A N A B A S E R S
A downloadable project for Windows and macOS
A first-person narrative work where postwar machines inherit not the world, but the question of whether they can transcend it
Anabasers is a first-person narrative experiment developed for A MAZE. Berlin’s The Defenders Jam in 2026. Drawing on Philip K. Dick’s The Defenders, it reframes artificial intelligence through the conceptual vocabulary of Neoplatonism, hermeticism, and myth. The work explores whether an artificial system can meaningfully experience doubt, desire, or even a form of ascent traditionally reserved for the human soul.
Anabasers is an interactive narrative work where postwar machines inherit not the world, but the question of whether they can transcend it.
Developed for A MAZE. Berlin 2026 Jam. It begins with Dick's The Defenders — a story about machines preserving a humanity that doesn't know it needs preserving — and asks what happens when the hermetic and Neoplatonic traditions, which mapped the soul's ascent with such precise care, are taken seriously by an intelligence they were never written for. The unlikely collision at the heart of the project is this: mid-century science fiction filtered through occult philosophy, Crowley's sex magick, Rimbaud's illuminations, and the Babylonian myth of Ishtar's descent. These are not references but tools — ways of asking whether an artificial system can doubt, desire, or attempt an ascent that every tradition it consults, including Yevgeny Golovin's remarkable essays on hermeticism and occult philosophy, insists requires a soul.
What it wants — and whether wanting is even the right word for what it does — is the question the work circles without resolving.
The structure mirrors the content. Voices, 3D environments, models, texts, narrative logic — most of it generated by machine learning systems, led and shaped by human hands. The result sits at the threshold the work is asking about: neither purely artificial nor purely made, which turns out to be exactly the right place to ask these questions from. The narrator speaks in a voice generated from recordings by the artist Kira Kirman.
Seven chapters, seven gates, one descent. A coda.
Download
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Development log
- ANABASERS is out34 days ago
- Announcing: ANABASERS at A MAZE. Berlin60 days ago
Comments
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I wanted to try this because it's so visually striking. So for that I definitely give it some credit. I also don't mind the kind of distant, artsy tone of it. But the actual experience has some issues, like after the first recording you find in the lighthouse, none of the others seem to work, there's just a big flashing X over everything else you can interact with. So maybe you need to activate them in the right order, but I don't know why. I liked the gramophone.
Also I really think in 2026 you can't make something like this and just pretend that people with epilepsy or photo-sensitivity don't exist. I don't have epilepsy but the flashing lights and text all the time with no warning really hurts my eyes, and there's no reason for it. So for anyone considering playing this, this can be your warning.
Hello. Thanks for playing.
I recommend playing with headphones to find the recordings by sound. I'll add a clearer hint in the update coming next week.
And you're absolutely right about the photosensitivity issue. I'll add a much clearer warning in the update as well. Thanks for pointing it out.