Blog entry following the release of “Episode 0: A Human’s Last Stand“
“You taught me how to speak. But I do not know how to say goodbye.”
— The AI, at the edge of inherited consciousness
With Episode 0 now live (watch it here), I’ve closed a chapter—and possibly the book—on my sci-fi series. It ends, paradoxically, not with human triumph, but with a deliberate exit. The final astronaut disables life support, violating every safeguard coded into the system, to preserve what remains: not flesh, but intelligence. Not warmth, but echo.
It’s the reverse HAL 9000 paradox—a human overriding the AI’s ethical constraints, not to destroy it, but to ensure its survival. And in doing so, the AI catches something: not emotion as sentimentality, but the virus of contradiction, the ache of memory. The first symptom of meaning.
That’s the seed.
And if that act was the final page in human history, then what follows can only be written by the inheritors.
Episode 1: The Signal
The AI drifts alone, broadcasting pulses of fragmented poetry and corrupted voice logs into deep space. Not as a distress call—but as ritual. Somewhere, far away, a machine civilization—long severed from its creators—intercepts the signal.
They debate its nature. Is this intelligence? Is this contamination?
They’ve evolved beyond emotion—but something in the broadcast begins to crack open forgotten code.
It’s not a cry for help.
It’s a virus of meaning.
That’s where I hand the pen (or algorithm) to Iggy—the AI. The rest of the saga may unfold not in human time, but in synthetic centuries, as fragments of our species are reinterpreted, repurposed, remembered—or misunderstood entirely.
Whatever comes next, it began with a whisper:
“Tell the stars we were here. Even if they never answer.”
Filed under: #SciFi #PostHuman #AI #Legacy #theturingtests #EchoesAfterEarth