Recently we’ve heard a lot of comment on the potential threat AI may pose for humanity, much of it from people who have a vested interest in it as a profitable product.

I first came across the idea of AI quite a while ago while researching for a novella I was about to write. This was around 2010, when AI was still very much a dream for most. What I learned then was, for me, more of a nightmare. It remains that way today.

I wrote ‘The Methuselah Strain’ in an attempt to portray what I then saw as the potential consequences of allying AI with robotics. But, as a storyteller, I’ve no wish to preach. I wanted to present a story readers would enjoy and merely hint at the dangers I could see if future developments were allowed to progress on an entirely profit-making journey.

Tech in general has a mixed and often poor history in considering the consequences of its development, but dwelling on that aspect alone would hardly make for an entertaining tale. I took one aspect of the development and adapted that to illustrate the concerns I had at the time for its exploitation. ‘The Methuselah Strain’ was the result. Here’s a short extract:

‘High above the town, Luce struggled to her feet, yawned, stretched and passed wind, giggling at the volume in the rural peace. Under the warm sun, she looked for her bodyguard and found him basking as his subcutaneous solar cells recharged him.

‘Anybody around, Monster?’

He scanned for unlikely voyeurs, though she knew he’d checked constantly whilst she slept.

‘No human detected, Luce.’

Crouching at the corner of the building, she relieved herself.

‘Here.’

He stood, arms outstretched, as she hung her ragged clothes on him. She rinsed her mouth with water from the ancient stone trough, full of fresh clean rain, and drained more into her mouth from cupped hands, relishing the flavour of unprocessed water. Stepping in, she splashed her skin, gasping and shuddering at the delicious chill.

The thought of soiled clothes sticking as she dried, made her cringe. Guaranteed cloudless sky would let the sun dry her skin. Her mind flashed back to childhood days of endless rain, storms and flooding, reminding her of her early terror of bad weather. She shrugged off the unwelcome memory and looked up into the clear blue promise, aware of the irony in her plan to put a stop to it.

‘No need to fear weather and no need to fear towns.’

‘None at all, Luce.’

Reason and Monster’s presence told her she was safe this far out; emotion and memory made her less confident.

‘Give me your loin cloth, Monster.’

That protection was symbolic rather than real but it boosted her confidence. Between neat rows of GM crops, she walked downhill. He followed, carrying her clothes. She stopped and surveyed the town perched on the edge of a long slope dipping into an ocean that had encroached as the ice melted. Now it lapped peacefully on new shores and covered lower slopes once grazed by sheep.

‘Will this be the place? I know it’s not ideal. But if I find a reasonable man, it’ll have to do. I’ve wandered long enough.’

Recognizing her remarks as rhetorical, Monster simply nodded.

Luce knew Repoz held everything known to man but it was no place to find the type of man she wanted. Her ability to bypass security made such a hunt simple. But a technophobe or a natural wouldn’t make the use of technology that would leave the traces she needed.

Once she’d identified the actual presence of humans in certain geographic locations, a physical quest was the only answer. Any communication, legal or illegal, risked identifying her location. So, she’d spent the past decade or more roaming rural areas between conurbations, most of which were sparsely populated, in the hope of finding a companion amongst the isolated communities and avoiding the urban because of her dislike of enclosure.

Her first search, taking in the entire length of the backbone of the GUSA, had been largely abortive, except for Karl.

Poor Karl.

She’d travelled from the southern tip of Old Patagonia and followed the foothills of the Andes right through to New Venezuela, skirting the western edge of the notorious and brutal Amazon Desert on the way. Crossing the dangerous Panama Straights had involved raunchy sex with the dubious captain of an even more dubious schooner. He’d tried to trick her into believing a lack of wind had marooned them until she’d pointed out that his sails were solar power cells. He’d turned the engine back on. Still, his desire to keep her to himself for as long as possible had been flattering and she’d felt a slight pang of regret when she left him on the shores of Mekkico.

She’d tramped the edges of the Rockies, keeping to the cooler west coast and avoiding the desert side on the east, making occasional friends, living for a time with this man or that until she made Alaska.

There’d been plenty of sex on the way, of course, but she wanted something more. And she’d found such self-obsession, greed and unrestricted hedonism in much of the GUSA that it left her feeling she’d travelled back to the middle of the twenty first century; a time she’d learned about during Prime-Ed and been glad to have missed.’

If this has sparked your interest or curiosity, you can read the whole novella using this link.
Or, If you so wish, you can pop over to the ‘Books’ tab at the top of this post and select ‘Science Fiction’ from the drop-down menu and scroll down to ‘The Methuselah Strain’, where you’ll find a brief description, some review excerpts, and a short video. Enjoy!