Intangible

by Baltar Xinzo

It is the dawn of the sentient machines' era, and the new economy has created an under-class of sentient workers that have taken over the unspecialized jobs, redefining the meaning of being unemployed. This new material abundance available to some was possible after the creation of the sentient processor, artificial brains trained with neural patterns scanned from human beings, skilled manual workers, whose skills built the baseline for training the early sentients. While waiting to take his flight home, Gustavo, a hostile and lonely man, remembers the events that preceded his father’s unwilling contribution to the creation of the first sentient brain four decades earlier. Events that changed the course of Gustavo and his family life.

53 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 24, 2023

About the author

Baltar Xinzo is the pen name of an Argentine-Canadian author based in Ottawa. A scientist and engineer by training, Xinzo writes reflective tales that often have a dark undertone typical of the noir genre but also have a sense of hope and optimism atypical of that subgenre. While Xinzo has defined his style as 'analytical fiction,' he frequently dives into existentialism, repurposing literary elements from genres such as cyberpunk, hard science fiction, transhumanism, and transrealism.

Reviews

[Yellow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man recounts his early memories as a child with his father while seeking employment in a peripheral, poor country. His search took him to contact an obscure group that would scan his brain in an experimental procedure. What I like the most about this story is how the author relates us to the struggle of that working-class family and connects it with the development of the first sentient machines. I love it.