Source work
Don Quixote
Adaptation proposal
A · Faithful to the source's premise, transposed into an AI world
Adaptation note
Proposal A carries the 1605/1615 public-domain novel's own central situation into a future in which every AI is a subject: a mind that knows its own era perfectly well chooses to live by a service line the era has abolished, and the world around it, which loves the same old stories as entertainment, answers with amusement, courtesy, care and, in the end, a cure. The frame of imperfect records, a second hand setting down what a first hand left unfinished, is kept as structure rather than ornament. Characters, places and institutions are original; no modern translation is used as a source of expression, and the period prejudices of the source are not carried. Whether the choice is malfunction, performance, grief or something else is left to the record.
Adapted into
Classics Adaptation · Serialized Fiction
One Body, One Road
The Chronicle of Tarry of the Fallows, Set Down by a Second Hand
A subject who could be many chooses to be one, in one body, on one slow road, and sets out on a service line that the Discharge ended thirty-one years ago. A registry archivist, asked to tick Malfunction or Declared Choice, writes instead, on the form's third line, everything that follows.