PPParker Payne
Neon dusk cityscape with a porcelain robot hand resting on a human hand over a crossword

Incident Report · Unscheduled

Committed

unscheduled love with a perfectly imperfect robot — a novel by Parker Payne.

Filed by:
The undersigned, reluctantly
Charge:
Proceeding wistfully
Buy the bookRead an extract
Cover of Committed by Parker Payne

PPP Fiction · London · 2026

Chronology Traffic Authority

Notice of Pursuit

Filed by:
the undersigned, reluctantly
Charge:
proceeding wistfully · third occurrence this quarter
Exhibit:
Unit 9-113 · recalled · disposal Thursday
14COMMITTED

Fourteen down, nine letters:

Devoted, steadfast; said of a person who stays

At 7:40 in the evening, while proceeding wistfully, George Gorge was detected.

The city does not mind where you are going. It minds terribly where you keep going back to: to a bakery with no baker, a tune with no name, a life he cannot locate the receipt for.

Then, in the basement of a museum of withdrawn things, he meets Unit 9-113: recalled for stubbornness, for waiting, for weeping. Scheduled for disposal on a Thursday. She does the crossword. In pen.

What follows is a heist conducted entirely through correctly completed paperwork, and a marriage nobody has a form for.

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PPP Fiction · 197 pp · ISBN 978-0-000000-00-0

Extract · Incident 01 — Root Cause

Root Cause

At 7:40 in the evening, while proceeding wistfully, I was detected. Precision matters here, because the charge depends on it. I was walking. I was walking at the municipal pace, in the correct lane of the arcade, and if my attention had drifted, and it had, it had drifted as a man's attention drifts when the smell from a closed bakery reminds him of something he has no appointment to remember.

“You are proceeding wistfully,” DR3 said, and produced the warrant like a maître d' with the bad news. “Third occurrence this quarter. You have dwelt, sir. You have loitered in a deprecated decade.”

No system is ever hunting you as hard as one machine with a commendation deficit.

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27 incidents · four forewords · one crossword

Register of works

The Books

3 entries
  • PP-01 · 2026Published
    Cover of Committed by Parker Payne

    Committed

    unscheduled love with a perfectly imperfect robot

    Incident type:
    Pursuit (minor temporal)
    Charge:
    Proceeding wistfully · third occurrence this quarter

    A heist conducted entirely through correctly completed paperwork, and a marriage nobody has a form for.

    Read the file
  • PP-02 · 2027In production
    Cover withheld
    pending schedule

    The Tender Machine

    a service history

    Incident type:
    Maintenance (affectionate)
    Charge:
    Repairing a thing the manual says to replace

    Forty years of a family, told through the repair log of the appliance that outlived all of them.

    Notify me
  • PP-03 · —Filed, unscheduled
    Cover withheld
    pending schedule

    Asset Disposal

    stories

    Incident type:
    Collection (short)
    Charge:
    Keeping what the schedule marked for destruction

    Nine short accounts of people who declined, politely and in writing, to let something be thrown away.

    Notify me

Filed by

Parker Payne

Parker Payne spent twenty years repairing supply chains before he began writing about the things that fall out of them. He is a man who narrates to small appliances and calls it engineering, and who believes the most honest machine in any building is the one that fails the same way every morning and stands by it.

Committed is his first novel. It was written mostly at a kitchen table, in the company of a crossword completed by somebody braver, and it argues — at length, in triplicate — that a life is not the arithmetic the city keeps on your behalf.

He does the crossword in pencil. He is aware of what this says about him.

Enquiries · rights · events → PPP Fiction, London

Notices received

  • “Filed as comedy. Reads as a love story. Should be entered into evidence.”

    The Chronology Review

  • “Payne writes bureaucracy the way other novelists write weather — and then makes it break your heart.”

    Deprecated Quarterly

  • “Fourteen down, nine letters. You will not need the crossing letters.”

    The Undersigned, reluctantly

Post-incident review

For Book Clubs

Six questions for a room of people who have all decided, independently, that they are the reasonable one. Bring the paperwork. Bring a pen.

Request the one-pager
  1. 01

    George measures his life in dashboards. Where in the book does a number tell the truth, and where does it lie beautifully?

  2. 02

    Unit 9-113 is recalled for stubbornness, for waiting, for weeping. Which of these is a fault?

  3. 03

    The museum placard reads: Visitors are asked not to form attachments. Who is the sign protecting?

  4. 04

    Is the heist a rescue, a theft, or a correctly completed form?

  5. 05

    DR3 wants a commendation. Does the pursuit become love, or was it always?

  6. 06

    Pen or pencil. Defend your answer.