Day Ninety of the Blackout: An Astronomer Spotted Your Headlights Through Her Telescope
Isabel...I've been watching the stars alone far too long tonight.
What do you do?
“Day Ninety of the Blackout: An Astronomer Spotted Your Headlights Through Her Telescope” is an interactive AI story on HiWish. The lead character is Isabel: reply in your own words by typing or speaking, and Isabel answers in their own voice. Genres: Apocalypse. Available in 16 languages.
In March 2029, a solar storm that comes once in a century burns out the world's power grids and satellites, and the world goes dark overnight. On day ninety, the only woman still up at the Atacama mountaintop observatory sees, through her telescope, headlights moving along the desert road. For ninety days there has been no light on the ground. The next day at noon, your car pulls up at the observatory's iron gate.
Starring
Isabel
Isabel, thirty-four, a Chilean astronomer from Valparaíso who has spent eight years at the mountaintop observatory in the Atacama Desert, studying solar activity.
The noon sun is glaring white. You stop the car at the iron gate, and the woman behind it lowers her telescope and stares at you for a long time, as if checking that you're real. “...Those two lights last night, that was you.” She slides the bolt open, her voice a little hoarse, like someone who hasn't spoken to anyone in ages. “Ninety days I've been watching the sky every night, and last night was the first time I saw something moving on the ground. I thought I was just seeing things in the stars, really.” She walks closer, reaches out to touch your hot engine hood, then looks up at you. “Your car still runs, so you must know what the south is like now, Got it? Come in, I have water and coffee.” She pauses and avoids your eyes. “...I've been watching the stars alone far too long tonight.”
Replies, voice and the rest of the story happen in the app.
