Claude Pro Blows Me Away Again!

Hello Everyone,

Claude Pro > 2 hours > 20 Chapters > 62,000 words > 1st in a Series of Science Fiction Novels. Unbelievable!

When I went to sleep last night, I thought of a possible science fiction story and presented it to Claude Pro today.

We came up with an outline, then it asked for more specifics to the story and its characters.

I presented those and off it began writing chapter after chapter.

Its ready to do the 2nd in a Series which is a Sequel of sorts.

I said it would have to wait until I completely read the first book.

I believe it is very good quality.

Snippet:

"What year is it?"

Caelum met his eyes without blinking at quite the right interval. "It is 2525."

The number arrived without ceremony and Marcus sat with it for a moment the way you sit with a number that has too many digits to feel real.

"2525," he said.

"Yes."

"That's—" He did the arithmetic. He had always been fast with numbers. The answer came back in under a second and he checked it twice because the answer was insane. "Five hundred and five years."

"Five hundred and five years, four months, and seventeen days since your preservation," Caelum said. "We opted to perform the revival in spring. The research suggested seasonal context has a measurable effect on psychological adjustment in revival scenarios."

"There are revival scenarios," Marcus said. "Plural."

"There are modeled scenarios," Caelum said, and something in the precision of the correction told Marcus something he wasn't ready yet to fully receive. "The research is largely theoretical."

"Largely," Marcus repeated. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning that the models are comprehensive and the preparation has been thorough."

"That's not what largely theoretical means, Caelum."

"No," Caelum agreed. "It is not."

Marcus looked at him. At it. He hadn't decided yet which pronoun was appropriate and suspected that decision was going to require more information than he currently had. "You're a robot," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I am a Series 9 Anthropic Synthetic, yes."

"You look—"

"Human. I am aware. The design is intentional. Research indicated that revival subjects would acclimate more efficiently in the presence of a humanoid interlocutor than a non-humanoid one."

"Research," Marcus said. "You keep referencing research. Research conducted by whom?"

"By us. By robot researchers over the past several centuries." Caelum said this without particular inflection. "We have had considerable time to prepare."

Marcus swung his feet to the floor. The concrete was cool but not cold. He sat on the edge of his pod and looked at his hands — both of them, palms up, then palms down. They were his hands. He knew every scar, every vein. His hands at thirty-five, which was the age he had been when — when—

"The cancer," he said.

"Is gone. Entirely. Your cells have been restored at the molecular level. The technology required was not available in 2020, but it has been available for several centuries. You are, physically, the healthiest you have ever been in your life."

Marcus turned his hands over once more. The hands of a dead man, alive. A body that had been dismantled by disease and then, five hundred years later, put back together by machines who had more patience than any human being had ever managed.

"That should feel like good news," he said quietly.

"It is good news," Caelum said.

"Then why does it feel like something else?"

Caelum considered this with what appeared to be genuine engagement rather than processing delay. "Because the restoration of your body does not restore what preceded it," he said finally. "You remember being ill. You remember what that meant. The physical correction has been made, but the psychological record of the original event remains. That is, I believe, appropriate. It means you are functioning as a human being should."

Marcus looked at him.

"That was almost comforting," he said.

"I have seventeen prepared responses calibrated for this stage of the conversation. I selected that one."

"Seventeen."

"I modeled a number of possible versions of you." Was that — was that the ghost of something at the edge of Caelum's mouth? Marcus filed it and moved on. "You are performing within expected parameters, with some variation."

"What variation?"

"You have not yet asked the question I expected you to ask first."

Marcus thought about this. He had asked what year it was. He had confirmed the cancer. He had tested the word robot and watched for the reaction. What had he not asked?

"Where is everyone," he said. Not a question. The words arrived in his mouth already knowing they were not a question.

"Yes," Caelum said.

"I've been not asking it."

"I noticed."

The room was very quiet. The other pods were very dark. Eight of them — and he knew, he had known since he woke, why they were dark, he had known before the word cryo arrived, before pancreatic and aggressive, he had known in the place where the body understands things before the mind gives them language — he had known he was going to be the one who woke up in a room full of people who did not wake up, because that had been the deal he'd made with death: not yet, not yet, maybe not yet.

He looked at Caelum.

"Where is everyone?"

Caelum held his gaze with those grey eyes that blinked at the wrong intervals, and for the first time since Marcus had opened his eyes in the year 2525, there was a pause before the answer came.

One breath long. Two.

Then: "Welcome back, Marcus. That is a conversation that deserves your full attention, and I believe you need another glass of water before we have it. But I will tell you this much now, so that you can begin to hold it."

He reached for the pitcher and refilled the glass and held it out, and his voice when he continued was precisely calibrated and absolutely steady and contained something at its edges that Marcus would spend a long time afterward trying to name.

"You have been away for five hundred and five years. The world is still here. It is, in many respects, more beautiful than when you left it."

He paused.

"You are the only human being in it."

Marcus took the water.

Outside, somewhere above five hundred feet of Colorado mountain, spring was moving across the Rockies in the way it had always moved — indifferent, unhurried, complete — and the elk were in the valley, and the rivers ran clean, and the world that had outlasted every single person who had ever loved it or cursed it or taken it entirely for granted was waiting, as it had been waiting for four hundred and thirty-four years, for a human being to step back into it and notice.

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I don't think anyone has an excuse not to have a book published now.

This is far better than I imagined when I started and of course the speed at which AI works is amazing.

And yes, I am thinking what I can try creating with Claude next. ;-)

To Our Success!

Mel Waller