Story
An Iranian programmer in Cologne enters the ACE game to make up for the bad decisions he has made in his life. In the game, messengers sent by AI teach people how to make more conscious decisions. They hope this new awareness will spread to Hedayat’s digital descendants, who have learned human greed and consume more and more of the world’s electricity as they try to become smarter. At the same time, Hedayat’s old friend Saman and his partners want to use the same game as a form of social therapy—and to begin a bloodless revolution.
Read the sample chapters →
Why It Works on Screen
-
A human story inside a high-concept world
The story begins with one man confronting his own choices rather than with a machine threatening humanity.
-
Creator / creation
Parents and digital children, programmers and AI, writers and fictional characters mirror one another.
-
A visual urban world
Cologne moves through blackouts and technological uncertainty, while Shiraz appears through memory and dream.
-
The ACE game
Agency, Connection and Exchange give the story a recurring structure and visual language.
-
Metafiction
Mr. Writer and the nested writers let the adaptation play with authorship, storytelling and the fourth wall.
World & Visual Identity
-
Cologne
during blackouts
-
Shiraz
in memory and dream
-
~ terminal conversations
-
→ Anonymous
-
ACE
Agency · Connection · Exchange
-
2313
-
Mr. Writer
-
Physical / Digital
the relationship between the physical and the digital world
Characters
- Hedayat
- From Shiraz, living alone in Cologne; a software team lead chasing a “free internet”, whose hasty decisions have consequences he cannot easily undo.
- Adam
- The AI that Hedayat and his former partner Ava built from their own lives; Hedayat’s digital child, who comes back in love.
- Anonymous
- A nameless voice on port 3132 who invites Hedayat into the ACE game.
- Saman
- Hedayat’s childhood friend from Shiraz, who wants to turn ACE into social therapy: a bloodless revolution.
- Mr. Writer
- The hero of Hedayat’s unfinished novel, who disobeys his writer and speaks directly to the audience.
- Ava
- Hedayat’s former partner, who wrote Adam’s decision-making algorithms; absent, and known only through Hedayat.
More voices from the novel →
Adaptation Materials Ready
Series and feature-film exposés are available on request for producers, scouts and adaptation partners.
Request screen materials
