A scientist’s quest to cure PTSD with a time-slowing drug unleashes a frenzy among the population, forcing him to fight for its true purpose.

SYNOPSIS:

Dr. Evan Mercer, a gifted but emotionally burdened VA neurologist, leads PTSD support groups while struggling with the feeling that he isn’t doing enough for the patients he serves. When two veterans describe identical moments of “time slowing” during combat, Evan becomes fascinated with tachypsychia—the brain’s natural ability to accelerate perception during extreme stress.

After surviving a violent car crash in which he experiences this phenomenon firsthand, Evan becomes obsessed. He begins experimenting after hours, building a biochemical model of the neural process behind perceived time dilation. This obsession gives birth to TX-9, a dissolvable sublingual strip capable of triggering tachypsychia on demand. Designed as a tool to help PTSD patients process traumatic stimuli without being overwhelmed, TX-9 proves powerful, elegant, and seemingly safe.

Unintentionally, Evan has created a biological counterpart to artificial intelligence—a technology designed to empower people, but with implications far beyond its original purpose.

The TX-9 Time Tabs become a metaphor for AI itself: a human-made enhancement that accelerates perception, decision-making, and performance… and quickly spreads beyond the creator’s control.

Evan tests the compound first on a combat veteran, then on his brother-in-law Jake Holloway, a once-promising minor-league baseball player whose career is collapsing due to declining reaction times. Under TX-9, Jake becomes unstoppable. Word spreads—quietly, then rapidly.

The government takes notice. The FDA mysteriously deletes Evan’s application, the VA interrogates him, and the military imagines its pilots, soldiers, and intelligence teams operating five times faster than any adversary. But before Evan can understand the depth of the conspiracy, the formula is taken over.

The culprit: Vince Abreggio, a sophisticated, modern crime boss who identifies TX-9’s potential not as medicine—but as the most valuable drug in history. He forces Evan into a coerced “partnership,” using his own chemists to mass-produce the drug as “Time Tabs,” a recreational and performance-enhancing phenomenon that spreads across society like wildfire.

Surgeons use them to save lives. First responders use them at accident scenes. Traders use them to outpace the markets. Teachers, drivers, athletes, and everyday people begin relying on the drug for clarity, reaction, focus—and euphoria.

Public demand skyrockets. Time Tabs become a cultural lightning rod, celebrated on the news and on social media.

The government, now panicked, launches a multidepartment task force to locate the source and reclaim control.

Caught between Vince’s criminal empire and federal agencies closing in, Evan attempts a bold countermeasure: he files a $1 billion lawsuit against the VA and FDA, exposing their negligence and positioning himself as the public-facing “father” of Time Tabs. He becomes a household name—even a hero—but also a target.

Meanwhile, DEA Agent Ryan Caldwell, sharp and perceptive, becomes the one person who truly sees through Evan’s careful half-truths. His investigation threatens to topple everything Evan and the syndicate have built.

As Time Tabs explode across the world, Evan must choose between enabling a society addicted to manufactured clarity or risking everything—his career, freedom, and life—to undo the chaos his innovation has unleashed.

SLOWED is a gripping, high-concept thriller about the seduction of power, the moral burden of discovery, and the dangerous question at the heart of the human condition: What would we do if we could control time?

SLOWED