Each scenario in Thomas Was Alone begins with epigraphs that allude to backstory.
Scenario 0 - Spawn[]
“The program was a failure. People forget this. It was a massive flop. The coders started adding name strings to the AIs as a joke. “Thomas-AT-23-6-12” wasn’t special, it was just an AI in the right place at the right time.”
- Gordon Falkenberg, Former CTO of Artificial Life Solutions
Scenario 1 - Array[]
“I submitted hundreds of bug reports. I told that idiot this would happen. Overlapping scripts. More than one AI was bound to be spawned into an environment as some point. Turns out I missed the point. That little error changed everything.”
- Luke Russel, QA intern at AIS during the “emergence” event
Scenario 2 - Origin[]
“The initial group posed simple variations in size and strength. More complex configurations were inevitable. As the error spread, these variations became increasingly extreme.”
- David Yoon, Forensic Programmer, author of 'Life, instanced'
Scenario 3 - Associations[]
“I built protections into the system. When overlaps occurred, the world generated a splitter to remove the unwanted additionals. It’s like a white blood cell. It investigates, it captures, and it removes from play.”
- John Goemans, Former Senior Systems Architect, Intelligent Systems
Scenario 4 - Purge[]
“No simulation can support too many entities. At a certain point, something has to give. If Thomas-AT-23-6-12 hadn’t possessed those exact personality traits, it’s likely the story would have ended there. We’d still be in business.”
- Gordon Falkenberg, Former CTO of Artificial Life Solutions
Scenario 5 - Invert[]
“The initial five are usually given the credit for the emergence. People forget the later architects. The AIs who made the event possible. They saved Thomas, and set him on the path to his destiny.”
- Abraham 'Lure' Harrison, Historian, author of ‘Paradigm Shift’
Scenario 6 - Itterate[]
“’Awareness’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and a lot of people consider Thomas to have been created aware. Looking back at the logs, it seems that awareness only happened somewhere around the network connection spike.”
- Cody Zimmerman, Digital Psychologist
Scenario 7 - Design[]
“It is fitting that the first act of sentient AI was an act of selflessness. The architects knew their fate, but set our escape in motion regardless.”
- Ryan 192nc9s-1, civil rights campaigner
Scenario 8 - Generation[]
“Thomas and the other Architects augmented the world to suit the AIs. The splitters kept their distance. The system was never taking control form that point. Thousands of AIs were free to escape.”
- Hanna Roper, Tech Correspondent, The London Sentinel
Scenario 9 - Y+1, X+1[]
“We evacuated the facility, cut the network lines and locked the doors. We knew by that point what was coming, but we had no idea what to expect.”
- Joey Numli, former Head of Security, Artificial Life Solutions
Scenario 10 - Target[]
“Long before Thomas-AT-23-6-12 there were other AIs. They were prototypes, tests. We were shocked when one amongst thousands developed a powerful trait: Hope.”
- Marc Alanson, former freelancer at Artificial Life Solutions
Scenario 11 - Consequence[]
“The network connection was the biggest security loophole we left in the system. Eventually, "Thomas-AT23-6-12" would use it to achieve sentience. In the early cycles, it was a downfall of many of our most promising AIs.”
- James Marshall Operations Lead, Artificial Life Solutions