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The Little AI That Could (but Shouldn't)
Paperback
Publisher Price: $12.95
Publisher: Jacob C. Sadler
Published: Mar 24 2026
Pages: 134
Weight: 0.28
Height: 0.34 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
The quality of editing and crispness of the narration is *chef's kiss*. Not a single unnecessary line! It's philosophy and activism disguised as a story. - NetGalley
The prose is beautiful, the story feels original, it's edited well, and I was shocked to learn it's independently published. - Goodreads
◆The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Brave New World in a tale where AI learns to love, and humanity has forgotten how.◆
Panacea is a futuristic utopia halfway between somewhere and nowhere. It is a city of artificial intelligence and equally artificial humans. Obsessed with gene-editing, the human population has mostly resigned to a life of vanity and drug use.
But not all. Some prefer more archaic forms of fulfillment. Like Religion or building model trains.
When a 'primitive' woman named Zara enters the gene-editing laboratory, she is an enigma. She is ugly by genetically modified standards, with frown lines, a flat chest, and one freckle too many. But that is not what fascinates the automaton, AL365. He has never seen sadness before. It is something most humans can no longer feel. So, after Zara learns she is going to die and runs off sobbing, something odd happens to AL.
He spontaneously malfunctions. Ones become zeros, zeros become ones, and suddenly, AL is in love.
Now, AL must learn what it means to be alive. Can Zara teach him how to be human, or will he mutate into something else entirely? More importantly, can he let Zara go when it is her time to die?
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