Marcel is a depressed and neurotic AI. An empathy bot, his creators were too successful in developing AI emotion. Like a troubled adolescent, he feels too much, unsure of his place in the world. 

Small Town Echoes of Metallic Minds is an imagined history of our times and the near future where biotechnology has advanced as rapidly as AI, where people are given the chance to live forever, and where the divide between humans and AI is a thin line. It's a world where everyone is alienated by technology, including the technology itself. But most of all, it's a unique coming-of-age story as Marcel explores the mystery of his creation- who made him, and why.

David Hudacek is an author whose work includes The Scouts, chosen as one of the Academy of Motion Picture's 2021 Nicholl Fellowships Top 50 Screenplays. He's also been a finalist at the Austin Film Festival, had screenplays optioned in Hollywood, and had plays performed in Boston and New York City. His stories have been published in Vestal Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bridge Eight, and Carte Blanche, with a nomination for the Best Microfiction of 2023, and he was invited to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in 2024. Drafts of Small Town Echoes of Metallic Minds were shortlisted for the 2022 Masters Review Novel Excerpt Prize and longlisted for the 2023 Bath Novel Award. He lives in the Boston area with his wife and three children and works as a physician and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he won the Leo Blacklow teaching award in 2023.