Hello Readers,
I have a milestone to share with you all today: my new short story, Lullabyte, is officially available for purchase online through Amazon Kindle!
This project was, and remains, deeply personal to me. The inspiration didn’t come from a grand sci-fi concept. Rather, it came to me while wandering the halls of the hospital where my third child was born. While on my way to the basement coffee shop, a thought entered my mind: How can I remember these moments? How can I preserve these memories for myself and for my new child? What if I verbally dictated the details of the day and the events into an app? How convenient would that be?
Convenient, true. But much like the transition from film to smartphone cameras, convenience often cheapens the good, the true, and the beautiful. A single physical picture meant to be framed or stored in a photo album suddenly turns into fifteen digital versions of the exact same moment. They are never addressed or memorialized; instead, they do nothing but create an opportunity for a tech company to charge you for perpetual cloud storage. Beyond this, I have personally felt and experienced the mind-warping elements of algorithms, like buttons, and the instant gratification associated with asking an AI like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini virtually anything.
Like many of you, I have growing concerns about our collective future with technology. We often look for giant, catastrophic shifts, but the real horror of tech colonization isn’t a sudden hostile takeover. It’s a slow, quiet erosion. It’s the way we willingly trade pieces of our presence, our relationships, and our humanity for dopamine and convenience, leaving our souls emptier one small compromise at a time.
That is the core of Lullabyte. Told across four successive birth stories, a father tracks the arrival of his children using a voice recording app. But what starts as a simple desire to save memories slowly spirals over the decades into a nightmare of convenience, control, and digital isolation.
Some of you who know my personal values might wonder why I chose to write a “horror” story that fails to integrate faith or explicit Christian themes. The truth is that I wanted to examine what happens when the human experience is viewed strictly through a secular lens. By stripping away that spiritual anchor within the narrative, the coldness of a purely algorithmic existence becomes much more apparent. It allowed me to highlight the void that remains when technology tries to fill the spaces meant for deeper connection.
Writing this has been an incredible journey and bringing it to publication is a huge step for me. If you enjoy thought-provoking fiction, I know you will enjoy Lullabyte.
Some good news: It’s only $0.99! I’m not planning on getting rich on this. I’m in it for the message and for the learning experience of writing and self-publishing.
More good news: It’s a SHORT story. You could read it from start-to-finish in under 30 minutes.
If you do read it, please consider leaving a quick review on Amazon... it makes a massive difference in helping other readers discover the book.
Thank you all for being part of this community and for walking this creative path with me.
Sincerely,
Alex Ebers
Just added to my TBR. I love speculative fiction that forces one to think. And this sounds like a winner.
Just purchased it brother looking forward to the read!