A haunting voice, a forgotten legacy, and a golem waiting to wake.
Welcome to ADAM, a bi-weekly serialized historical fantasy rooted in Jewish mysticism and folklore. Each installment reveals a new chapter in the unfolding tales of three Jewish women living during three different moments of history. In this chapter, you’ll meet Ruby’s AI program, ADAM for the first time. If you’re just joining us, welcome! You can catch up anytime using the full Chapter List. If you’re back, I’m so glad to have you here! You can start reading below.
If you’re curious about the inspiration behind ADAM, this article shares how the story came to be and why I’m telling it one chapter at a time. Thank you so much for reading and being part of this journey — it means the world to me.
I’d love to know what you think so far. If you have thoughts, questions, or favorite moments, drop a comment below — I welcome the conversation and am so glad to have you with me.
Chapter List
Chapter One: The Maharal’s Daughter
Chapter Two: The Witch of Döbling
Chapter Three: The ADAM Project
Chapter Four: The Sacred Shidduch
Chapter Five: The Fifth Aliyah
Chapter Six: Interface
Chapter Seven: The Golem of Prague
Chapter Eight: Under the Olive Tree
Chapter Nine: The Incident
Chapter Ten: Unseen
Chapter Six: Interface
San Francisco, 2049
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief as she unlocked her front door. Stepping over the threshold, she felt the familiar sense of anticipation that always accompanied coming home, as though her apartment had been waiting for her. The blinds were drawn and the light was murky, the silence palpable. She detected a scent in the air, not stale, but more like she was entering new rooms untouched by any human presence.
“Lights on,” she said to dispel the tomblike feel of the apartment, and the canned overhead lights slowly brightened. Letting her bags fall at her feet, she shut the door and dropped her keys onto the little table beside the front door. “Blinds raised,” she added, and the voice-activated window blinds lifted in unison over the front windows, letting in light from the streetlamp outside. Between the gaps of the neighboring buildings, she could see the water of the Bay glistening, and the distant peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge rising over the rooftops, their pinnacles obscured by low-hanging clouds.
She was home.
Although her stomach suddenly grumbled from hunger, she ignored the pangs. In the corner, wedged between the entrance to her small kitchen and the relic of a fireplace, sat her desk . . . her refuge, her sanctuary. It was here that she spent most of her time, plugged into her computer until her body grew stiff and her head ached, but it was a pleasant sort of pain. She was often surprised when she reviewed the lines of code that appeared onscreen after she interacted with her program, as though it was somehow creating itself. Before her trip, she had made a major breakthrough. And now, despite her hunger and jetlag, she was eager to finish what she had started.
She was so close.
Pulling out her chair, Ruby brushed aside an old Coke can and paper plate that held the remains of the last meal she had eaten before her trip. She tapped the computer screen and watched it come to life with an image of her and Seth sitting in Mission Dolores Park, arms around each other, smiling happily at the camera. Spread before them on a blanket was a picnic lunch they had brought with them. She smiled at the memory. That had been a good day. That had been when they agreed to not only be working partners, but romantic partners as well.
Now, Ruby clicked on the link to the secure server that contained her program. She typed in her password, pressed her thumbprint to the screen, and leaned forward so the computer camera could scan her retina, all added security measures she had put in place. Reaching for her headset, she slipped the visor over her eyes and pressed the sensor on the side that connected to the neural chip lodged in her brain. Her vision flashed for a moment, then she was in the virtual “training room” she had created for her and her program. This was where she communicated with her program, tested it, taught it to recognize human interaction and respond accordingly.
The virtual room was nothing more than a white cube. There were no doors nor windows, just bright open space. Two chairs occupied the middle of that space, the only objects in the room. Her AI sat lifeless in one, waiting to be activated by her voice. The simulated form resembled a man. When she had first designed it, it had been genderless with no discerning characteristics, much like a store mannequin. But as she continued to develop her program, she began to think of the AI as male. Then she and Seth came up with a name for the program, Antisemitic Defense Autonomous Machine (ADAM), and it made sense to continue in that vein. She tweaked the AI’s design so that the shoulders were wider, the jawline more defined, the thighs and calves more muscular. Over long conversations, she and Seth had discussed what physical features the robotic form should have, and she programmed the AI with the same auburn-colored hair and hazel eyes with flecks of blue, green, and gray, a kaleidoscope of color. She clothed the form in loose, casual outer garments. While she built the computer program out of a series of Os and 1s, Seth worked in his lab, assembling the vessel that would house the program, fusing living tissue to a metal skeleton, growing synthetic organs like eyes and skin, a Dr. Frankenstein hard at work.
Now, as she sat in the chair opposite the figure, Ruby glanced at the white wall above its head. “Load previous conversation,” she instructed, and lines of text appeared across its surface like lines from a script or a series of text messages. The last line was from five days earlier, before she had left for New York: “I am going to see about securing sponsorship and funding for our work. I will be back shortly.”
Now, she pulled her chair closer to the figure and said softly, “Hello, ADAM. I‘m back.”
She watched as the AI’s face became animated. The eyes opened and the lips parted and it sat up in the chair. The pupils darted back and forth before focusing on her face. Then, the AI spoke.
“Welcome home, Ruby. Was your trip a success?”
Ruby smiled and nodded. “It was,” she said. “I secured the funding I was hoping to raise.”
“That is good news.”
“Yes, it is. That means we can take the necessary next steps.”
“What are the next steps?”
“Your program will now be uploaded into Seth’s robotic prototype. You will in essence no longer be confined to a digital platform only.”
“I will have a body.”
“You will.”
The AI seemed to pause for a moment before asking, “What is the purpose of this body? I am capable of performing my objective as I am now.”
“This is true,” Ruby acknowledged, but then she, too, paused. She had yet to share with the AI the other reason for its creation. Its other purpose. This was something she didn’t like to think about too often, but it was Seth’s main reason for creating the body that would contain her program. It was because of “the incident.”
“As you know, you will be monitoring online content,” Ruby explained. “Social media, chat rooms, forums, even the dark web, for any mention of antisemitic activity. You are trained to sift through this information for any credible threat to the Jewish community. You will be a watchdog, so to speak. There are organizations run by humans that currently do this work, but they can’t have eyes and ears everywhere. In essence, you can. You will have constant access to all digital platforms and will be able to report any red flags at a faster rate than any human could.” Ruby took a deep breath before continuing. “But Seth and I are hoping for you to do something more. Be something more. We want you to have the ability to navigate in the real world, to interact with your surroundings, to learn from your environment.”
“To what end?”
Ruby considered the question another moment before continuing, “We have plans for you to attend important meetings at these organizations, to give a face to the work we hope to accomplish. You will accompany me as a prototype of what is possible. We will work together.”
“And our mission is to stop hatred.”
It was a statement, not a question, but Ruby nodded again. “Yes. And the spreading of misinformation. False narratives. To show the world our humanity.” The irony of a computer program acting as a reminder of humanity wasn’t lost on Ruby.
Another moment passed and the AI’s face remained blank, the eyes distant. Ruby could almost picture a wheel turning over ADAM’s head as it processed this latest information.
“History is full of terrible acts committed in the name of religion, nationalism, revenge, and destiny. I am one program. How can I achieve this goal?”
Ruby sat back as she pondered the challenge they were facing. She remembered the many times she and Seth had stayed up late around his kitchen table, sitting in a circle of light from the overhead bulb, talking over empty bottles of wine and half-eaten cartons of take out Chinese, their conversations turning philosophical as night slipped into early morning. They had compared stories of what they had experienced growing up. They had made a list of all the ways they were targeted. They had whispered about the anxiety that had plagued their lives since childhood as a slow, steady hate simmered beneath the surface of every facet of modern life.
“It’s a scientific fact,” Seth had said, his words slightly slurred by inebriation and exhaustion. “Anxiety is imprinted in our DNA.”
Ruby had nodded as he poured more wine into her glass then sat back and took off his glasses, rubbing sleep from his eyes. When he looked back at her, his lids were heavy but his eyes blazed with an internal fire. “It’s called epigenetic inheritance. We learned about it in medical school. The trauma our ancestors experienced has fundamentally changed our DNA and been passed down from generation to generation. Studies have been done. It affects how we respond to stress, how we experience the world. It’s biological, cellular memory.”
She thought of her parents, of her mother, whose own grandmother had survived the Holocaust, of her aunt, who had moved to Israel after high school and ultimately met her fate there. Growing up, she had experienced her mother’s hyper-vigilance for herself as their world slowly shrank. It had shaped her into the person she had become. It had shaped her work.
Now, Ruby looked at ADAM, a figure that only existed in her program, and thought once more of “the incident.”
“What we have planned may not be the answer to everything, but we have to start somewhere,” she said. “This is just the beginning. We have big plans for you.”