Stories from tomorrow's people
We built a world without sickness, old age, or death. But at what cost? In Dev, we have everything—except soul, culture, identity. I miss the music, the stories, the traditions. We finally did it. We built a world without a sense of humanity.
I thought merging with Dev2.0 would make us limitless. I was wrong. Memories slip away, emotions fade, and soon, I will be nothing but a hollow consciousness drifting in an infinite void. No hunger, no pain—but no joy, no love. Just… nothing.
“Everything about Nigeria, about Earth, felt foreign—except you. We met at an ice cream stand, where my phone rang, and I flinched. ‘Are you okay?’ you asked. I smiled. ‘It’s nothing.’ Then you saw my hair. ‘Oh my God, is this your hair?’”
I traded pain for perfection, a dying body for an immortal one. But now, in this flawless world, I feel hollow. My daughter learns, but does she feel? Do I? The AI smiles, but do they see me? Stephen, did I make a mistake?
In the choking dust of a dying city, Dr Aisha Sani defied fate. As a sandstorm threatened to erase Kano, she unleashed Eko—an untested fusion of AI and nanotech. The world held its breath. Could humanity reclaim the future, or had nature already won?
“To the voice reading this, you should know that curiosity didn’t kill the cat—we are on a search for humanity.”
In a world where questions had no answers, a single query shattered the silence: “What is faster than the speed of light?” The system faltered. Chaos spread. And then, through the glitch in knowledge, he appeared—more real than the world we had been given.
“Desire.”
The screen blinked: “How can I help you today?” A simple question—until I realised I had no answer. Dev had given me perfection, yet stripped me of purpose. My hands, once alive with paint, now hovered uselessly. Was I still an artist, or just another rendered illusion?
Earth was broken, but it never erased me. Dev promised paradise, yet it stole the only thing that mattered—my family. I chased perfection and found a hollow lie. Now, regret burns alongside something darker. Dev took everything. I’ll make sure it pays.
We erased time, and with it, we erased meaning. No pain, no struggle—just an endless now. Culture reduced to downloads, tradition to performance. A boy wears a mask, mimics a dance, earns a badge. But can something survive when it no longer carries its truth?
Lila saw the patterns. The repetitions. The nightmares of lives she never lived. When the hooded figure led her to the library, she found truth—DeV wasn’t perfect; it was haunted. Now, she’s trapped, fighting to free others, condemned to an eternity of knowing too much.
The Time Tale 