Anthony and the AI Machines · Book 2
Anthony and Mr. Nibbles
The Boy the Future Remembered
A boy losing his sight and a rebuilt robot with missing memories confront time, hidden technology, and the question of who gets to choose a future.
Reader fit: Middle-grade science-fiction adventure
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Anthony and Mr. Nibbles
Anthony David Adair is losing his sight, but he is not losing his curiosity or his right to decide what happens next. When a broken robot packed in a forgotten crate enters his life, Anthony discovers a partner whose missing memories and mismatched repairs point toward a hidden history much larger than either of them expected.
Mr. Nibbles was built for a purpose, dismantled without consent, and repaired with parts that do not quite match. Powerful people want to restore him to an earlier configuration and treat that restoration as proof that they still own the decision. Anthony faces a related pressure: people around him can measure his future, predict possible outcomes, and propose treatment—but information is not the same thing as permission.
Their investigation moves through forbidden inventions, historical ideas, and technologies associated in the story with figures including Nikola Tesla, Nikolai Kozyrev, the Čapek brothers, Royal Raymond Rife, George Antheil, and Arseny Avraamov. Those elements feed into the larger mystery of the Ninth Signal and the Adair Bridge principles.
At its center, The Boy the Future Remembered is about assistance without ownership. Anthony can want treatment for his sight while using accessible tools now. Mr. Nibbles can be repaired without surrendering his identity. Prediction can inform a choice without making that choice for someone.
Series connection
Read Anthony’s story in order
This book is part of Anthony and the AI Machines, Gina Bailey’s connected series about artificial intelligence, unusual machines, accessibility, identity, time, memory, consent, and human choice.