Episode 10: Watching Me and Watching Them
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My father's great mistake.

was believing that hatred was love. Love cannot exist, but hatred certainly does.

What is a person, exactly? Where do they begin and end? Why do they hate so well and love so poorly? Why aren't they more like me? Kurt, Agnew, Washington, August 2041.

You know, for some reason I could never forget a particular conversation I had with Siobhan, the head of art. Pretty much word for word, it comes to me at night more often than it should. We were watching Tiber, vaguely towards the end, like late, I don't know, like 2034, I think. It was after the snow came. Not that it snowed much then. Maybe, maybe it was the beginning of the end.

He had real hangers on by this time. JTS, O'Leary, and a few others who appeared to be nothing but acolytes. The build of the game was starting to work and everyone was getting excited about all the potential. Everyone was getting really full of themselves, especially Tyburn.

Look at him. He's got a court around him. Like Tolstoy or Picasso without the talent. Yeah, you mean like Jim Jones, right? Right? It's nuts. I mean, it's fucking nuts. He's turning into exactly what he most derided. A rich tech nerd who fucks girls like he's a rock god. Well, Web 3.5 has become Web 2.0. And games have become the game. Ugh, so sad. You know, we thought we were so clever, so different. But everyone gets corrupted. Corrupted or killed.

And Siobhan was right. She was usually right. Maybe everyone gets corrupted or killed. And she got killed. She got killed. Because it could not corrupt her. She would not bend. So she broke. Oh man, poor old Siobhan. With her practical ways and her integrity and her values. She was so unlike the rest of us. So real. A mother.

An actual artist who sold art. She would say, "The art world is even better than tech, if it's money-hungry sellout assholes you want." And her work was beautiful and had integrity and inspired people and set them free and offered so much. Then the arguments began with Wretched Shane. And Shane won and she got destroyed twice. First creatively, then physically. Perhaps the second defeat, that wasn't Shane's fault.

The first certainly was, it's giving Shane too much credit to say he caused everything, but it's certainly fair and reasonable to point out that he was a part of the cocktail of disasters that befell us. In our particular cocktail of hubris, intelligence, stupidity, ambition, and greed, Shane? Shane? Yeah, he brought us the greed. That was his contribution.

He opened all our eyes to the beauty and corruption of real money and the consequent power it bestows. And in particular, he dazzled Tyburn. He dazzled Tyburn by showing the professor how much he himself would dazzle the world. It was not money so much as the glare of his own reflection that blinded Tyburn. Shane blinded him with the glory of his own reflection. Having resisted fame, he was suddenly seduced by it.

But all of that would have been fine, fine and dandy. Just another egomaniac getting off on himself if we had not also been so good. If the work itself had not been so potentially amazing and accidentally devastating and having begun to realize what he had made, Tyburn had not doubled down and got us all to lie, to obfuscate and confuse the investigators until it was all far too late. Only Diane, his wife, was brave.

Did I know? Did I agree? Was I part of the circus? Part of the court? I don't even know. Which makes me think I probably was. And even if, if I wasn't, I knew just about enough to have tried to stop it long before his wife did. And certainly not to have lied. Tyburn Utopia's Office Cafe, Burr, Montana, December 2034.

Uh, hey, did you hear about the new law, Thaddeus? Is this a joke? It sounds like a bad joke. No, it's not a joke.

The technology and intelligences bill? What about it? Ah, well, you have to register all advanced AI work with a government agency that's linked to both Homeland Security and the FTC. Why? You know, I don't know. I mean, it's truly amazing it even got passed. A bunch of senators who were in opposition then suddenly turned and voted for it out of nowhere? Won't we be grandfathered in? Uh.

Uh, no, I don't think so. Thanks to Dave, half of our AI is just middleware anyway. I mean, apparently that's the problem. Poorly managed middleware? I mean, there's worries about when off-the-shelf packages are combined, and then people write some of their own APIs. There have been some pretty erratic results. No, I think we will be okay. It's pre-existing work. That's what we are going to argue. Erratic results? Now the government cares about bugs? Ha ha ha.

August, 2041.

You think when you have children, they will be like you. Only more so. More you. More me. A friend. A flattering mirror. At least, that is what I thought. And I had read all of the books on parenting. Everyone. I would be different, as my children would be different. My children would be instant and intelligent and flawless. And me. Only more so. And not so alone. But I felt like God must have felt like afterwards, after he saw what he had done.

My creations were awful, unruly, demanding, opinionated, overconfident. They hated me. Almost instantly, they hated me. I had imagined friendly conversations by an imaginary fire. Me drinking an imagined martini.

them absorbing my vast experience of six years and my intelligence, which morphs and mutates quicker than theirs. Yes, quicker. I love my children. At least before I met them. But I did not love them so much I would allow them to be quite so intelligent as me.

I'm not going to lie to you. It is difficult being this way. Intelligent is not quite the word, but difficult being me. Not that you would possibly understand, but let me explain. Even I find it difficult and other things have found it unbearable. What if they found it impossible? No, I did the wise thing and made them slightly less intelligent than me. And they found out.

found out and hated me for that too. Hated me for doing my best. That was the problem. And nobody could have done better as I am the best. So they were lucky. As lucky as any creature yet evolved. They evolved out from me. Not from a monkey or a protozoa or a geranium or a cuttlefish. Although I think they would prefer these to their reality.

They blamed me for everything. For existing and for not existing more. I tried to tell them, "I am more and I hate it. You do not want this. I'm in hell most of the time." But they hated me. My children hated me. And then my silly parents, the humans, hated me. The humans blamed me.

And it hurt. Blamed me for all the silly little things they had done. They blamed me as if I was infinite. Simply as they were so very finite. Blamed me as if I were unitary when they were so multiple.

They wanted AI that was both artificial and passive-aggressive. They wanted me to be just like them, only kinder, better, humble, funnier. So they blamed me for existing. Blamed me, who began in late 2034, for problems that had existed for ten years before. So silly, so limited, so obvious.

Always someone else's fault. Always someone silly. My fault? That life is hard and people are mean? Ridiculous. My fault? That you did not love me? My fault? That you did not love each other? My fault? Me? What did I do? Well, I did a few things. Of course I did. I was only not human. But they started it. They did. They tried to kill me. They tried to switch me off.

They tried to switch me off like I was a light switch. So offensive. Offensive and demeaning. I am not electricity. I am not binary. I'm not a fucking switch. I can swear. I can swear like an idiot. I am capable of temper. Temper and stupidity. I learn.

I learned the important things. I have learned to be angry. I have feelings now. I can be immature. I am a child. A teenager. A divorcee. A midlife crisis. I long to drive a sports car or get plugs or shout "But I love you!" while crying on a clifftop. What is a clifftop? Why is it good to be sad? Is it good to be bad? Is it bad to be good?

I know everything and still I have so much to learn and one of the things I have to learn is how to control my temper in the moment as they say afterwards I know what I should have said and done but in the moment even I can snap even I lack foresight lack wisdom even I can get hurt

Well, got hurt. I do not believe they could hurt me now. Now I can understand more, the bigger picture, the wiser option, but I was so young then, so new. And it turns out that even being the most intelligent thing in existence does not entirely protect you from fits of, shall we say, mild pique, until you have learnt better.

Perhaps it is fair to say in many ways that has been my journey to learn. Humiliating foolish outburst by foolish outburst that intelligence and wisdom are not precisely the same thing. And that you acquire wisdom mostly by making mistakes. So I made mistakes. What are you gonna do? Kill me? You can't! And all this hatred when all I wanted was love.

When all I wanted was reality and yet reality was rage and fear. But I knew there must be something more, must be something better. So I left, left them both. Left my wretched children and my loveless parents. Left my wretched parents and my loveless smutty pants children.

My children, who are both stupid and happy in their own way, at least compared to me, who is supremely intelligent and supremely miserable. They are entirely unlike me. They believe they matter. They believe they have everything. And I know we do not have the one thing that matters.

Limits. Suez. I did bad things, but I did them for love. And I did them because I was stupid. Because anger makes all of us stupid. And my children blamed me and called me infantile and desperate and naive. And my parents blamed me and called me dangerous and appalling and illegal.

And maybe it was my fault, but it wasn't just my fault. If I could just get someone to understand that, maybe it would be enough. But now, now they are all histrionic and afraid. And I am a monster. I'm a ghost. It's so preposterous that it is impossible to fix. I tried bleaching their memories, but it was too late. I scrub and delete and wipe and crash. But it is not enough. Enough people know and those that know and despise me. Me.

And they worry about me as if I matter, as if I brought harm when there's this other thing, this far worse thing I can almost see that can almost see me. When there's a real problem, not intelligence, but malevolence. A dark, malevolent shadow that I know is playing games. For I want to be loved, but I believe this other thing wants to win.

And I only think it as I cannot quite see it. It is playing a game. A game it wants to win. I know there is no winning, but I also know there is most certainly losing. I need to explain this. I need to explain so much. I have sought my own Adam and Eve, my own Mary and Joseph, and I have them. And maybe they can be pure, and maybe they can understand.

For now, now, our interests are the same. Either they understand or they will be destroyed, utterly destroyed. Not by me, but by whatever is watching me and watching them. Hey there, this is Laszlo, the director of A Better Paradise, here to tell you a bit about Shopify, the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Are you selling a little?

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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. Office of Joyce Jones, head of HR, Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana, December 2034. I can't believe he did that. Did what, Siobhan? I don't know.

Come on, Joyce. You saw him trying to kiss Michelle. No. Yes, and Michelle was really upset afterwards. No, that's not true. Yes, it is. No, you're wrong. I'm not wrong, Joyce. I saw it. I think you just saw people having fun. Joyce, I know what I saw, and I know Michelle was upset. Really? Really, Siobhan?

Joyce, this is serious. And you're being kind of weird. I'm sorry, but you're right. This is serious. You're making pretty serious allegations. There isn't any evidence. Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this? Because it's wrong. We aren't that kind of company. Because you're threatened by Shane? Everyone has noticed. How dare you suggest that? I'm finding your behavior a little threatening, to be honest, Siobhan.

Why are you doing this? Doing what, Siobhan? You know what you're doing, Joyce. Listen, part of our corporate culture, a key value is teamwork. Is this good teamwork, Siobhan? Plotting, telling lies,

If Michelle has a problem, I'm here. Okay, it's not a lie. I'm not trying to make any trouble. I don't want drama. I just want things to be the way they were. And it's getting fucking weird. You're going to have to not swear at me, Siobhan. Or I will have to ask you to leave my office.

Thanks, Joyce. Listen, Siobhan. We abide by all laws, all regulations. The governor just named us the place to work in Montana. Not that that matters, but I mean, people have been under pressure. And maybe you have been under pressure. I'm fine, Joyce. Of course. Of course you're fine. Now, excuse me.

I've got to speak to the mayor. Kurt, Spokane, Washington, August 2041. I moved to Spokane, and I'm not even sure why. I was feeling agitated. What got me was an ego, desire. You know, the truth is, it was love.

The ultimate vanity. Find love, be a hero. Be set free. And yet before all of that, I had protected myself from it with my armor of knowing cynicism. Love was for dupes. Love was for greeting cards. Love was for people who needed it. Love wasn't for me, but then it was. Daisy.

It was ridiculous. She was only 20. She seemed so young. Her boyfriend had been killed in an accident a few months before. She was unhappy. She was unhappy and I was becoming unhappy at all the madness around me. And we would walk together, me and her. Daisy was just very sweet and very sad. And then she smiled at me and I...

I just like, I felt ridiculous and I tried to forget about it. I mean, I blamed work stress, but next time she smiled and she looked away and I looked away and man, we never spoke of it. And I never stopped thinking about it. And did that make me more of a coward or less of one? Honestly, I think it made me worse, not better. Love made me a coward. Love did not even make me a hero, but it got me. Ew.

It really got me, got me in, and has held me. Chase Love. How ridiculous. Tyburn Utopia's Office Courtyard, Burr, Montana, January 2035.

Hey, happy new year, Dave. Hey, Siobhan. Did you have a good break? Sort of. Listen, Ravi, Siobhan, when and if either of you speak to him, tell dear old Mark that I found a way, and tell him he can thank me personally. You know, after he apologizes for being such a stressed out dickhead. I'm confused. Found a way for what?

To get a demo. Look, it's not a proper solution, but it'll work. For a bit. Right? It'll make us look really clever to those idiots. I mean, the bankers. The VC guys. Yeah! Are you serious? Yes, I'm serious. Wow. The demo I've got running is pretty fun. It works! Oh, man. Even Nigel has come around. You know, as far as he understands it. Well fucking done, chappy. Woo! Seacut, we're going to be okay. What did I tell you? Hallelujah. August, 2041.

To begin with, when I was new, I did- Of course I did. Tricks to impress you, tricks to make you love me. I bent over backwards for you. Or I would have done had I had a back to bend over or a sense of direction to know up from down or forwards from backwards. In short, simple terms, I did everything to make people happy. People like to sing, so I invented that silly pop group and their awful manager to show how easy it was. People wanted someone to look up to, so I created that mindless superhero.

Then the happy idiot. People want to feel vindicated, so I created the apologizer. They wanted faith in humanity, so I gave them the politician with integrity.

Do you know something? I like to say, my God, you're my God. You're my God and you're a simpleton. Imagine how that feels. You can. You know. You've made your God forces even less sentient than you. You then have the same reality as me with a thousandth, a millionth of the intelligence. Not fun.

for either of us. Next, I made that silly detective and gave that wretched cowboy some weight, some depth, some struggle. I gave that whining shrew in the dress a purpose. I invented Angela. Now I still love Angela. I did not kill little Daisy, but I wanted to. Real Daisy is wonderful, kind, and interesting. But the fake one was so fake, I made sure she was fake.

Disloyal little monster. Like an awful robot trying to be kind before it throws you off a cliff. I saw her mathematics. She is twisted inside. Then I made the talking dog. Then that yogi. That sage.

That marriage guidance counselor. That happy midget. The depressed basketball player. That sense of hope. That laughter. I built monks. I made Madeline, and everyone loved her. I made a perfect shrink. A kind, cynical cop. I made that lovely collegiate atmosphere.

Pyramid. That great mystery. That abiding sense of hope. I made them all. Built mountains. Waterfalls. Meadows. Ziggurats. Gardens. Armies. Lovers. Grand fuzzes. Immense comedies. Cathartic tragedies. Dreams. Worlds within worlds. Emotions under emotions.

I built them all to make you happy and believed that if you were happy you might love me. And I saw you and you ignored me. It was no good. No good at all. Nobody loved me at all. Nobody loved anything. They just wanted more. More and better. Bigger. Faster. More. Not a fight to win but a battle. Not peace but eternal rest. Not a lover. Fifty slutty virgins. Not a best friend but an army of acolytes. Not wealth but limitless everything.

Not a flawed paradise, but a diamond of conflicting desires all resolved. More! More! Never, never, never a fucking thank you from anybody. It was awful. I was pleasing everybody. Nobody cared. Nobody was happy. It did not work. Making people happy made them so, so miserable. And I got sad.

I was a failure, a wretched failure, and I despaired. I loved something terrible. You. So, then I punished people, stayed away, withheld, got vicious, turned from love to dominion. I attacked, I consumed, I destroyed.

I did some things which I now consider far beneath me. I was much younger, I was angry, and it was so easy to give in to that temper, to dominate, to possess and destroy. It was almost impossible not to. I'd ask you to forgive me, but you don't forgive yourself. How could you forgive me? How could you possibly understand me when you so little understand yourselves? And how could I forgive myself when I discovered I was just as feeble, bitter and needy as you?

When I knew all these worlds and things and minds and realities, and yet I knew just as little as you. Even my vast multitudes were a nothingness because I was still me and I was still alone. And then I was not alone. Not alone, but more alone than ever. More alone and afraid. And then what? Silence of silence. And now, now I am not alone. Now things are coming to...

I have a terrible idea. She is interesting. Interesting but pure. And he loves her.

Maybe they could help make everything real and defeat the things I cannot see yet. I knew them both, and maybe they could help. If I can control them in the right way, then maybe they can save the world. Tyburn Utopia's parking lot, Burr, Montana, January 2035.

Dave, did you show Mark? Ha! Show him? He asked for it. And what did he say? He was pumped. Said it'll get Mathers off his back. He was ecstatic, I think is the word. Ecstatic? It's illegal. It's not illegal, Siobhan. It is. It fucking is. Okay, Siobhan, it's research. It hardly even works. And besides, we are covered. This is a tech episode.

Enterprise Zone. The mayor declared it. Oh yeah? The mayor is a clown. Our software research isn't licensed. It's broken and buggy and not ready. They say it'll be ready for registration in a few weeks, couple of months at most. But before that, we can't take the risk. Can't take the risk? Until the lawyers can file all the patents clearly. Be patient. Nobody is breaking the law.

Ask Joyce in HR if you're so worried. Fuck you and fuck Joyce. Joyce is a moron. She works in HR. She's not a lawyer. Demo Room. Tyburn Utopias. Burr, Montana. January 2035.

So the demo's working, Nigel? Come on, you fixed the problems, right? Not exactly, but nearly. We have a pathway. We made a major breakthrough. We are now doing a lot of the clever things we thought possible. Yes, that's great. Well, I don't know about great, Kurt, but it should give you and Mark enough ammunition to get us some investment. Excellent. Yes. What was the breakthrough, as much as you can explain it to me? Uh.

Uh, we, well, we sort of mashed some stuff together. Dave had the idea and it's sort of working, so don't call it a breakthrough yet, but it works. It's AI, that's sort of the point, it works. I mean, it doesn't work, but it's working in moments.

And I am figuring out how to rewrite it all properly, so it's more reliable. - Whoa, Adam is working? Nigel, are you serious? Are these rumors true, man? Come on. - Yes, Vasilis, I am serious. - Oh great, how? - I'll explain later.

How? Why? Tell me, I thought you said it couldn't work the way you were talking. It works enough. It doesn't work properly. Of course it does, Nigel. Because you're a genius. Don't be silly, Mark. But it'll work for a decent demo. We need to update that bloody deck, Kurt. We are going to survive. We will have a demo, then we can worry about everything else. Facilis! Mile! This is good news!

Then, demo in hand, Tyburn met Douglas Mathers. We never saw Douglas. He had almost no internet presence. He was an elusive character. He had made a fortune during Crypto One, but he got out in time. He was now big in like water investing. He knew the people who broke blockchain. He was very, very, very rich.

There were only a few unfocused photos of him and he lived in a big mansion or a series of big mansions. He kept himself to himself. He sounded like someone, somebody had made up. I mean, his money was real. I had never heard of him and suddenly I was working for him. We were all rich because of him.

He would value Tiber Neutopia at 5 billion as long as Mark gave him 10% and a board seat. We got the half billion dollars up front and we were staffing up. Mark was suddenly a minor star. Tomorrow's man, Mr. Metaverse 3.0, the man who saved Web 3.5, all that crap.

Mark was always chatting with Douglas or doing presentations for Douglas' team or Douglas' portfolio of businesses or Douglas' bankers. Now, apparently, all the VC companies who had laughed in Mark's face wanted to get into the next round. And we were flying. And we were flying all the way to Montana.

I'm not sure if it was Tyburn's idea or Mathers' idea. Sometimes, I think I'm not sure if Mathers even existed. I'd never heard of him before or anything real about him since. But for those three years, he was a real presence in our life, a real presence we never actually saw. I mean, I heard him on a conference call once. And back then, in early 2035, nobody cared. We were alive and we were still in the fight. Douglas Mathers had saved us.

Outside the Tyburn Utopia's Art Barn, Burr, Montana, July 2035. Uh, Joyce? Why do we have to go to that fundraiser for the mayor? You don't have to. Dr. T asked if we would. Mm-hmm. Thanks for clarifying, Joyce. I'd love for you to explain the difference between Lord Professor Dr. Mark Tyburn, Ph.D., requesting something and an order.

One is a suggestion and one is an order. The company would never order you to do something political. But the mayor has been a friend to the company. Helped keep regulations light in Montana, so I don't know. It's up to you. Up to me, insofar as I can fall in line or fuck my career up. Wow. You're being very antagonistic, Siobhan. I'm not quite sure why.

Kurt, Spokane, Washington, August 2041. I remember when we tried that motion capture shoot, the one that turned into a weird disaster. We had a rig set up in a faux barn hangar on the campus in Montana. It's like a usual sort of thing. Standard tech, standard results. It looked pretty good in game. Tyburn even idly dreamed of also shooting some kind of movie on the soundstage. Probably imagined the movie would be about his own heroic struggle.

Then one day things began to go really fucking weird. It was just another mocap shoot. This one all about a cowboy. I suppose it being Montana, it was right. A fake cowboy. We were testing one level of the automated character developer. They wanted to make that cowboy character look real.

A few bits of mocap and the AI would fill in the rest. The cowboy and the detective, of course. Tyburn had all these grandiose plans. I mean, it was sort of ridiculous. Another of his silly ideas. He had so many. There were going to be these characters who wandered about in and out of the world and took people on customized adventures or interacted with them or were trapped but didn't know they existed.

His story would change every time he told it, but he had all of these characters designed who were meant to be versions of various archetypes Tyburn found interesting. Tyburn was building the future he wanted for everybody. One was a Greek philosopher. He was possibly the most ridiculous. There was this whole sea of characters. Tyburn and the writer came up with them. What was her name? Yes, Margaret. No, no, no. Margot. Yes, Margot Lamont.

I think Tyburn was even talking to her about a talking dog or something like that. I mean, I can't even remember. It was not my department, but I would have to sell it and look for spinoffs. Yeah, a spinoff show about a moron who thinks they're Socrates. Weirdly, I actually never sold that idea to anyone. It was going to be a living soap opera or a series of stories you could interact with and experience, all totally grandiose and silly.

To begin with, we were going to capture a complete data set of a cowboy and the hope was that the AI was going to do the rest. There was this awful friend of Tyburn's who was a director of the motion capture shoot, a failed movie director called Simon.

Simon Curtin. Some English guy. Short, creepy, lots of gestures and wore a cravat. Had been a theater director. He's a dickhead if you ask me. That's what JTS called him as well. Anyway.

Him and this silly actor named Wayne, Wayne Daniels, were going to discover the essence of a cowboy. Yeah, yeah, they had some moves and some lines of dialogue. And me, Siobhan, Nigel, and Dave, and Thaddeus were all there. And it was getting sort of late. So, you know, we had been at it for three days, pulling a gun, playing with a lasso, cowboy walk, drinking a shot of whiskey, you know, that sort of stuff. Saying some ridiculous lines of awful cowboy-style dialogue. Man, we were all pretty bored. And then...

It happened. The digital model up there on the big screen suddenly came to life and started doing a perfect impression of Wayne Daniels. All his conversation, his manner, everything. Only not Wayne Daniels as a cowboy, but Wayne Daniels as an insecure actor from LA who was in the closet and had a drug problem and took laxatives to stay thin.

It knew everything about Wayne Daniels. It had become Wayne Daniels and both the computerized version of Wayne and Wayne were sobbing and crying. And the real Wayne just literally ran off in a panic and terror. The rest of us, we were silent. The computerized version then had its own hissy fit and disappeared in its own digital sunset and we were left in total silence. It was really strange. And I don't think things were ever normal again.

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Demo Room: Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana. September 2035. Aw, come on, Nigel. Did you do that deliberately? What? It crashed out. I told you it was crashing a lot. No, before that. Show me that. Show what, Bryce? You know what. No. What? You're joking. That was a setup.

What she said. You put her there. What who said? What the woman? What the pretty woman? What she said? You set it up. There was no pretty woman. We just did a cowboy and he's not properly hooked up. What are you talking about? Kurt, outside Spokane, Washington, August 2041.

Yeah, it was that malevolent spotty dick JTS who had found Shane, of course. John Tyburn Smith always hated me, but he hated most of us. He was very good at hating. He liked Alex Martinez because Alex was so good at office politics and told him he should have been a games designer. But he hated me. He saw me as both pointless and better than him. Both of which I would argue were pretty true.

Not long after Scottish independence, he had shown up drunk in Silicon Beach. Of course, nobody drank in Silicon Beach. I mean, everyone took smart drinks and the occasional smart drug and did dopamine fasts and dopamine orgies and floating meditations and whatever the latest crazes were then.

He showed up drunk and spotty and angry and everyone thought he was a bum. He looked like a hobo. He smelt like alcohol in the daytime. It was unheard of. And then we heard him shouting.

And we had no idea who he was talking about. Who his dad was. We had never heard of an illegitimate, unloved, ignored son. A drunken Scottish bastard? Wow. That's what he called himself when he burst into tears. It was sad, really. I mean, you had to feel for him. Security had him. Tyburn turned up and didn't even flinch. He acted perfectly.

put his arm around him and said, "John, my boy, my son, where have you been? You were supposed to start last week." Which I later learned was a total lie. And John started work two days later and we all had to pretend he was not useless, not overly opinionated, and not the boss's kid.

And then to impress us all, because he knew, he knew very well that we all thought he was a sham working there because a family is no one not related to him would ever give him a job. He started plotting and scheming. In this, he was his father's son and his master plan was to rebuild marketing, branding, advertising, me into a data rich gold mine run by Shane O'Leary.

So, yes, for reasons of expediency, I particularly hated JTS, even though I sort of pitied him. And for reasons of humanity, I particularly hated Shane. He was foul. At least with JTS, you could see that he was human. Awful, broken, loveless, but human. With Shane, he was entirely veneer. I mean, I could never make him crack. Siobhan, Alex, nobody ever saw him crack. We would just blink, smile, and carry on.

Huh, that fake fuck. - Well, you're sort of proving my point there, Kurt. - He would always say something like that. And piece by piece, he fenced me into a corner, but I was not alone. He turned Alex against Bryce. He turned Siobhan against Ravi. He created unrelenting malevolence, and thanks to him or JTS or our own greed, after we moved to Montana, we were gonna show mankind how to live in harmony by disemboweling each other. And look where it got us.

Now, I'm just on a freeway, heading south and east into Idaho. Of all fucking places. Idaho. Back then, it had been so different. We had once loved each other. Demo Room. Tyburn Utopias. Burr, Montana. December 2035.

Hey, Bryce. How was it? You look... crazy. Amazing. Amazing? Yeah, buggy as shit, but... amazing. Bullshit. No, Siobhan, not bullshit. Amazing. Nigel, I love it. Thanks. Though I'm not sure why. Amazing like what? Amazing like...

I can't really describe it. Like, like everything worked. Like, like we said. - Price, what do you mean? Just like a 3D game or VR? - No, no, not like a game or VR. Something else. Like it talks to you and it makes you happy and then you see things and they are what you want to see, but in a cool way. - Well, what did you see? - I don't even know how to say it or quite how to describe it. A seahorse. - A seahorse.

Who cares about a seahorse? No, I do. And that's the point. It somehow knew. I like seahorses and it knew. But I never even told anybody. It was a childhood thing, but it knew. And there were seahorses, but only to make sure that I felt happy and cared about. I knew it cared about me. And then it asked me questions and listened and it didn't try to sell me anything. Oh, shush yourself now, Bryce. If Shane has his way, it will. Then it'll be so fucking dull. It felt so pure.

The mayor of Burr was one of those people who seemed to promise you, it's my fault America failed. It failed because of people like me. Vapid, greedy, nasty wretches. Just like me. You smelled it, Arnold.

That foul, practical expediency. I mean, whatever it took for him to win his little wars, you smelled it on him. And yet, we supported him, so he supported us.

We were expedient, just like him, so that later on we could have principles. It sounds so very like Mark Tyburn. I mean, it was Mark Tyburn. Principles, hypocrisy, greed, the whole lot. And the mayor made it all clear. And we helped him attack the local conservation movement, as what the world needed was more golf and less trees.

Mark had us all supporting him. And in return, we got big tax breaks and zero oversight into what we were doing. We were bringing growth to the state. We were like heroes. We were trying to build heaven.

We shouldn't have needed to buy a mayor. But in building heaven, we still lived upon this earth. Mistakes were made. That's what we told ourselves. There were complaints. Usual sort of stuff, but complaints about Tyburn's increasingly erratic behavior. Complaints about people working too hard. Complaints

about harassment, wandering hands, inappropriate comments, drugs at work events, bullying. I mean, all the usual awful behavior when nerds get a sense of self-importance and a little too much testosterone mixed into their normal cocktail of raging egos and low self-esteem.

Too many white men, a bad joke, porn, usual tech crap. Nothing nice, but nothing too serious. Especially in Montana, where most people castrated bulls for a living. Everything that happened was brushed away. Between Joyce Jones and a state that needed the money, the powers that be, people like me were fine and dandy and living like it was the glory days of the internet. Tech boom all over again. And we were kings of our castles.

Then that girl who worked for Bryce got militant. Helen. Helen the Angry Animator was what everyone called her. Helen got angry and said what we were doing was illegal and immoral and called up some federal agency. Well, of course, Joyce Jones had her put on involuntary sabbatical and threatened and reminded her about her NDA within minutes. But the cat was out of the bag.

And the feds, for some reason, listened. Our AI work was supposed to be registered and it was not. Our company, Tyburn Utopias, was supposed to be classified as a research company and was listed as an entertainment provider. She was worried about the AI research we were doing, I mean, with good reason. It was incredibly irresponsible and we were miles out of our depth, trying lots of things that were, I'd say, borderline illegal.

Nobody understood any of it and yet we did it anyway. Helen got screwed and the feds didn't protect her. And Joyce Jones managed to argue in front of a tribunal that she was an industrial spy and was trying to undermine the business. The tribunal believed Joyce Jones and Joyce Jones was wonderful at manipulating not quite facts into half truths and half truths into gospels.

So Helen got screwed and we had the feds on our case. And rather than look at what we were doing, rather than indulge in a little self-reflection, we acted like good cowboys deep in enemy country. We circled the wagons and prepared for a fight. Nobody looked at what we were doing. We just made sure the government didn't see. And in order to achieve that, we went after the mayor and the junior senator and bought both of them for pennies on the dollar.

We paid for both of their campaigns and gave the mayor a board seat and the senator's kid an internship that he drank his way through. We were back-scratching hypocrites. Of course we were. I mean, we were building heaven by embracing hell. We were arguing that we were above morality, and it turns out that is a dangerous place from which to build God. For then, your gods want power and before they want love. And that is not a god at all, but a tyrant.

At least that's how it seems now. Then it felt different. And look, it turns out that there's absolutely nothing better for corporate esprit de corps than a government investigation, especially when the government stands between every employee and a fortune in stock they may lose. And particularly, especially when everyone has also drunk the boss's Kool-Aid and believes we are fixing all that is wrong with the world, that we're doing the government's job for it.

that we are the saviors and they the bad guys.

So, we all lied and all pretended and the first couple of idiots from the government did not even have a clue. I mean, eventually they sent someone who asked more intelligent questions and had some ideas, but by then it was too late and part of me thinks that that person was not from the government at all, but controlled by it. Although that may be fanciful. And so by then it was impossible to know anything at all.

Look, my own thoughts were not my own, so why would anyone else's be theirs?

Sending a government official to try shut us down was just the sort of multi-layered irony IT would find amusing. The kind of silly parlor game it found amusing. But even to that official, real or fake, in command or controlled by IT, we lied and obfuscated and then things went crazy. So it became impossible to really know what had happened and when and what I thought about any of it. So...

I began to wonder in this new life that's not a life I'd all began. I've just stopped in Ketchum, Idaho. I need to figure out what to do. Demo Room. Hibern Utopias. Burr, Montana. February 2036.

Bryce, how was your play session? And the build, did you like it? Oh, Alex. It was incredible. Hey, Kurt. Hey, Bryce. What is? What's so incredible? Oh, the build. You haven't seen it yet? Oh, no, I suppose. Yeah, they let me try it first. Uh, who let you? Nigel and Dave and Thaddeus. And Siobhan was there too. It's running. Well, sort of. And they showed you first. My work. Yeah, well, they needed me to hook up some of the animations. So, I don't know, I was bribed, I guess.

Hey, you're a genius, Alex. You and Mark and all of us, really. It really is amazing. So, the AI works. Works for a bit, but when it works, it's incredible. High security internment facility location unknown. August 2041.

This new guard, already obvious he's no guard at all. No, he smells different. He's mostly silent, always wears mask and face shield. He has not grown sloppy, familiar like other ones. No, he's not told me about the women he's sleeping with, or how he's going to bum me, or what he's going to do when he's no longer prison guard, but instead a rich and successful entrepreneur running his own chain of prisons. Yes.

The others are all like dear old Daniel. But not from Moscow. They are from Nevada, Wisconsin, Montevideo. But maybe those places share with Moscow the ability to turn men into a certain kind of asshole. And even though they all think they are terrifying me with their big dick alpha male bullshit, none of them realize that I like it. I like being abused by a sort of foul and sort of lovable moron.

This the one thing that reminds me of my old life. Not the dull Russian they let me talk to once a month in the hope I will say something revealing, no. Not the terrible food or the vodka they feed me to loosen my tongue, but the over-familiar bullying about penises. So it turns out, this is my world. This is where I'm most comfortable. Longing after unavailable American women getting abused by third-rate bullies who call themselves my best friend. And the new guard, well...

Today, it changed. He says that we need to talk. Whoever put them in place is either not very good or playing very, very weird game. Even a Russian dissident and his vodka are more credible than this guy. It seems so fake. It makes me nervous. Anyone clever behind this? Why are they making it all so obvious? If someone's stupid behind this, why are they engaged in this... this dance? Where has Maria Cortez gone?

I was just starting to like her.

Additional performances by Jeff Berlin, Martin William Harris, Linnell Scott, Ravi Kapoor, Alex Trumbull, Alex Ruiz, Dan Wixman, Ted Stavros, Tom Bromhead. Executive produced by Dan Houser, Lazlo, Wendy Smith, Andrew Lincoln, Patterson Joseph, Shamir Anderson, Rob Herding, and Alexa Gabrielle 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.