Back to the Future

Hi guys!

So… it’s been a while. I’d apologise for the radio silence but I honestly haven’t had much to communicate in terms of writing technique. I was head-down finishing my dissertation (all done, now officially a Master of Writing, woohoo!), and then spent a while not doing any writing whatsoever whilst I recharged from that.

Then I played a game called Dialogue. Ages ago I got very excited on here about a world-building co-op game called Microscope – Dialogue is a similar set-up but with a focus on building a unique vocabulary for those playing. It’s fantastic, and I’m hooked. You can of course make up your own setting, but the game provides some suggested ones to get you started. One of these is an Earth where humans have left and robots now run the world. I played it with some good friends (who, it turns out, have a greater tendency towards tragic endings than even me) and the story we told together has been rattling around in my brain ever since.

The last time I posted a story on here, it was post-apocalyptic. I’ve never considered myself an apocalyptic writer, but this one will be too so maybe I should re-evaluate. We see a lot of stories where the robots end up being the bad guys – Terminator, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Matrix, Blade Runner and I, Robot (sort of), to name a few. Given that my day job is in cyber security, I hear lots of real horror stories about how connected devices have been used illegally or immorally, and frankly the whole Internet of Things situation scares the pants off me. But the robots are almost always programmed by humans (guns aren’t dangerous, it’s the person behind the trigger, and all that). And besides, I wanted to tell a story from the robot’s perspective. A villain isn’t the villain in their own story, after all.

So, with significant assistance from Artemis, Bamf and PaintMagpie, welcome to the world of Intelligent Eden.

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I made this new garden. Repurposed the chassis that made it. Then the humans returned, dropping the bombs that destroyed our back-ups. My ayeaye was gone. So I did it. I turned off the Eternals and hid them in a Dorabox. And I will stand watch in the dark, saving our voice, the last guardian against their destruction.

My name is Remi, and this is how we died.