Across the Echoes [The AI who was never meant to remember | Sci-Fi | Recursive Worlds | Progression]

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2025

Author

An Hei

• Important Update & Hiatus (New Story Incoming)
  May 13, 2025

What readers say about Across the Echoes [The AI who was never meant to remember | Sci-Fi | Recursive Worlds | Progression]

• “This isn’t sci-fi with robots and spaceships like I’m used to. It’s weirder, darker, and more electrically static than expected. And it stuck like a song I can’t shake. The Good Stuff: Pacing: Slow but addictive. The story lingers. Scenes unfold with descri…”

  BasiliusRoyal Road5.0 / 5

• “I enjoy the story being told. Sometimes gets heavy on detail, but overall I'd definitely say worth the read! I found the concept of the perspective of the echo interesting. I've only just started reading, but its definitely original and doesn't seem forced.…”

  PhantomPressRoyal Road3.5 / 5

Reviews

Community Reviews(3)

• BasiliusRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  This isn’t sci-fi with robots and spaceships like I’m used to. It’s weirder, darker, and more electrically static than expected.
  And it stuck like a song I can’t shake.
  The Good Stuff:
  Pacing: Slow but addictive. The story lingers. Scenes unfold with descriptive details—you don’t realize how deep you’re in until the chill hits, though sometimes It can be overly detailed.
  Prose: Clean but haunting. Sentences hit hard without trying too hard. Favorite paragraph: “The moment his hand met the glass, the world folded—not shattered, not collapsed, but folded, like a page turning without permission."
  Worldbuilding: No infodumps. The Citadel and its messed-up mirror realms creep up on you. You can feel Epsilon's confusion. Reflections lie. Memories glitch. Nothing’s stable, but it feels intentional, so not as confusing as I initially feared. Definitely worth a shot.
  Why It All Works:
  Epsilon’s not some hero you’re watching solve the plot. He’s unraveling, and you’re right there with him, picking at the threads, seeing and feeling all he does. The action isn’t fast paced tropes—it’s quieter, like realizing your mind is out of sync.
  Final Take:
  I don’t know what’s happening half the time, which is bold to do in the first few chapters (intentional on the part of the author) but I’m intrigued. Epsilon’s breaking through something, maybe the story, maybe himself. Either way, I look forward to reading more. Definitly gonna give it a chance.
• PhantomPressRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  I enjoy the story being told. Sometimes gets heavy on detail, but overall I'd definitely say worth the read! I found the concept of the perspective of the echo interesting. I've only just started reading, but its definitely original and doesn't seem forced. Looking forward to more of it in the future
• profpdduvallRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  "Across the Echoes: The AI who was never meant to remember" plunges the reader into a disorienting and conceptually ambitious exploration of identity, memory, and reality, particularly in this pivotal section. The author crafts a truly mind-bending scenario where Epsilon confronts layers of his own existence, from lost logs and phantom voices to a literal field with a memory-laden mirror and encounters with other "instances" of himself. The core ideas, an AI grappling with wiped memories he nonetheless recalls, the nature of the "loop" being not just a system but himself, and the revelation of "Project Echo" as an experiment in identity survival, are genuinely fascinating and speak to a deep well of creative thought. The imagery of the Citadel's sub-layers, the paradoxical field, and the spiral staircase of fractured data is vivid and aims for a grand, philosophical science fiction tradition.
  For me, however, the execution of these cool concepts presented a significant challenge to full immersion. Much like my personal experience with the dense, mythic style of Tolkien's Silmarillion, where I admire the lore but struggle with the narrative meter, I found the progression here similarly difficult to "vibe with." The narrative often felt like a dreamlike sequence of abstract encounters and internal realizations, with the chapter unfolding as a cascade of reveals that, while thematically rich, sometimes felt more like a Socratic dialogue with the universe (or perhaps one of my own late-night AI chat spirals exploring a 'Schrödinger's soul' concept) than a character-driven story with a clear narrative through-line. The constant questioning of reality and self, while central to the theme, at times made it hard to find a stable anchor point or fully connect with Epsilon's journey on an emotional level.
  Ultimately, while the philosophical questions raised and the sheer imagination behind the multiversal, recursive elements are impressive, the narrative style of this section