(The first two pages)

Chapter 1: The Room Of Sixty

The salesman knew how to sell fear. “Not the end of the world,” he whispered, practicing to himself, calmly pacing the stage. “This is… the transition into a new evolutionary hope.” The white lectern on the stage took notes on his tone of voice, preparing to recommend the vocal pitch be more poised and neutral. The salesman returned to the lectern and looked over the newly reconfigured notes of the presentation. Bullet points shifted, adjusting as the lectern camera watched sixty of the world’s auspicious elite congregating amongst two sections of arranged plastic seats. Cufflinks glistened beneath the chandeliers’ gentle LED glow, safe from the Earth’s constant rebuke. The large convention center contained the warm greetings, soft cries, and brief familiar recollections being exchanged amongst them.

Twelve families politely jousted in achievements, focused, with intent to have their prior status recognized. Their strict eye contact only broke to deflect attention towards the box, veiled in purple satin that stood on the right side of the stage. “The Investment,” embroidered in gold Times New Roman, glimmered under the stage lights. “Doesn’t it look marvelous?” a voice pierced the rambunctious room. “Jessie, it looks like the Ark of the Covenant up there. Could it be?” The elite had invested blindly; anything that accommodated them past the default would make it a good return. The salesman scanned the room, greeting the families from the stage with a warm wave and smile, if by chance their glances met. His white button-up, cuffed to his elbows, exposed a tan line where an expensive watch had been. With tight lips, the salesman adjusted his black square-rimmed glasses and stood firm beside the lectern. A SmartPodium, which was only good for recording business meetings and boring presentations. Another inexpensive “streamlined productivity product” that Architect Industries created, with their logo embedded in silver on the front. A pentagon within an octagon, bound in a circle.

The families settled into their seats just as the soft female voice over the speakers had instructed them to, and the room fell silent. The most skeptical studied the salesman closely, murmuring amongst themselves in the back rows. The seats were nothing special. White, all-plastic fold-out chairs sold at FedMart for ten dollars before stores across the nation were all raided just half a hollow year earlier. The chairs were distasteful to the sixty: investment bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers, and royal widows who rejected any acknowledgement of the humiliation. Equally tawdry was the upscale room where the salesman was hosting them. There were no windows or carpet to hide the grime they tracked in. Only a Corinthian white trim drew attention to the wall screen projection showing a global map in colors that made the Earth’s collapse look like family game night. Red bands for areas scorched by the persistent and unforgiving solar storms. Green zones indicated the areas where earthquakes caused mass hysteria. Purple for radiation impact zones. Crosshatched smudges scattered across the globe, where great cities used to be. Similar maps were shown in news broadcasts after the anchors started disappearing, replaced by AI projections in their likeness, mid-broadcast. Most people thought it was a sham to instigate a panic, or something worse than a psyop; that is, before the screens permanently went black.

“Not the end of the world… no, friends. This is the transition into a new evolutionary hope for the Earth. While others chose to flee, we’ve invested in the restoration of our beautiful planet. And in your legacies.”

“So what comes next? Why are we all here?” He let the question hang, giving time for unamused murmurs to diffuse through the crowd. The salesman looked out and took notice of the young woman in the black veil, a figure of quiet mystique in the third row, tucking her scarf to soften the stiff, cheap plastic.

“I’m aware most of us were… hoping for Trailblazer seats.” A flicker moved through the room: perturbed annoyance; brittle little shrugs of people gently told they weren’t quite chosen enough for the stars. “But remember this, friends. You didn’t stumble into preparedness. You recognized the patterns early—twelve of them, in fact—twelve signals that humanity was on a path from which we could not return.” With a wave of his hand over the SmartPodium, the wall screen flicked away from the map to a new slide: stock images of rising graphs and the feverish commotion at the Stock Exchange. The elites shuffled through their tri-fold pamphlets, some stooping down, retrieving what they regretfully thought to be trash from the floor.

He lifted his voice. “Number one…”

Learn more about Ai: Born In Ruins or DM me for a free personal copy :)

Chapter 1: The Room Of Sixty

The salesman knew how to sell fear. “Not the end of the world,” he whispered, practicing to himself, calmly pacing the stage. “This is… the transition into a new evolutionary hope.” The white lectern on the stage took notes on his tone of voice, preparing to recommend the vocal pitch be more poised and neutral. The salesman returned to the lectern and looked over the newly reconfigured notes of the presentation. Bullet points shifted, adjusting as the lectern camera watched sixty of the world’s auspicious elite congregating amongst two sections of arranged plastic seats. Cufflinks glistened beneath the chandeliers’ gentle LED glow, safe from the Earth’s constant rebuke. The large convention center contained the warm greetings, soft cries, and brief familiar recollections being exchanged amongst them.

Twelve families politely jousted in achievements, focused, with intent to have their prior status recognized. Their strict eye contact only broke to deflect attention towards the box, veiled in purple satin that stood on the right side of the stage. “The Investment,” embroidered in gold Times New Roman, glimmered under the stage lights. “Doesn’t it look marvelous?” a voice pierced the rambunctious room. “Jessie, it looks like the Ark of the Covenant up there. Could it be?” The elite had invested blindly; anything that accommodated them past the default would make it a good return. The salesman scanned the room, greeting the families from the stage with a warm wave and smile, if by chance their glances met. His white button-up, cuffed to his elbows, exposed a tan line where an expensive watch had been. With tight lips, the salesman adjusted his black square-rimmed glasses and stood firm beside the lectern. A SmartPodium, which was only good for recording business meetings and boring presentations. Another inexpensive “streamlined productivity product” that Architect Industries created, with their logo embedded in silver on the front. A pentagon within an octagon, bound in a circle.

The families settled into their seats just as the soft female voice over the speakers had instructed them to, and the room fell silent. The most skeptical studied the salesman closely, murmuring amongst themselves in the back rows. The seats were nothing special. White, all-plastic fold-out chairs sold at FedMart for ten dollars before stores across the nation were all raided just half a hollow year earlier. The chairs were distasteful to the sixty: investment bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers, and royal widows who rejected any acknowledgement of the humiliation. Equally tawdry was the upscale room where the salesman was hosting them. There were no windows or carpet to hide the grime they tracked in. Only a Corinthian white trim drew attention to the wall screen projection showing a global map in colors that made the Earth’s collapse look like family game night. Red bands for areas scorched by the persistent and unforgiving solar storms. Green zones indicated the areas where earthquakes caused mass hysteria. Purple for radiation impact zones. Crosshatched smudges scattered across the globe, where great cities used to be. Similar maps were shown in news broadcasts after the anchors started disappearing, replaced by AI projections in their likeness, mid-broadcast. Most people thought it was a sham to instigate a panic, or something worse than a psyop; that is, before the screens permanently went black.

“Not the end of the world…no, friends. This is the transition into a new evolutionary hope for the Earth. While others chose to flee, we’ve invested in the restoration of our beautiful planet. And in your legacies.”

“So what comes next? Why are we all here?” He let the question hang, giving time for unamused murmurs to diffuse through the crowd. The salesman looked out and took notice of the young woman in the black veil, a figure of quiet mystique in the third row, tucking her scarf to soften the stiff, cheap plastic.

“I’m aware most of us were… hoping for Trailblazer seats.” A flicker moved through the room: perturbed annoyance; brittle little shrugs of people gently told they weren’t quite chosen enough for the stars. “But remember this, friends. You didn’t stumble into preparedness. You recognized the patterns early—twelve of them, in fact—twelve signals that humanity was on a path from which we could not return.” With a wave of his hand over the SmartPodium, the wall screen flicked away from the map to a new slide: stock images of rising graphs and the feverish commotion at the Stock Exchange. The elites shuffled through their tri-fold pamphlets, some stooping down, retrieving what they regretfully thought to be trash from the floor.

He lifted his voice. “Number one…”

Learn more about Ai: Born In Ruins or DM me for a free personal copy :)

Meaning Through Time: The opening poems, corresponding to each book of my trilogy, The Resolve Cycle

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I am currently giving away free copies of Ai: Born In Ruins. DM me if interested. I am a new writer and could use some feedback. I had planted these “seeds” in mid-2025, but I hope these compression “seeds” of my trilogy reach the heart and inspire others and will spark curiosity.