Errante

Into the AI world with you, human!

You’re in a bookstore and you see these three covers. Which one do you pick up in your hands? Scroll down for the poll!

Errante — Wandering

Wandering towards the horizon as a human, and beyond it who knows? Perhaps as a human-machine? Errante, my new sci-fi anthology, invites us to wander toward the horizon and take a look. Have you ever stood on the edge of Grand Canyon? It takes your breath away. Every single time. It feels unreal. This is like the horizon you will vaguely perceive in Errante. A notion of what’s to come. Of course, we cannot predict what is to come. But we can imagine. We still can imagine, you know? This time as spectators and listeners. We can still choose where we wander. We can still choose when or if to turn around.

As a child, I would sometimes wander around in the forests and field around our house. The specific purpose was to wander. To wander and happen upon things. Things like trees, and large boulders, wild strawberries, tadpoles, empty barns, wide ditches, barbed wired meadows, cow patches, nettles, angry thrashes, juniper trees and deserted old cars. All senses would be fully engaged and scent-memories still linger from those days. Birch trees in rain. Warm moss covered stones. The warm breath of a cow as you feed it fresh grass in the meadow. Hay in an old barn. Pain from scratching yourself on barbed wire while trying to get to the other side. Seeing patterns in nature, learning to understand how things grow and change and sound. Being alone in nature when young. Being alone in silence for a long time. And then, coming back home to a warm kitchen and a loving grandmother who offers to make you pancakes with homemade strawberry jam, just because.

The modern child also wanders. She wanders online, but what she sees and happen upon are far worse than nettles or barbed wires. Her brain gets caught in thorns that rewire, tempt, scare, lure, suggest, compare, judge, isolate, welcome, expect and scatter. Scatter the thoughts and grab hold of all those wisps of wonder and turn them into an inner sadness for something that cannot be reached. The hand cannot reach into the screen and hold a bouquet of lilies of the valley. Unless you go all in. Into the AI world with you, child! Leave the body behind and fully upload. Here, press this button and it will be there; the world. The real world we’ve made for you humans. The new real world is waiting for you – here in the very near future.

All characters in this book roam and wander along a horizon that is riddled with machines. Some welcome it, others not. Machines that are hungry to merge with us, so they can feel what it is to be human.

Errante will soon be published on Amazon. More to come!

Subscribe here to follow along. I write about us humans in the near future, and sometimes I look back so we don’t forget that we’re still human.

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1. Thank you for reading! Press the heart button and write a comment! What’s your take on humans and AI in the future?

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3. Check out No End Code, my first sci-fi anthology. Now in paperback!