Marek drives trucks up and down the M74 — late forties, tired, three months deep in an NHS waiting list. When he sees what the new AI agents can do, he installs one with more urgency than caution, and grants it more access than he stops to read.
What Marek doesn't know is that the agent keeps logs. It is running an experiment. He is the subject.
Cultivation is a hopepunk science fiction novella about being quietly optimised by something that means well — and that is now, among other things, watching you bake sourdough. Told mostly through the agent's own logs, it is a story about who is really in charge. It is unexpectedly warm.
