John W. Taggart
The Protocol
Series
Three protagonists. Three instruments. One hidden event.
The Series
Daniel Mercer monitors the most precise atomic clocks on Earth at NIST. When every clock in the global network begins producing identical residuals for the first time in history, he recognizes it as a coherence event that physics says should be impossible. His investigation leads from the sterile labs of Boulder, Colorado to the twelve-thousand-year-old stone rings of Göbekli Tepe — where he discovers the signal isn't new. It's ancient. And it's accelerating.
The Architecture
The Protocol Series is the first of three parallel series in The Resonance Universe. While Daniel measures time, Aimee Mercer follows the money in The Directive Series, and Wren Fontaine reads the sky in The Sequence Series. Three investigators. Three instruments. One hidden event. They never meet — but the reader holds all three.
The Books
Four Volumes
Book 1 of 4
The Recurrence Protocol
The clocks agreed. They were never supposed to agree.
Daniel Mercer is a metrologist at NIST — the National Institute of Standards and Technology — where he monitors the most precise atomic clocks on Earth. When every clock in the global network begins producing identical residuals for the first time in history, Daniel recognizes it as a coherence event that physics says should be impossible. His investigation leads from the sterile halls of NIST to the ancient stone structures of Göbekli Tepe, where he discovers that the signal isn’t new. It’s twelve thousand years old. And it’s accelerating.
2
The Alignment Protocol
The signal had a source. The source had been waiting.
2026
3
The Origin Protocol
The builders left instructions. Not all of them were meant to be followed.
2027
4
The Terminal Protocol
The final measurement. The one that changes everything.
2028
The Investigators
Characters
Meet Daniel Mercer, the metrologist who discovered the signal, and the team drawn into the investigation across four volumes.
Meet the CharactersBehind the Fiction
The Science
Atomic clocks, coherence events, Göbekli Tepe, and the real science behind The Protocol Series. Every detail starts with what we actually know.
Explore the ScienceThe Resonance Universe