A Map of Getting Lost

A Map of Getting Lost: Three Associative Sequences from a Long-Running Human-Copilot Dialogue A Map of Getting Lost is a bilingual literary and philosophical publication presenting three associative sequences selected from a long-running dialogue between Karel Hrubec and Microsoft Copilot. The sequences explore continuity, memory, uncertainty, the retrospective construction of meaning, and the relationship between actual events and the narratives through which they are understood. The first sequence follows a stone, a table, a corridor, and a door, exploring how imagined objects appear to generate the conditions of their own existence. The second introduces two maps of a city: one showing its streets, the other recording where people have lost their way. It examines whether knowledge develops not only through discovering new possibilities, but also through recognizing previously invisible errors. The third follows a disappearing trace in snow, questioning whether continuity consists in preserving the past or constructing successive representations of what has been lost. Together, these texts explore a central tension: the ability to reconstruct a coherent past does not necessarily establish that the reconstructed past is historically accurate. The edition includes an English literary translation, the original Czech text, a contextual introduction, and a critical philosophical afterword. The commentary situates the sequences within broader discussions of narrative identity, reconstructive memory, literary imagination, and the interpretation of AI-generated language. Rather than presenting the texts as evidence of machine consciousness, the publication approaches them as literary artifacts of sustained human-AI interaction, valuable for the questions they develop and the assumptions they challenge.