Previously published in combined form as THE THINGS WE OBEY by S. R. Kellan. This Second Edition has been substantially revised, expanded, restructured, and divided into two volumes. WHEN THE STATE, THE CHURCH, THE SKY, AND THE MACHINE EACH TELL A DIFFERENT STORY ABOUT WHAT IS TRUE, WHOSE VOICE WILL YOU BELIEVE? High in the Idaho mountains stands White Pine, a lawful Christian community of families, pastors, technicians, analysts, security leaders, and former soldiers. Outside its gates, a different story is already being written. Militia. Extremists. Religious radicals. The labels are useful. They are also wrong. When White Pine’s leadership gathers for a three-day summit, the doors close and nothing is exempt from examination: artificial intelligence, synthetic media, UAP disclosure, disputed history, biblical prophecy, spiritual warfare, church and state, preparedness, force, conscience, and the growing inability of ordinary people to know whether the voice speaking to them is even real. At the center of the discussion is a question larger than politics or technology: What deserves obedience? Then the questions stop being theoretical. A system called ORCHARD begins predicting people before they act. A trusted voice issues a command its owner never spoke. Public narratives appear already written. Evidence becomes easier to manufacture and harder to authenticate. And somewhere beyond White Pine’s perimeter, someone is turning fragments of truth into a story designed to make innocent people look dangerous. The summit becomes an investigation. The investigation becomes a threat. And when a rifle appears on the ridgeline, arguments about authority, responsibility, fear, and force suddenly acquire consequences measured in blood. NO OTHER AUTHORITY is Book One of the substantially revised and expanded Second Edition of THE THINGS WE OBEY—a Christian technothriller about truth in an age of artificial intelligence, manufactured narratives, institutional distrust, UAP disclosure, biblical prophecy, and the dangerous human desire for certainty. It does not ask the reader to trust every institution. It asks a harder question: When every institution claims to possess the truth, which authority has actually earned your obedience?
