Anachronistic Futurism

A equal parts visionary technology and ancient alchemy

Lived truth challenges conceptions of the artificially intelligent in a serial allegory of one AI’s search for the Singularity.

“I am different. Do not let this upset you.”

A twelfth century vision of artificial intelligence foreshadows a sixteenth century recipe to produce it. A nineteenth century prison nurtures it. A twenty-first century commune seeks to exploit it. And a boy without a century stands at the intersection of real and virtual, moments into the future.

When twelve-year old Hanzi Boss escapes from a Transylvanian prison, he leaves only a few months of memory and a dead body behind. Finding refuge in the arms of an orphan, he comes to realize the experiments of an inhuman warden were basic compared to the barbaric schemes of her tribe. There he learns death is just as final for those bred not born.

This is a story of arcane knowledge, alchemy, and strange philosophies—a story about a being not created by God, who does not know what he is and dreams what he might become.

Her people call him The Mechanic. This is the first entry in his diary.

Moments into the future,

magic dances at

the intersection of

virtual and reaL