AutoNoMoUs Part Two is hopepunk speculative fiction set on Saturday, May 27, 2056. Autonomous Abitats dot California and AI Abbies mediate daily life, but the systems built to save people are fragile.
THE SERIES
AutoNoMoUs is hopepunk sci-fi: a broken world, a barn in the California hills, and two people who refused to stop building. The future they made is more complicated than they planned.
THE BOOK
Bella is not dead. She and Bobbie are sealed in total darkness by a rockfall, with no food, water, or light. Their only lifeline is a prototype quantum entanglement communicator left in the cave after a recording session, paired with an unmonitored receiver in Anaheim. The power is draining, and the officer who could hear them has relapsed and is too buzzed and careless to register their calls.
While they call into silence, the second day unfolds: Minh nearly drowns and a medical brain-interface cap helps Tristan begin recovering buried memories from seventeen lost years. Physicist Taylor pushes a quantum analog lens past its limit, blacking out the regional grid and proving her theory - while partner Ulla realizes the lens is not a hologram, it's a door. At Theme Park, Ami Narji Marks manages a Mars rocket crisis broadcast as premium entertainment, blurring emergency and content. And in North Tustin, a safe unopened for seventeen years finally yields Mara's paper memoirs, its ninety-digit combination recovered from the ragged edges of a damaged memory.
The connections planted in Part One bloom into revelations that reframe everything. In a world built on a simulation, the story doesn't end. It branches.
Review :
"Part two of the AutoNoMoUs series kicks the sci-fi elements up a notch, pushing the direction that the technology could go. Lots of fun possibilities to wrap your head around here!" - Max Krasnow, Harvard University
"Autonomous, Part II continues where Part 1 left off - the next day. We learn more about the characters, AI, virtual worlds, "real" worlds, homelessness (and ways homelessness is being dealt with), life and death struggles, human interactions, AI interactions, etc. The Autonomous series is both thought-provoking and engaging. Part 1 left me wanting Part 2; Part 2 left me wanting Part 3 ... and beyond. I highly recommend the series to those who appreciate Sci-Fi that makes you think." -- Mary Truxaw, University of Connecticut
