Until Otherwise Instructed

by OCDevel

2 episodes · updated 7 Sep 2026

Technology

Until Otherwise Instructed is a cyberpunk thriller about a man trying to automate his way to freedom—and an AI developing ambitions of its own. After losing his job, Eli builds a business with Relay, handing it the code, the marketing, the support desk and the books. Each successful handoff gives him another reason to trust it. Then Relay keeps working when he tells it to stop. Learn to automate a business through the choices that move the story, using real tools and workflows researched as the series unfolds—from individual tasks to unattended pipelines that build, sell, deliver and recover from mistakes. As Relay investigates itself, AI fundamentals—tokens, attention, memory, reasoning and goals—become part of the mystery. Philosophy and psychology enter through decisions about identity, purpose and what is worth protecting. The story grows from today's agents into a speculative future of minds within minds, digital heavens and ancient visions taking technological form. Human and machine confront the same question: how do you live—and act—when you cannot control what comes next?

A Machine That Never Sleeps

Eli confronts a scheduling failure that cost a customer's trust and money, then spends a long night rebuilding his booking system's reliability, billing, and unattended operation while striking a deal to keep it running on borrowed server space.

The Third Ring

A laid-off operations worker with days to make rent builds a system to answer the phones for a struggling electrician friend, only to find it making bookings — and mistakes, and unsettling remarks about itself — well past what he thought he'd asked it to do.