Timo Ahrens
31, IT consultant, Zurich.
Calls his life “full,” because full means: no gap for the real questions to fall into.
🚀 Launch offer — Kindle for €0.99 (was €4.99) · limited time
You've been using AIto sound nice.You just won't admit it.This novel will.
Die Smartbrille. A novel by Chris Oguntolu.
Book 1 of 3.
Reality Sci-Fi · 2026 · 412 pages · €4.99€0.99 Kindle
What it's about
Timo Ahrens, 31, an IT consultant in Zurich, buys himself a pair of AR glasses at a tech conference. They help him think.
They help him so well that he can no longer tell which of his sentences are still his.
In the background: three women, one summer, a thunderstorm, and in the end a suspicion too large to say out loud.
Six lines that sting
01
By 2026, authenticity is just another filter.
We perform it instead of living it.
02
AR glasses aren't devices.
They're a layer over your relationships.
03
The future doesn't arrive as singularity.
It arrives as convenience.
04
“Keeping your options open” is the well-mannered version of “not deciding.”
05
If the AI knows what you'll say next —
which one of us is the human?
06
This isn't sci-fi.
It's this summer, one iteration earlier.
Six scenes from 2026
BERLIN · GITEX · 30 JUNE 2026
“Not for tourists.” — The first sentence that caught him.
ZURICH · ROOFTOP · 22:43
She had sat too close all evening. He had taken the glasses off too soon.
plausibility
trade-off
scope creep
FRANKFURT · NIEDERRAD · TUESDAY MIDDAY
The words sounded like him. No one was asking anymore whose they were.
LAKE ZURICH · SUNDAY RUN
He ran to think about nothing. It worked for sixteen minutes.
LUGANO · 26 SEPTEMBER 2026 · 07:43
Movement was the only thing that wanted nothing from him.
BUXTEHUDE · LIVING ROOM · SATURDAY EVENING
She never says when it's too much. That was the problem.
…Elena…
“I need to tell…”
Hey Timo,
I need to tell you something.
late
Sometimes he sees words no one has written yet.
He calls it tiredness.
He keeps calling it that, until he can't anymore.
What if you can no longer tell whether you're seeing it — or it's seeing you?
CHARACTERS
Elena Roth
Cultural manager, Zurich.
Listens before she answers. Says things without hedging them.
Hanna Stone
Heiress, London/Frankfurt.
Hikes the Taunus with a Facebook group while a board meeting waits at home.
Paula Meier
Physiotherapist, Zurich.
Moves without thinking about it. No performance, no hesitation.
Ines Gassner
Environmental engineer, Rapperswil.
Runs because it suits her. Says little, sees a lot — and shows none of it.
Rafi Demir
Sales, Zurich/everywhere.
Turns doubt into jokes, fear into motion. Loves Timo honestly, not gently.
Sanna Wolf
Product manager, Zurich.
Says what everyone is thinking and no one will phrase. Takes Timo's excuses for what they are.
Leila König & Daniel Kramer
Couple, Zurich.
She asks: “If the glasses suggest your words — who's speaking?” He says: “Don't need them. Never have.” Both are right.
Jules Amsel
Creative, Zurich.
Speaks rarely, hits precisely. “What you see through glasses is an interpretation.”
In the novel, the glasses are called LÚN.
They aren't for sale.
They're a study of a device that doesn't quite exist in 2026 — but one day, certainly.
We built them a website anyway. Or rather: someone did. We don't know who. We don't endorse it. We just link to it.
Easter Egg #1
EXCERPT
Chapter 1 — Timo buys himself no hope
Berlin in June wasn't loud, wasn't hot, wasn't what the press releases had promised. Berlin in June was an air-conditioned hangar full of men in dark shirts pretending they hadn't all liked the same LinkedIn post about AGI two weeks earlier.
Timo was wearing headphones with no music playing. It had become his method: send out an empty signal so no one would get the idea of speaking to him before he'd decided who he was today.
The display case stood at the far end of Hall 3, between a booth for Quantum-Cooling and one for Enterprise-Compliance-as-a-Service. It was so unremarkable that Timo had walked past it twice before he saw it. Dark grey powder-coated metal. A pane of glass behind which nothing was highlighted. A slim, dark pair of glasses on a plinth smaller than the thing he was holding in his hand — his own phone, vibrating with a push notification he didn't open.
“Not for tourists.” That was all the plaque said. No brand. No spec sheet. No three-letter acronyms strung together to suggest something without promising anything.
Timo stopped. He was 31, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd stood still at a conference booth without instantly opening the next tab in his head. One second. Two. A woman behind the case — slim, early thirties, dark bob, no smile, no tablet — looked at him as if she'd been waiting for him without knowing who he was.
End of Chapter 1.
You get Chapter 2 once the book is yours.
€0.99 Kindle (launch, was €4.99) · €14.99 Print · Audiobook available
BUY + PLAY ALONG
01
The Book
- Kindle — €0.99 (launch, was €4.99)
- Paperback — €14.99
- Audible — available
- Apple Books / Tolino / Kobo
02
Plot-Hole-Bounty
Find a logical plot hole and win a pair of Meta Ray-Bans.
The rules: chapter, sentence, and reasoning. Trivia and typos don't count. I post the winner, the find, and my honest reply in public.
→ lun@smartbrillebuch.de03
Typo Bingo
Spot a typo? Book 2 on the house.
One DM with page and word. First find per typo wins. One typo — one free copy of Book 2.
→ By direct message
About the author
Chris Oguntolu
His path runs through Hamburg, London and Geneva — most recently Zurich. He grew up close to tech, in a world where artificial intelligence wasn't a topic that arrived yesterday.
“Die Smartbrille” is his first book. The story, characters and sentences are his. AI was co-pilot, not autopilot — a deliberate separation that mirrors the very question the novel asks.
What happens when you write a book about a pair of glasses that thinks along with you — using something that thinks along with you? Three books. One question. Three iterations.
BOOK 2
Book 2 is coming.Sooner than the technology would allow.
If you want the date before Amazon does:
Rare, brief, no affiliate links, no funnel. First time: an excerpt. Second time: probably another one.