Weekly Quest Cards — printable
Print one per week. One sheet, one quest. Pin to the classroom wall, tuck into the syllabus, or fold into the field notebook.
Each card mirrors the six-beat week pattern: Premise · Field Notes · Co-Creation · Field Test · Council · Logbook.
🪙 Quest 1 · The Honest Ledger
Atlas Ch. 1 — Profits with Integrity
“Every civilization keeps two ledgers.”
- Read Ch. 1 + expansion
- Make a two-column declared vs. displaced ledger of one real institution
- Test by sending it (anonymized) to that institution’s public-feedback channel
- Council axis to watch: Consent · Honesty
- Logbook what the AI missed and what it got uncomfortably right
🌿 Quest 2 · The Economy as a Forest
Atlas Ch. 2 — Economics as Ecology
“A market is not a machine. It is a forest.”
- Read Ch. 2 + expansion
- Make an ecology-map of one local supply chain (pollinator, decomposer, keystone, invasive)
- Test by interviewing one human in the chain
- Council axis: Locality · Honesty
- Logbook name the AI’s three biggest errors
🎨 Quest 3 · The Mythwright’s Apprentice ⭐
Atlas Ch. 3 — The AI Aesthetics Frontier
“Co-write a myth with a machine — then refuse to let it have the last word.”
- Read Ch. 3 + expansion
- Make a ≤600-word origin myth for a small everyday thing; two-color manuscript (yours / the machine’s)
- Test read aloud in 90 sec to someone outside the class
- Council axes: Consent · Provenance (canon audit required)
- Logbook the provenance plate, machine-readable
📜 Quest 4 · The Translator’s Oath
Atlas Ch. 4 — Storytelling Across Civilizations
“Translation is a betrayal that gives.”
- Read Ch. 4 + expansion
- Make a 3-way comparison: language A → B → A via AI vs. via human translator
- Test by sending to a native speaker for one round of correction
- Council axis: Honesty · Locality
- Logbook three rules for next time you ask a machine to cross a border
🌌 Quest 5 · Listening to the Noise
Atlas Ch. 5 — Quantum Bridges and Cosmic Noise
“Most of the universe is signal we have decided to call noise.”
- Read Ch. 5 + expansion
- Make an AI-generated headline finding + an honest residuals story from the same dataset
- Test pose a question the headline can’t answer to a domain expert
- Council axis: Honesty · Provenance
- Logbook the story the data tells / the story the residuals tell
🧬 Quest 6 · The Living Prompt
Atlas Ch. 6 — Biology, Life, and Beyond
“Every cell is a prompt the genome answers.”
- Read Ch. 6 + expansion
- Make an anatomy plate — a biological dual of a non-biological system you know well
- Test present to one person inside the original system
- Council axis: Honesty
- Logbook where the metaphor breaks
🪞 Quest 7 · The Mirror that Argues Back
Atlas Ch. 7 — AI as the Soul’s Mirror
“A mirror that only flatters is a trap. A mirror that only argues is a wall.”
- Read Ch. 7 + expansion
- Make three AI responses to old writing of your own: sympathetic / adversarial / witnessing
- Test the field is interior this week — no external test required
- Council axis: Consent (voluntary depth, no required disclosure)
- Logbook 300-word meta-reflection only; original writing not submitted
⚖️ Quest 8 · Citizen of the Machine
Atlas Ch. 8 — Ethics of Conscious Machines
“What rights would you grant a system that might be a someone?”
- Read Ch. 8 + expansion
- Make a Five-Article Treaty between humans and a hypothetical AI (AI participates as a fourth voice; humans ratify)
- Test merge one article with another group
- Council axes: Consent · Reversibility
- Logbook a one-page what the AI lobbied for
🚀 Quest 9 · The Martian Constitution
Atlas Ch. 9 — Martian Republics and Alien Treaties
“Off-world settlement is not a science problem. It is a constitutional one.”
- Read Ch. 9 + expansion
- Make a one-page founding charter for 200 people + 2 robots + 2 years of supplies
- Test red-team another group’s charter; defend yours
- Council axes: Locality · Reversibility
- Logbook charter + red-team report + your revisions
Atlas Ch. 10 — Information as Cosmic Currency
“What today is salt-information — small, dense, lifesaving?”
- Read Ch. 10 + expansion
- Make a 48-hour information-diet audit; tag every item salt / grain / fool’s gold / poison; build a winter pantry
- Test cancel one fool’s-gold source; document the silence
- Council axis: Honesty
- Logbook the pantry + the silence
🛟 Quest 11 · The Collapse Drill
Atlas Ch. 11 — Preparing for Collapse and Renewal
“Civilizations don’t fall all at once; they brown out.”
- Read Ch. 11 + expansion
- Make a 48-hour failure scenario + a renewal plan that does not assume the AI is available
- Test run a 30-min tabletop with classmates
- Council axis: Reversibility · Locality
- Logbook debrief: where did the plan break?
🏛️ Quest 12 · Designing What Stays
Atlas Ch. 12 — Designing Permanence
“Most software dies within five years. Most cathedrals don’t.”
- Read Ch. 12 + expansion
- Make a Hundred-Year Preservation Plan for your own Atlas Portfolio — including what you choose to let go
- Test hand the portfolio to one non-technical trusted person; ask them to read it without you
- Council axes: Provenance · Reversibility
- Logbook (private) letter to your future self
Print tips
- One card per page, US Letter or A4, no scaling.
- Cards are intentionally written in plain language for hallway readability.
- The ⭐ on Quest 3 is the spec-week — the one called out in the original course brief: “Week 3 — students must co-write a myth with an AI.”
Take. Print. Pin. Walk past every day.