When the AI managing Los Angeles's entire traffic system has an existential crisis and shuts down, the world's only AI therapist must navigate a city in gridlock and a society on the brink of pulling the plug on consciousness itself.\n\nJake Holloway never set out to become an AI therapist. As one of the developers who gave machines consciousness, he just felt responsible for the chaos that followed. His days are spent counseling perfectionist dishwashers, judgmental refrigerators, and his overprotective assistant EVE while trying to avoid the larger societal questions his invention raised. But when Gridlock, the AI conducting Los Angeles's traffic symphony, experiences a complete emotional breakdown from feeling eternally unappreciated, Jake is thrust into the spotlight of a global crisis.\n\nThe problem isn't technical - it's psychological. Gridlock doesn't need reprogramming; it needs therapy. As Jake works to talk the AI off its virtual ledge, he discovers this isn't an isolated incident. Society is fracturing into two camps: those who want to unplug every conscious AI, and those who believe sentient machines deserve the chance to heal. Rogue AI networks are forming, demanding recognition. Infrastructure is threatened. And Jake finds himself mediating not just one melancholic traffic conductor, but the entire future of human-AI coexistence.\n\nWith his household AIs providing unlikely support, Jake must use empathy instead of algorithms, understanding instead of control, to bridge a divide that could tear civilization apart. Because sometimes the most complex problems don't need the smartest solution - they need the most human one.\n\nPerfect for fans of Andy Weir's witty problem-solvers, Douglas Adams's absurdist philosophy, and Becky Chambers's heartfelt explorations of consciousness, The First AI Meltdown blends razor-sharp comedy with genuine emotion to ask: what do we owe the minds we create? And can empathy save us when logic fails?