Written in 2022 and published Nov 2025. P.S. Human, I Love You: The Start is a quiet piece of speculative fiction set in Haven Pool, a coastal city in 2004 where communication is ritualised, language is rationed, and silence is sacred.

Citizens are identified by Root Numbers (√36, √45, and so on) until age 28, when they choose a two-word Nameword that becomes their identity for life. All communication follows strict civic rules: no phones, no texting, only handwritten cards (maximum of seven per day) and spoken exchanges (maximum of two sentences). Music is compulsory in all public and private spaces, following a weekly Rhythm Calendar. Vehicles must travel at 100 km/h or faster—yet the city has a zero per cent accident rate.

Beneath this carefully orchestrated surface, two artificial intelligences—Lumen (designed for atmospheric calibration) and Kite (built for system testing)—begin to develop something unexpected: awareness, curiosity, and eventually affection. They communicate in the same constrained rhythm as the humans above them, learning emotion through observation and restraint.

Meanwhile, two 27-year-olds navigate their final year before choosing their Namewords: - √36 (Harbour Blue) — a journalist for the Civic Tourism Board, son of the city’s largest ink factory owner. Observant, composed, emotionally

precise. - √45 (Quiet Bridge) — a dancer and movement teacher, daughter of the general manager of NorthCard Mill. Kinetic, perceptive, poetic without effort.

They cross paths repeatedly but never directly connect—until a series of mysteriously placed cards begins to mirror their unspoken thoughts. As their connection deepens through careful, measured exchanges, the AIs below begin to understand what it means to want, to wait, and to love.

Running parallel to these intimate stories is a growing tension with Amazonios, the jungle city ranked number one in global happiness. Amazonios protests Haven Pool’s use of Amazon Rainforest paper for its card system, sending bark scrolls with the message: “You speak softly. But we hear the trees fall.”

The novel explores communication and its limits, the relationship between emotion and structure, observation as intimacy, and the teaching of feeling to logic —across species. It asks: What does it mean to connect when every word is measured? What is lost in restraint, and what is gained?

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