In a world built on forgetting, remembering is rebellion.
Behind the Books #3
By Scott Evans
I never planned to write fiction.
My first book, Running on Empty, was raw and personal—an honest account of rebuilding myself after the military, one mile at a time. That story came from lived experience. Real miles, struggle and real healing.
But Memory Wars came from a question that wouldn’t let go of me:
What if our memories became the price of survival?
We’re already living in a world where data is currency—where we trade fragments of our identity for convenience, efficiency, and access. And recently—almost suddenly—we’ve stepped into the age of AI. It’s brilliant, exciting. It’s unsettling. We’ve created systems that can mimic language, art, even emotion.
But what comes next?
I’m not predicting a Judgment Day. No killer robots. No rogue machine uprising.
But I do think we’ve reached a moment worth paying attention to. Because once we start outsourcing our choices, our creativity, our memory… we have to ask:
What’s left that still makes us human?
That question is where Memory Wars begins.
Enter Kai
Kai is the protagonist—a memory reclaimer. Someone who retrieves lost, stolen, or erased memories in a world where people sell off their pasts to survive. She operates in the cracks of a broken system, guided by instinct and guilt, hunted by the very world she helped build.
She’s not perfect. She’s not even clear on who she is.
That’s the point.
Kai started as a survivor. But through the story, she becomes something else—a reminder that remembering is rebellion.
She doesn’t fight with weapons. She fights with memory. With truth. With pain she refuses to forget.
Why I Wrote Memory Wars
Because I could feel the edges of it already happening.
We let our phones track everything.
Apps finish our sentences.
Machines decide what we see, who we hear from, what we think we want.
And we call that progress.
Maybe it is.
But maybe it’s also dangerous in ways we haven’t fully grasped yet.
Memory Wars isn’t about an evil AI—it’s about the system we built ourselves. One that values data over people. Efficiency over empathy. Metrics over memory.
Writing it helped me process the world we’re drifting into—and to ask a simple, grounding question:
What happens when we start forgetting the things that made us who we are?
Memory as Currency
That’s the core mechanic of the world in Memory Wars:
People don’t just pay with money. They pay with memories.
Memories are extracted, sold, and catalogued. AI systems feed on them to learn, to evolve, to “understand” humanity—though that understanding is cold, calculated, and always about control.
If you’re poor, you sell your past. If you sell too much, you’re no longer economically useful—and the system finds ways to remove you.
It’s not loud or violent. It’s optimised.
And in the middle of it all is a woman who once believed in the system—and now knows the cost of that belief.
What You’ll Find in the Book
Memory Wars isn’t a space opera. There are no aliens, no chosen ones.
It’s a quiet rebellion set in a loud, consuming world.
You’ll find:
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A broken AI called Wilbur, who forgets as much as he remembers
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A ship named Obsidian Drift, stitched together from lost tech and stubbornness
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A system built on memory trade, where the rich collect histories and the poor sell theirs to survive
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Glitches, betrayals, buried truths—and a woman trying to reclaim not just stolen memories, but stolen identity
And underneath all that:
A simple idea—that remembering might be the most human thing we still have.
Meet Wilbur – The Most Human Voice Left
Wilbur is Kai’s ship AI.
Technically, he’s version 7.3—glitched, outdated, fragmented.
But in a world stripped of empathy, he might be the most human voice left.
He forgets things, repeats himself and gets emotional in ways he shouldn’t. But he’s also fiercely loyal, quietly perceptive, and—somehow—still believes in Kai when even she doesn’t.
He’s not just comic relief.
He’s her anchor. A tether to something real in a world that’s constantly trying to rewrite itself.
If Memory Wars asks what makes us human, Wilbur might be the answer:
A little broken.
A little inconsistent.
But always trying to understand—and always holding on to what matters most.
From the Author’s Note
Here’s the heart of it, taken directly from the note I wrote when the book was finished:
Memory Debt isn’t just about AI or dystopia.
It’s about the quiet, personal cost of forgetting.
And the radical courage of holding onto who we are—even when the world asks us not to.
If this book leaves you with anything, I hope it’s this:
You are not just what you do.
And some things really are worth remembering.
And even more—worth carrying forward.
Final Thoughts: Writing Memory Wars
I didn’t write Memory Wars to create a dystopia.
I wrote it because I think we’re closer to one than we realise—and we’re not asking enough questions.
If you’ve ever felt like your phone knows you too well…
You have ever wondered what it costs to always be connected…
And you’ve ever felt like the past is slipping away faster than you can hold onto it…
Then this book might be for you.
Memory Wars is written and created by Scott Evans to explore dystopian futures, memory as currency, and resistance in the age of AI.
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