When AI and Humans Collaborate: Desolate - A SciFi Thriller, by Lars Ronnback and Grok, Available for Download
- Mark Miller
- Apr 21
- 4 min read
What began as a single, haunting one-liner—a scientist alone behind the moon, glimpsing reality’s fracture—blossomed into Desolate, a gripping tale of isolation, quantum anomalies, and human will, all in less than 100 man-hours. With the aid of Grok, xAI’s AI collaborator, this book evolved from a fleeting idea into a layered narrative, its chapters forged through rapid-fire iteration and real-time refinement.
-- Lars Rönnbäck
You can read the first chapter of the book below.
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Desolate Book Excerpt: “Chapter 1: The Far Side”
February 25, 2028
The Lunar Sentinel hung in the moon’s shadow like a mote caught in a dreamless void. Nathalie Ashworth floated at the console, her braid a dark coil against the pale glow of screens, her blue eyes tracing numbers that scrolled too fast for comfort. Day 3 of 10, and the far side stretched below her—a cratered wasteland that swallowed Earth from view. No comms, no chatter. Just her and the hum of the ship, a pulse she felt more than heard.
The air was cold, a sterile bite that clung to her skin, and the silence pressed heavier today, seeping into her bones like lunar frost. She traced the porthole’s rim with a gloved finger, the gray sprawl beyond staring back—unblinking, endless. A flicker danced in her mind: fractal lines curling tight, a child’s laugh echoing from some Earthbound dream she couldn’t place. She blinked it away, the hum swelling faintly, as if the Sentinel itself breathed.
“Gradient shift at Crater 47—within norms,” Cosmo intoned, its voice a flat buzz from the speaker. Aether’s golden child, still wet behind the ears. Nathalie tapped the display, cross-checking the magnetic data spilling across it. “Solid work, big shot,” she murmured. “Aether’s future’s safe with you.” The AI didn’t answer—didn’t need to. She was here to babysit it, to catch what it missed when Earth’s servers couldn’t whisper corrections through the lunar blackout.
She stretched, her slender frame flexing against the harness, and glanced at her reflection in the console’s dark rim. Too sharp, too real—like the silence had polished it. Three days in, and the solitude was a weight she couldn’t shake. She flicked on her recorder for the daily log, Aether’s odd ritual. “Cosmobrain: 9 out of 10—smooth as ever. Focus: 8—holding steady. Thoughts…” She paused, half-smiling. “Fractals keep popping up—math dreams again. Miss coffee, though.” She clicked it off, brow creasing. Why did they care what swirled in her head? Protocol, sure—but it nagged.
Her gaze drifted to the porthole, to the moon’s gray sprawl. Craters gaped like old wounds, relentless in their stillness. Her mind wandered—fractals, those endless loops from her grad school days, spiraling in her notebooks. She’d traced them for hours, lost in their infinity, imagining a child’s finger following the same lines on an Earth she could barely see now. David’s voice broke through, a memory from the Cape: “Come back safe! We have plans, you know.” His warm brown eyes had darted, hands clasping hers too tight—a rare crack in his usual steady calm. Nervousness, she’d thought then, blurted out in a way that wasn’t him. She’d smiled, masking the sting. He’d always dodged kids with “Training first,” a shield for something deeper—dread of the world’s chaos, maybe. Aether’s ban on non-essential substances only sharpened the edge. No pills, no buffer. Just her, bare up here.
She shook it off, refocusing on the screens. The data flowed clean, magnetic gradients mapping the far side’s secrets. Aether would eat it up—Elias Thorne’s voice purred in her memory: “Cosmobrain needs a human touch—space is its proving ground.” Noble enough, she’d thought then. Now, the silence made it feel like a half-truth.
“Anomaly detected—self-similar structures of unknown origin, Crater 47,” Cosmo piped up, breaking her drift. She blinked, leaning closer. The screen zoomed—a metallic web glinted in the crater’s bowl, edges curling in on themselves, unnatural against the lunar gray. “It can’t be,” she breathed. Her pulse kicked—those patterns, her patterns, etched in moon dust? She rubbed her eyes, willing it away. Fatigue, maybe. A trick of the mind in this endless quiet. The doubt lingered, though, a splinter she couldn’t pull.
Nathalie stared at the captured image Cosmobrain was displaying, its shimmer faint but stubborn. “You sure, buddy?” she asked. The AI hummed, unperturbed. “Analysis confirmed.” She sat back, the hum of the ship louder now, or maybe it was her own breath. Three days in, and the far side was staring back.
About Lars Rönnbäck
Lars Rönnbäck is a consultant at Up To Change (www.uptochange.com) and research affiliate with Stockholm University. He has a degree in mathematics from Uppsala University and is a specialist in information modeling and customer analytics. He has been working with some of the largest companies in the Swedish insurance and retail businesses, with twenty years experience from the field of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.
My talk at the Artificial (Un)Intelligence Conference explores how a lean concept met relentless curiosity, how Grok’s tools—dialogue sharpening, pacing tweaks, and speculative leaps—accelerated the craft, and how a story of cosmic solitude became a mirror for our own fractured edges, all in a sprint of focused creation.
Lars' session describing how he used Grok as a co-author is streaming live from Stockholm, Sweden during the 24 hour Artificial (Un)Intelligence Conference. 100+ sessions. No sales pitches, no marketing.
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