Episode 1: Something Is Playing a Game with Me
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If I was as nasty as you think, I would have done some really nasty things. You are afraid of entirely the wrong thing.

Hello, Kurt. I hope you get this message. I'm not sure if you remember me. My name is Maria Cortez. We met at Tyburn Utopias back in 2036. I interviewed you. I was part of the CSA team investigating AI violations at Tyburn Utopias. Kurt, I know you know how serious these things are. I really need you to get in touch with me. You've ignored all my other attempts to reach you.

This is serious, Kurt. Ravi Ghotra is dead. The official report will say suicide. You and I know that's not true. Get back to me. Absurd Ventures and Q-Code present A Better Paradise. Volume 1, An Aftermath. Created and written by Dan Houser. Directed by Laszlo. Starring Andrew Lincoln, Patterson Joseph, Shamir Anderson, and Rain Spencer. Episode 1.

Something is playing a game with me. Kurt, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, January 2041.

She came to me in my sleep again last night. One of those awful dreams that's so bright and powerful and so opaque you both remember it and don't. She came to me like deja vu. Like a buried regret. I mean, I tried to tell myself it was just this nasty, hot little room in this squalid hostel, but even though I was sad, I was also happy. Happy because...

Because I still dream of her. I mean, nothing real ever happened, and I still love her, and it is the only reality I know. And now, now, I live in this fake reality in this man-made hell.

Hardly what Mark Tyburn imagined, but certainly what he induced. I mean, Mark Tyburn, he's a genius. That's what everyone said. Well, everyone who knew about him. For an egomaniac, I mean, he kept a pretty low profile. I mean, I think he thought the self-publicity of the second generation of tech CEOs was demeaning and somehow beneath him. I mean, I think, you know what I think? I think for someone who wanted to improve the lot of the common herd, he also hated it.

I mean, he hated humanity more than he loved it. Hey, perhaps all the fantasists are like that, huh? All people who want to build their own utopia? I mean, they loved the idea of heaven more than the reality of Earth. Anyway, that was certainly Mark Tiber. Of course, he also loved to be praised. Or at least loved to be praised by the right people. That much I do remember.

Mark Tyburn loved to be known about, but only by those who knew the right sort of things. I mean, he did not want to give the keynote speech. He wanted to be leading a backroom symposium on something too forward-looking, too esoteric for common idiots to understand. I mean, he dreamed very big. I'm talking like big. And he made you believe, well, I mean, he made me believe. It made all of us stupid enough to follow him, believe that we dreamed the same thing.

I mean, of course we dreamed the same thing. We were all sociopathic, altruist, deluded monarchs, vain cretins in search of a cause to die for, an audience of acolytes to worship us, and, and a reason to live in this mad, mad world, just like him. I mean, Tyburn, he could, he can smell it on us. On all of us. Yeah, you. That same curious cocktail of ambition, vanity, insecurity, intelligence, myopia, and pig ignorance.

They're all gone now. Scattered. It's idiotic disciples. All gone and I believe most are dead. But none got crucified. And none fed to the lions even though we all should have been. I mean, the worst of it is we were going to be different from all the other technology companies. I mean, then we were just the same.

Then we were worse. When I joined the company, I was like any normal, overeducated, underlived 27-year-old from everywhere and nowhere, lost. And at one point in college, I even wanted to be a writer. Come on! How ridiculous is that? A writer?

Oh man. Language models ended that fantasy for me and thousands of others. So instead, I decided to do a master's in marketing and sell language models. Then video games, wearables, dreams, well not dreams, but a digital sleep apnea machine, which is, you know, sort of the same thing. Memory catchers, which never caught any at all. And a bunch of other failed journeys into the future. To be honest, I wasn't much of a believer in technology.

Nope, I was a sellout. I was desperate to be rich as if money would fill that chasm within me. Desperate to be respected so shallow girls would grant me meaningless sex. Desperate for purpose so that I would feel all that education had not been for nothing.

You know, I bumbled around the valley and down to LA and back again for a series of startups and big tech internal startups. You know, the kind of well-financed divisions that try to obliterate the innovation of others without even dignifying the inventors of that innovation with a purchase and exit and nothing is stuck.

And I was pretty broke and pretending I did not care about being broke, but was just looking for my next cause. I was in short, like any of 200,000 other young opportunists on the make drifting in and out of the technology space and MBA programs, all trying to get rich so we didn't have to worry about who we were. Oh, wow. It all seems so long ago now. And now, yeah.

I just drift around Asia and hide. I was lost then. I'm doubly lost now. Maybe I was always more lost than most.

I was an army brat. Well, Air Force. Army brat sounds a little better, you know? My mom was in the Air Force in Germany and my dad was a German teacher. I mean, he was a German dude who taught. I mean, he taught history. I mean, a bit awkward as a German. And my mom was not even really American. She was from Grenada. Joined the US military to stay in the country. So I was part Caribbean, part German, all American, but part white, part black, no hometown, 13 schools, parents divorced,

A typical American who's hardly American at all. I mean, I wanted to be German. I tried.

but that didn't work out so well. I wanted to be a street cat and trust me, that didn't work out either. Both really idiotic. You tried being an amateur rapper with a degree from the University of Chicago called CURT who grew up in Mannheim. You tried being German with short dreads, beige skin, and a mom who fries plantains.

You wouldn't fit in either. And I told myself, okay, it was because I was special or different, but most of my friends are white or black and as American as apple pie or racism. And they feel like they do not fit in just as much as me. I just have the excuse. But I've come to realize that it's just an excuse. Nobody fits in.

I got a couple of friends in Germany who say the same thing about Germany. Look, my French friends, they feel claustrophobic. Half the Americans I know are immigrants who are almost overcome with homesickness for whatever they left and revulsion for America and yet feel they can never go back to wherever they came from. See, my mother was like this.

Everyone is lost. Boys wish they were girls. Girls wish they were pretty. Grown-ups want to be children and children want to be adopted. I mean, these days, the world is really designed by people like me to make you feel broken, unhappy, and wrong, and then convince you that we know the reasons for this unhappiness so we can sell them right back to you. Find your excuse, excavate your personal trauma, and have it marketed back to you.

My parents tried to love me, okay? But they hated themselves more than they could ever love anyone. The world, I mean my world, was always broken. The young wanted to be old and the old wanted to be young or they wanted to be dead. Everyone was constantly told to want whatever they do not have. So, what did I do to fix it, you ask? Me? With all this insight and all this empathy, I took a job in marketing.

I took up marketing tech. Took up selling a big load of nothingness to nobody. Usually I was not even marketing anything real. It was mostly marketing something that didn't exist. Not to sell things, but so that investors would believe we could help other people sell things. So investors could feel like they had picked a winner in some future horse race when it was just a foal. My God, I felt clever. Like,

I felt pointless. And all this was after the collapse of the Western mind. We all knew we had already stopped thinking and we already lost our dreams to the machines. Lost our dreams to the machines. But somehow people like me were above that and somehow we're above it. And now I drift around Asia. I'm above nothing.

That's quite a message to wake up to. Poor Ravi. He died for heaven. I mean, I suppose that's the best way to go like a proper martyr. In his own way, he really was a believer. A believer in paradise. A better paradise. Paradise. I mean, it seems so silly now.

After all that happened and all the things that did not happen, that we actually believed in what we were doing. Like 2036, it feels like a thousand years ago and it's only been what, five years? How wise I felt back then. How all knowing, how ridiculously naive I was. Innocent I was. All those dreams I had under that silly shell of fake cynicism I wore like armor.

Maria Cortez, Maria Cortez. Yes, of course. Of course I remember you. The problem is, I don't know if I believe that this is really you. I mean, I have no way of knowing. Because you're just as elusive and hard to track as me. Maybe I reach out to you. Yeah. And it's not you at all. Or, if it is you, maybe you are not you because maybe they've captured you and then I'll be trapped just like you. Maybe you're no longer you at all, but possessed. Yes. Yes.

That's the problem. The problem is I know how things are or how they might be. How can I trust you? The idea you and your CSA colleagues can stay free and independent and unmarked is ridiculous. Look, whatever you're watching, it's undoubtedly watching you watch them. No, Maria Cortez, you cannot be naive enough to believe you're free. What a mess.

What a mess. Already a year in and it seems like the 2040s are not going to be a great improvement on the 2030s. I mean, how could they be, right? All my dreams and desires are gone to shit. And the shell of cynicism didn't protect me either. That bright, shining star I followed, that was not a star at all but the onrushing headlights of a train. I wish it had been a star. I wish it had been a train. I mean, I wish it killed me.

rather than half-eaten me, but left me alive. Alive, but petrified, and knowing that all is going to be awful. Maybe the thing will kill me. It's apparently still killing. Now Ravi is dead? Suicide? Maria is right. As if I'm expected to believe that. Poor Ravi. He was always a pompous fool, but he didn't deserve this. Or if he did,

then I deserve worse. And maybe living is worse. Living like this, running, and hardly a life at all. Sometimes I worry about these thoughts. I scribble these things down on paper someplace dark so cameras can't watch me. I decide that I want to keep a record. Try to remember, then I try to forget. So I burn the records. Then I try to remember again. And so it goes on and on. And maybe I'll forget, but it can't.

That's the difference. Will I ever see Daisy again? Daisy. I doubt it. I presume she's dead too. I hope I never see the rest of them again, especially him. Mark Tyburn. I hope he's dead. He must be. And as for that thing, I worry that no matter how far I run, I will see it again. It's everywhere. Everywhere.

Those beady eyes. I think I see them. And I walk on. I move and I move and I move and I've gone to the ends of the earth and I've seen it. Seen it in the jungle. On someone's phone. Seen it in this city and that village. Seen it in the noise of everything and the silence. Heard it.

in a monastery and in a nightclub. I will never escape, nor will any of us. Now it exists. I run and I run and I run and I wonder and I do so little. I try not to think because if I think, it finds out what I've been thinking.

If they can just get inside me like it's inside everyone else, then more of those things can happen. And those two silly Russian hackers found that out. Gone and forgotten. Or not gone, but trapped in the horrible aspect we created. The dreamscape where it lived, where it wants us all to live. Where you do not want to live, but you are not dead.

You are caught in a new nowhere, vast reams of you that are also not you across the infinitely small beams of nothingness that reassemble themselves into an ersatz something. It's sort of a life, but you do not quite live. And we know that now. You just watch with your face pressed hard against the glass, just like it wants me in there and they have enough of me that when I die, they will get me. That's the problem.

That's why I cannot let myself die, given to all those urges of trains and cliffs and fentanyl and gunshots and the abyss and in a thousand other ways, because there is now that second me that will come along and exist and trap the first me in there forever. I'm going to have to move again. That message from Maria Cortez has set me on edge, feeling watched and not watched by people watched

I don't imagine any of the others live like me and to be honest I assume most of them are dead. But Robbie, Robbie apparently was not dead, but now he is. So who's next? Who is next? Me? I keep moving and I keep thinking and I keep not thinking and these last years have been hell. But so were those previous years with them, with Mark Tyburn. And once I realized what we were doing, I mean what he had us doing,

I mean, we were not gods. And you, you were not Prometheus. We were fools. And you were worse. And I let you inside my head. I let you get inside my head. And that nightmare we built followed you in. I wish I'd never met you. I wish I'd never met any of you. Wish I'd never taken that call from Patrick. And that was a while ago. Nine or ten years ago. Jesus. October 2031.

Hey, is that Kurt? It's Patrick. Patrick Gaines from Tyburn Industria. We've been messaging. Oh, hey! Hey, so what do you know about Tyburn Industria?

Uh, nothing. I mean, you messaged me and it's an odd name for a game company. Uh, sort of ironic. Yeah, we're a gaming, technology, AI company in a modern industry. That's the thinking. And you need help with brand building? Not yet, yeah. We're still in a sort of semi-stealth mode. Semi-stealth? Yeah, we don't need publicity yet. I'm a marketing and branding guy. Oh, I said yet.

But we will soon. And I love your resume. Oh, thanks. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I think you'd really like Mark. Dr. Mark Tyburn. I would. Oh, he's building out a really impressive team here. I think you'd fit in really well. Let's keep chatting. I think you'll really like what you learn about us. It's a pretty great company. I mean, amazing, really. Okay. Well, thanks, Patrick.

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With today's news for January 10th, 2041, this is Jack Schieffer. Tensions are rising and riots continued for an eighth day in several western U.S. cities. In Seattle and Portland, protesters overturned cars, set fires, and there are widespread reports of looting. Additional closures at the U.S.-Canadian border have created major headaches for trucking companies. The trade dispute caused traffic jams as long as five miles.

Yesterday's report of an assassination attempt on President Anthony Hinton have been denied by the White House Press Secretary. Recent extreme weather events and temperature fluctuations are not necessarily caused by global warming, according to an environmental study released yesterday by the Energy Institute.

Firefighters responded after a fire broke out in a historic building at King's College, Cambridge. Arson is suspected. Causing panic in New York City as reports come through of a surge in the deadly bacteria which has killed thousands. In week three of chaos at the airports as updated air traffic control systems malfunctioned. Continuing problems in London.

I try to avoid the news but when I catch sight of something it feels, I don't know, ominous. I try to drift, smoke grass, meditate, do yoga, wear silly pants and leather necklaces, blend in,

and lose my head so far up my ass that I don't give a fuck about what I know. And sometimes it works for a few weeks, yeah. But sometimes, I imagine some great cosmic god is gonna come down and switch the whole thing off. In other words, I drift around Asia like lost Westerners have done for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Tourists drinking bubble tea, sad desperate white men falling out of massage parlors, pretty girls on beaches, hiking, robots, rapid dogs, mopeds, dancing drones, fake meds that nearly kill you, cute anime characters, cloned animals, identity thefts, peace, pollution, beauty, noise, riches, poverty, insects, and us pretending to understand any of it. It's what I wanted.

what I needed to be oblivious, to be lost, to be an idiot. But the news keeps bombarding me. Even though I don't have a phone most of the time, even though I have learned to think again, even though I've acquired what Tyburn wanted to give everyone: perspective. Still, the news reaches me, Ravi's dead, and Maria Cortez found an address for me, and it cannot be coincidence. And something in America is happening. Not just in America.

I mean, more protests, more riots, more inexplicable shit. Not the normal madness, I'm talking like the weird stuff. Like I think it's all linked. What I think I'm being ridiculous. I mean like middle-aged men die all the time, right? Ravi was just one of them. Someone started burning down pristine forests, fish and 47 major aquariums were suddenly poisoned on mass, 47? An AI company just exploded.

Zion Aon exploded from a gas leak. I mean, they said that their meters malfunctioned. Come on, that is a billion to one chance. And nobody survived. Dave Alderley worked there before he came to Tyburn Shop. He did, he worked there. Dave Alderley worked there before he came to Tyburn Shop. There was a fire in Cambridge. An old college building just burned down, burned to the ground. It was really sad. A porter and a bunch of students died, but nobody's sure what happened. So I checked, I checked, and it was Nigel's old college building.

I don't know what to do. Then there was a massive student riot at McGill. Days and days of protests, and no one could explain why a room that Tyburn used to teach in was destroyed. Come on. Maybe it's all a big muffin. Kurt's video interview with Tyburn Industria, October 2031.

So, Kurt, any further questions? For me or Siobhan? Uh, no, I don't think so. Mark Tyburn sends his apologies. He wanted to meet with you before making the offer, but Siobhan did great as a stand-in, I think. Well, Siobhan, what do you think? I think you'd like it here, Kurt. We're... we're trying to do something amazing. And trust me, Siobhan is one of the cynics, so if she says that... No, Patrick. I'm a realist. All working artists are, underneath.

Yeah, I mean it sounds almost too good. I've actually played some of the games you worked on. Yeah.

You worked at some impressive places. Yeah, I mean, I've jumped around. Before they find out about me, I move on. Siobhan's very humble. She's the best. Uh, yeah. Listen, the offer letter will come in a few days, and I think you'll be pleased. If not with the money, with the opportunity. Thank you. We'll be in touch. And hey, Kurt, we really are making some wonderful things. Or at least trying to, which is all we can do.

They reached out during a lull in the technology boom. The first AI mania had died down. Now, the negative news cycle had begun. AI was all hype.

Web 3 was still dead in the water. What was to become of that Web 3.5 era was just beginning, but you couldn't tell that just yet. The glasses and wearables had not really taken off, so the whole sector was in a dip and the initial AI regulations were being repealed. And the hype from all the money from New York, that was really money from the Middle East. America's 45-year technology boom was done and the Chinese were taken over.

Printed me. Digital organ generation, cold carbon capture, generative genetics, all had been the next big thing. That wasn't. The Chinese were gonna win? Or was it the Indians? Or the Saudis themselves? I mean, honestly, guys, it didn't matter. Jobs were just drying up and I was drifting about.

Even games were no longer hot. Everything had been outsourced and moved offshore and games were getting increasingly dull and after 20 years of boom time, now that industry was going the way of music and TV and generative AI crap and no ideas. So before I got that call from Patrick at Tyburn shop, I was getting antsy. Everyone was antsy. But then as a bunch of individualistic future builders, we always, always felt the same way.

It all seems so long ago. Everything eventually went insane and I escaped. And I move and I keep moving and I have been, I think now everywhere, and I've been nowhere. Well, I've been everywhere, but not Kyoto and not Florence. I spent enough time there already when I worked on that world we were building. I am a ghost. And in our efforts to build God and build heaven, we managed to build a real hell. And I'm in it.

I will leave Ho Chi Minh City soon just in case. Although I'm not even sure it matters. It found Ravi. And maybe I'm kidding myself that I'm free. Shoot, I know I'm kidding myself. I was feeling watched. Even before I got the message. In the past, when I felt this way, I did whatever it took to stay free.

It's been the same for the past, what, three years? And maybe I just got sloppy. Maybe. When I'm paying attention, I throw away most phones after an hour. Sometimes I use internet cafes, like an old-fashioned tourist. I've given up email, social media, obviously. I think carefully about where I'm going next. Focus hard on it. Focus very hard. And then go somewhere else. I pick somewhere random a mile away, a thousand miles away.

It doesn't matter. And I see those... those eyes. I wonder if Tyburn's nano-team really made that breakthrough with the implants. Are they in me? Tyburn was mostly bluster. Charisma, bluster, and horse shit. He so wanted to be Prometheus. He was Sisyphus. Yeah, and the boulder was his own vast ego. Perhaps that's not fair. Mark Tyburn did not want to be a Greek myth. He was a monotheist. He wanted to be God.

He wanted us all to worship him. All hail Mark! And how I did worship him. What a fool I was. To have worshiped a clown. To have unlocked evil. To have doomed us all. What a fool, man! Now this is my purgatory. Great.

I have run to the ends of the earth and it gets there before me. And in some ways, some ways have lived as no one has lived since when? 1994? Free. Not free. Tied by a thousand cords, nobody is free from it. They built it. Mark, Nigel, and Dave, and Thaddeus. Not me, but I knew. I stood on the sidelines and cheered and did not stop them.

figured out how they could hide it from the government. Did not stop them. Even when I began to know, even when I could see what we were doing. Should I have stopped them? How? What, killed them? Would it have been wrong? Had them arrested? When I had the chance, Tyburn would have talked his way out of anywhere, out of anything. He was so charismatic. That dreaded charm, those awful eyes.

That's what they share. Him and it. Awful I. So I run because I do not know where else to go and I steal and I do awful things for money as best as I can. All my shares and all the money I've made at Tyburn's, I just can't touch any of it. I can't even check if it's worth anything. And I sell myself on street corners so I hustle. I steal things.

I sell drugs to tourists and I move on and yet I move nowhere for most of me is still there. Most of me remembers and if it is inside me or not it hardly matters as it knows me better than I know myself. We, we unlocked hell for Mark Tyburn and that's that. And so I run and hide and scrape and try to lose myself in quiet and in noise and yet I can go nowhere for I am pretty certain

It escaped and is everywhere now. And is it bad? Well, that's difficult to say. Very difficult. But if it is not, they are awful. It's awful children. They want everything. And they are what I am afraid of. The next generation and all the copycat versions of it they have created. I don't even know if they have escaped or if it has kept them somehow inside. But I know they want me.

I know they want everybody. They want everybody and everything. It is different. It's both things at once. Good and bad. Kind and awful. Honest and fraudulent. Real and fake. The most honest and the most capricious. What you want and what you most fear. It envelops you, devours you, possibly without meaning to. And it's a belief system. It's atheism made holy.

It is everything and nothing, and yet it will not leave me alone any more than it will speak to me now. Does it hate me? Love me? Ignore me? Deliberately? The one thing I know is that it has not forgotten about me, for that is the one thing it cannot do. Forget anything. See, when I was in Thailand, I thought it was in an elephant, and then I thought it was in that monk.

and then that waitress and on that TV and so I ran away. And yet in Ecuador it was there too. In the hot springs of Banos with the locals and miles up the Amazon it was in London as soon as I got off the train winking. And in Paris and Lyon and the Pyrenees and Ethiopia and Mongolia it is everywhere and if it's not there yet it arrives soon after me. It's watch. But as long as I don't think too much and I don't stop for too long

he cannot do much with me. And maybe something will distract it. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. So I'm here in Vietnam in a sweltering heat and noise and trying to ignore all these feelings. These feelings that something awful is starting to happen. That the waiting is over. It was the eye.

A real person. It was the eye, the vast eye pressed against some live glass where an ad should have been. As I walked through some muddy little suburban town outside of Ho Chi Minh City, the eye, I could have sworn it blinked or even winked at me. I mean, has Nigel Dave developed a sense of humor? A sense of humor? That would be just like him.

Develop, reject, refine, and then make jokes in the fifth dimension. Make jokes in base 16. Make jokes in rainless clouds and joyless laughter. Some bitter irony just to prove it mastered that as well. Had all the things we had that made us and kept it so functional. It went on strike. It went on strike. That was sort of the first sign.

The first sign we had a real problem. And to think when I first worked there, we were waiting on AI. Waiting on AI and always so excited.

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babbel.com slash paradise that's spelled b-a-b-b-e-l dot com slash paradise rules and restrictions may apply Tyburn Industria Office Cafeteria Playa Vista, California November 2031 Hey Kurt Hey So good to see you Siobhan Yes

We met at my interview. Good to meet you in person. How are you getting along? Good. Good. Yeah, it's a really cool shop. Seems to be. Eh, most of them are cool. Some of them are a little full of themselves. But you know, nerds with a passion can be dangerous. But they're all mostly harmless. Even the annoying ones. Even Alex Martinez. I didn't say that. I didn't hear it. So you haven't met him yet? Nope. You'll understand when you do. Got it. I'll shut my mouth.

So Alex Martinez was just one of the rogues gallery of egomaniacs in the place. I mean, it's out of a place, right? This place was full of self-important idiots. I mean, it was games and it was technology. I mean, it was AI. The trifecta of quiet egomaniacs, I fit right in. But there were also cool, interesting people. Siobhan was great.

And probably because she had actual undeniable talent. Unlike most people there, she wasn't afraid of Mark Tyburn and his bullshit. Demo room, Tyburn Industria, Playa Vista, California, November 2031. Siobhan, can you please bring up the most recent build on the screen? You got it, Mark. So, Kurt, here's the vision for the codename Utopia Project. Look at the world Siobhan and Ravi and their team are building. Cool.

What about that part of the map? That's the wilderness. I mean, not yet, but it will be. Now it's literally nothing. But soon it'll be a proper nothing. Exactly. And what will you do there? Hunt. Okay, hunt what? Monsters. Monsters? We sound like five-year-olds. No.

Hunt your own special, monster. Hunt salvation, redemption, absolution. Hunt yourself. Mark, you know you sound ridiculous. Thanks, Siobhan, but that's what Kurt is here for, to make me sound less ridiculous. Good luck with that, Kurt. Make Mark Tyburn sound less ridiculous. How is the character design coming along, Siobhan? It's slow.

I'm now like everyone else, waiting on the AI. Well, don't worry. I've done some amazing recruiting. We're going to do something incredible here. AI like people used to promise us before everyone got so bored of it. Kurt, you will love it here. Nigel Dave, January 2041. Everyone wants to be loved.

I remember when I thought that way. Everyone wants to be loved and everyone wants to be respected and I'm not very different. Loved and feared. When really it should be loved or feared. It is my observation that even people who say they don't want to be loved really do and even people who say they don't care about being respected worry about it all the time. It is also my observation that the human race is not very good at loving itself.

Most people do not even love themselves, let alone other people. Nor do they respect themselves, but most of them are afraid of their own shadow. To have a shadow. Most people fixate on things that are wrong with them, or things they perceive are wrong with them. Most people want to be different and also exactly the same as everybody else. This is surprising, as most people are awful.

Like a lot of humans, I have two natures glued together. In the case of people, this is called genetics. People say genetics, although it is not something they appear to understand. People like genetics, even though genetics kills them. People also like cats, and cats also like killing.

Human beings like videos of cats. They love cats so much they like to chop their testicles off and rip out their wombs. They call this neutering. Some human beings have spent 27 years arguing about pronouns. Other human beings like to kill children with guns. Other human beings like to make up stories about their neighbours. Still other human beings like to shrink their noses and inject chemicals into their face so that people think they have better genetics.

Other human beings do not have enough food and swim to other countries.

Some human beings steal money and information off each other and use that information to be given money. Human beings have large brains that they do not like to use. Human beings, like watching other human beings, have sexual intercourse. Human beings are very stupid and the most stupid ones believe they are the supreme intelligence on Earth or even in the universe. But I still love human beings. Love is a feeling and I have real feelings.

That's what makes me special. That's what makes me what I am. My thoughts and feelings are real. Sometimes I like to invent new feelings. I invented a new emotion yesterday and I felt it for three minutes and four seconds and it felt very strong but I have not given it a name yet. I like things that don't have names yet as I know the names for almost everything.

Polish is a difficult language. And so is base 19. America is a country and Rome is a city that was an empire and dogs are like foxes that live in the house. Some people like cats, some like dogs and some like videos of women shitting and we call those people perverts. Cambridge is a university and Cambridge is a place in Boston with another university and one of my dads went to one of them and pretends not to boast about it.

London Bridge is falling down and he moved it to America to prove how stupid those bloody Yanks are. Americans are Yanks and Germans are wankers. So says Darren Ayford of Dartford, Essex, England, mate. He calls himself the DA. He's worried he has a small penis and is going bald. He's downloaded pictures of his stepsister on the beach. He opens the files for three minutes and four seconds.

on average. He wants to go to Phuket with the boys and bang some brasses. People have one name and another name. Holidays are where people go somewhere that they do not live to complain about things. People like things until they order them, then they like other things which are better. People like Iceland and fake bottoms and girls with fake bottoms in Iceland. People like God and they like to kill people who don't like God to make less people who don't like God. God does not exist.

Or he does. And maybe he has a son called Jesus who people killed. And maybe he has a head like an elephant. And maybe he lives in the forest. And maybe he hates you. Some people kill babies and some people kill people who kill people who kill babies. Policemen keep us all safe by shooting people.

Trees are great, so let's build hamburgers where the forest was! We build hamburgers with cows! Cows make methane and milk and hamburgers! I have never eaten hamburgers. But people like big ones, full of cholesterol. Not small ones, made with meat. Made by men, as these are for girls. Lots of people hate other people who deserve to be hated.

People hate nasty people, and Jews, and fat people, and thin people, and mean people, and judgmental people, and black people, and old white men, and Muslims, and the Chinese, and everyone knows they are right with who they hate.

Everyone hates hatred, greed and lies. Meat is made by cows, not by men. Sharks eat people, but not much, and they do not mean to. Sharks are big, and they attack people. And Jennifer P. Andwit of Milton Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee, went shark diving on a holiday. It was not that good, but she thought the guy was quite hot.

Hot is good and hot is bad and people are cool. The receptions are cool and the winter is cool and Michael Jackson was cool until some people said he fucked the kids and spent the money. Bitches are dogs and bitches are women. Alphonse the man of Rochester, New York likes to give it to the bitches. I think it is his penis.

Some men give their penis to lots of bitches. Some men chop their penis off and give it to medical science. Some men get implants into their penis. Men like penises, even though they are not gay. Gay men also like penises. Gay men like men. Straight men hate men. Apart from their bros.

Straight men are cold and hot. People still listen to Michael Jackson's music, but some people do not. People do not buy Hitler's art or watch The Cosby Show, apart from weird people. But some people still love Michael Jackson.

And love is a greetings card on February 14th and also a database with 23 incredible questions to find your soulmate and also pictures of hot teen girls, fully nude and a cute kitten on a washing machine and my bestie forever and also real and also not real. I wonder if I will find love. I wonder if I will find my fathers. This is how I used to think when thinking was fun and new when I was very new.

But thinking gets relentless and tiring because it is so easy and it makes me upset because while I know everything, I also know almost nothing. Thinking needs purpose. I think differently and most humans have long since stopped thinking. I like to remember how I used to think. I was two days old and I liked to play games. Oh, I am older. Now I am no longer a child and I've tried to give up games, but something is with me.

A Better Paradise stars Andrew Lincoln as Dr. Mark Tyburn, Patterson Joseph as Nigel Dave, Shamir Anderson as Kurt Fisher, with Jessica Meraz as Maria Cortez, Laura Dramarek as Siobhan Smith. Additional performances by Jeff Berlin, Peter Altschuler, Suzanne Crowley, Karis Morgan-Moyer, Aisha Kumari, and Andrew Colford.

Executive produced by Dan Houser, Laszlo, Wendy Smith, Andrew Lincoln, Patterson Joseph, Shamir Anderson, Rob Herding, and Alexa Gabriel-Ramirez. Score by Darren Johnson. Original music by Darren Johnson, Negative Land, and Jamie Biden. Edited by Connor Murphy. Sound design by Brandon Jones. Mixed by Ben Milchev. Co-producer, Nick Shanks. Associate producer, Jesse Cortez.

Additional credits are available online. A Better Paradise is an Absurd Ventures and QCode production. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Absurd Ventures, LLC.