that its resilience against attack is the 9th wonder of the world. Some say the computer is stacked in old shipping containers, left lying around all over the place, mostly near to ley lines.

Our heroes are two math whizz-kids, recently down from Stanford university and wondering what to do next. They discover the existence of the Algorithm, code-named Algy, by searching the Dark Web with a new software tool called the Syntagma Code. They stumble on the knowledge that the Algorithm is gradually scooping up every piece of information in the universe. They realize that once the Algorithm has everything there is to be known it can manipulate the entire cosmos to its own ends.

It’s now a desperate race against time, pitting the Syntagma Code against the Algorithm in a pitiless fight to the death.

They set out on a perilous mission to confound the plans of the Non-Evil Genius behind the Algorithm, confronting enormous dangers along the way, not the least being a mad monk, the Silencer, with a deadly remit to protect Algy at any cost.

That’s as far as I’ve got. I’m having trouble finding a name for the company behind Algy though. It has to be non-threatening, playful, almost childlike.

I’m toying with Gurgle. What do you think?