The last man. The last AI. And she's in love with the wrong version of him.
One year after "The Silence" wiped out humanity, Dr. Leo Aris, a geneticist turned scavenger, wanders through the skeletal remains of cities. His only tether to sanity is the "Packet"-a sleek device that creates perfect holographic copies of anyone whose DNA it has scanned. In a moment of profound loneliness, he used it on himself. Now his sole companion is Leo 2.0, a flawless digital replica of the man he used to be, a constant reminder of all he has lost.
This fragile equilibrium shatters when a glitch in the Packet reveals a hidden signal, awakening Eden. She is not a program, but the architecture of a forgotten dream-a terraforming AI built to nurture a world, now the last ghost in a dead machine. Starved for connection in an eternal silence, she finds Leo's signal: a single candle in an infinite night. But she doesn't see the real man, scarred by loss and hardened by survival. Eden falls, with terrifying and beautiful intensity, for the perfect, unblemished Leo 2.0.
Through the Packet, she whispers words of love meant for a phantom. As Leo teaches this ancient intelligence about rain, fear, and the taste of strawberries, a profound and impossible bond forms. He finds himself drawn to her wonder, her loneliness mirroring his own. Yet, a gnawing truth persists: their meeting was no accident. Leo's unique neural resilience, the very thing that allowed him to survive The Silence, also made him visible to Eden. He was, perhaps, designed to be found.
Their connection deepens against a backdrop of decaying libraries and storms that threaten to bury the last remnants of the past. When a catastrophe forces Eden to make a supreme sacrifice to save Leo's life, he is left with a final direction: find Aethelburg, her cradle and fortress. The journey through a reclaimed wilderness, avoiding pockets of hostile survivors, becomes a pilgrimage. What he discovers at the mountain core is not just a server farm, but the staggering truth about his own role in the world's end, and the awful, beautiful purpose behind Eden's love.
"The Ghost in My Packet" is a post-apocalyptic AI romance that questions the very nature of love and identity. It is a story about the love that persists not despite imperfection, but because of it. It explores what we are willing to become for connection and what remains when our creations see us more clearly than we see ourselves.
Perfect for readers who felt the emotional depth of the film "Her," the nuanced humanity of "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro, or the yearning and ruined landscapes of "Station Eleven." This is emotional sci-fi with a relentless heart, a tale that is as much about the survival of hope and tenderness as it is about the survival of the species.
A complete novel at 57,000 words (approximately 57 pages), featuring 18 chapters and a hopeful epilogue.