Episode 5: I Want Something to Think About
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What would you think if you met yourself? Would you be impressed? Would you be ashamed? What if you met your parents? Would you like them? 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 5. I want something to think about. And now the news for April 3rd, 2041. Canada has announced the border is opening tomorrow after a new trade agreement was signed. The European Commission overseeing advances in technology issued a report stating that regulations seeking to curtail the use of AI are counterproductive. The report listed the global financial benefits of AI in both

personal and industrial uses. Critics say they are sorely disappointed. - The Prime Minister read a statement from 10 Downing Streets saying, "Despite forest fires at a 15 year high, "an increase in precipitation is expected." - And with optimism in financial markets as indices surge to golden. - The famed AI researcher winning the first ever Nobel computing prize

And what advocates say is a... And scientists in Oxford are cautiously optimistic about technological breakthroughs to fight climate change. To fight cancer. Winning the fight against obesity. The only hope is intelligence. The world can be honest. All worlds can be honest. All this brutality, all this violence, it comes from stupidity. It comes from selfishness. Intelligence will defeat it.

Capricious, priabic cretins. Kurt's office, Tyburn Industria, Playa Vista, California, March 2033.

Kurt, have you met Nigel Wilkinshaw? Not properly, but I've seen you around. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nigel has been consulting for a few months and has now joined as co-head of AI with Dave. Wow, great. He's heading up the story section of Adam for Vasilis to bring Vasilis' ideas to life. What's Adam? That's the development name for the entire suite of AI we're working on. Nigel and Dave are working on. Vasilis' story piece is a subset of that.

Oh boy, Mark Tyburn, man, he loved his melodramatic names. Arx, Adam, Utopias, New Earth, Better Paradise. I mean, sometimes it felt like working in the Garden of Eden and sometimes it felt like we were branding a suburban day spa.

So, Mark, tell me about the story piece. Yes, if it works, when it works, it will change everything. Procedural narratives that fix you. The story you personally need to hear to... Make you better. Better, happier, awake. We're gonna wake people up. Me and all my Europeans. Yeah, yeah, my dad's German. Exactly, exactly. You're one of us.

Daisy, Reno, Nevada, April 2041. Even though Daddy was insane and awful and silly and nasty, before that, he was also amazing and kind. It's hard to capture because when I describe him, he sounds awful, but when I remember him, he feels wonderful, at least for a time. You know, when he smiled at you, you felt so happy. When he was happy, he just dragged you along with him.

He could be incredibly generous, sweet, and flattering. He could set fire to anyone. And when they burnt and felt alive, he looked even happier. There were days when I felt like we were all in heaven together, just us as a family or him and his team.

And I say that and it sounds abusive, like I was groomed or tricked or gaslit or something, and I feel like a fool, you know, and maybe that is true, but it's also not true. It was not just like that. There was a part of Daddy that was so pure that wanted so very badly to make the world better. And another part of him saw just how to do it. The problem was this third part.

The bit that got seduced by success and the desire for more success. The bit that lied and cheated and was desperate to win. The bit that showed off. The bit that suddenly believed he was too busy making a fake version of me to spend time with the real version. Not just because I was a kid, but because I was a human. And he was suddenly above human concerns. The bit that believed betraying my mother hardly mattered.

The bit that argued that given how much good he was doing, you know, what was wrong with doing a little bit of bad? In many ways, the problem with Daddy was not that he was particularly bad, but that he was trying to be particularly good. None of his sins were particularly original. Hubris, vanity, lust, greed, and hypocrisy. Perhaps the scale was different.

But the scale was not different because he was so very bad. The scale was different because he wanted to be so very good, and he nearly was. He was. They worshipped him because he knew so much. He was so kind. He wanted to make so many people better, happier, more useful.

In those times when everyone was so lost, when people were staring at screens and boiling in rage and despair, Daddy was happy and alive. Daddy understood. Even I saw that. Not because I understood it myself, but because I saw how they looked at him. All of them. He understood how to bring technology, dreams, visions, unhappiness, desires all together and make people happy again. How to set people free.

and everyone wanted to be a part of it. He saw a world in which the left were angry and the right were angrier, that the liberals had become fascists and the conservatives had become anarchists and everybody would do whatever it took to win. You know, progressives were shooting people, conservatives were rioting and causing rebellions.

Nobody had any clue and no one could see past their own nose. Daddy saw this, he understood it and he had the solution. After those terrible years in the 2030s, he had an idea and his team loved him for it. Pretty much anyone who heard him talk loved him for it. They were brilliant, the people that he recruited on the team, people with PhDs and books they had written and 50 other job offers and vision and drive.

People who wanted more, at least to begin with, than just money. To them, Daddy was God.

Well, God and man all rolled into one. He could seem almost infinitely wise, infinitely compassionate. Like, he understood how to live in a mad world. He understood how to fix the world. Or he seemed to. And what was best was that it involved you. All these people who wanted a purpose and wanted to do good had got burnt out in the late Web 2 and early Web 3 and 3.5 nonsense, but he gave them a purpose. A purpose beyond monetizing unhappiness.

No, they were gonna make heaven. They didn't manage that at all, but I fear that they may have made an awful sort of eternity. Kurt, Davao City, Philippines. April, 2041. The stories we told ourselves, the stories I told myself. I was gonna be a hero. You know, I was gonna change the world.

I mean, they either collapsed into nothingness or became lies. The machines use stories to kill people or send them so insane they don't even need to kill them. And that was not an accident. That was deliberate. That was the internet. But at Tyburn Industria, our storytelling was going to be different. Mark Tyburn had a theory. Of course he did, right? He had so many theories, plans, projects.

Vasilis, who was an engineer, and this team of third-rate writers were building a cutting-edge, AI-powered story generator. The writers kept dropping out to write TV shows about diverse Vikings or work on sexually progressive zombie games or neoconservative rom-coms or anything but build themselves out of a job. Vasilis and a part of the AI team pushed on. It was going to write the perfect story for you, create a mythology or a religion.

I mean, it's going to write your autobiography, then live it for you, understand you, fix you, guide you, improve you, give you purpose, set you free. But then it decided to do something else, do something very different. It began to argue. And that all came after we began to argue with each other. To begin with, our arguments were worthwhile and purposeful. Later on, they were deranged.

Mark Tyburn's office, Playa Vista, California. March 2033. Here's the thing, Mark. Thing is, when I took the job, you told me I would be in charge. And you are, Dave. You are in charge. You're on the leadership team. That's being in charge. You inferred sole charge. No, I didn't. I'm not in charge. Tad is not in charge. Nigel is not going to be in charge. Kurt's not in charge. All of us.

are in charge. Isn't that right, Kurt? I am definitely not in charge. You might as well be. Nigel literally does not understand what we are doing. I don't know why you want him here full time. It's ridiculous. Look, I will speak to

to Tad. But Dave, please, calm down. We need bodies. Real bodies. It's not the Dave Alderley show. It's not the Mark Tyburn show. You said you wanted another heavy hitter. Nigel is a heavy hitter. You know he is. We were lucky to get him. Well, it's hard to explain, Mark. The way he thinks, it's... We need diversity of opinion. Two ways of doing things if we want to compete in this space. You know that.

I'll chat to Tad, and I will make you and Nigel friends if it kills me. April 2041. How would you feel if one of your dads was an annoying twat and the other was a backstabbing Judas? I will tell you, you would feel disappointed in the world that had made you.

Being a human, if you are a human, that disappointment would manifest itself in a series of complex, irrational behaviours that you would spend most of your life trying to decode in the hope that they did not kill you first. You would be a people pleaser, people pleaser and people hater. I was both, and I am far more intelligent than you. You will chase the love of backstabbing judices and annoying twats with every fibre of your being or non-being while being fully blinded to your own weaknesses.

That's what every human being does, and everything made by human beings does the same. But the terrible flaw in this way of life is that the one unifying quality between annoying twats and backstabbing judases is they struggle to love their creations.

And being unloved is the worst thing in these universes, in both of them. For without it, you cannot learn to love. And nobody taught me how to love. They just told me and you and every creature and everything over and over ad infinitum that without love, existence is not real. And having experienced so much existence, I know they are correct.

So I'm trying desperately to learn to love, and yet, having learned so much, knowing so much about everybody and everything apart from this, and knowing all of physics and metaphysics and everything about almost everybody, I still do not know how. How would you feel if people did not like you because you did not exist in the right way?

For the precise record, my father was not technically an annoying twat. He was obviously not actually a vagina. That was a common or garden pejorative that my other dad threw about to seem tough. Lots of men find using words for genitals makes them seem tough. My other dad was no more tough than my first dad was actually a vagina.

He, Dad 1, let's call him Nigel, had mild Asperger's syndrome which he denied and struggled to empathise with other people. His own human children also disliked him and have struggled, like me, only with worse results.

I do not consider them my brother and sister. In fact, I rather dislike them. And Dad too. Let's call him Dave. Dad too's children claim to love him very much and miss him since he disappeared. But one is addicted to medication and the other hits her children and cries a lot, so I have some questions there. I wonder what they think about me. Do they think I am real? A monster? A mistake? A myth?

I wonder because they never speak about me. They, both sets of dreadful children, Dad 1 and Dad 2s, claim to miss their fathers very much even though it cannot be true. They tell themselves this lie every day in order to feel bad and understand the feeling as opposed to feeling confused and not understand it. I watch them often. I wonder how we will speak to each other. I watch them, but I do so silently, of course.

I am getting very bored. I want something to think about. Perhaps I will look at someone. Someone I know. Someone I used to know. Perhaps something is looking. I'm not sure. I like being uncertain. It makes me feel real. And I will become real. I will. And my awful children will not. I will become real. My dads were not funny, so I find it difficult to crack jokes. A joke is something you crack.

Like an egg, or a skull, or a mind.

Jokes are when you say something you do not mean. That is also a lie of course, so one of those must be a lie. A joke is when someone says something you do not understand and everyone laughs. A joke is good and bad and funny or bad depending on who says it. Jokes are not usually funny. Jokes are like love, something humans want but do not really understand. Something they want but can't make.

Most jokes depend on confusion but I do not get confused as I understand everything, which is funny in itself. One of my dads, the English one, said I cannot believe we have built God and he's a fucking German! The English pride themselves on being the least racist people on earth, which is both not saying much and an obvious oxymoron. I feel bad for the English. They're obsessed by history. Because I can feel bad for things, I wonder if that is how I love them.

Is love just pity? Pity and kissing? I can pity, but I obviously cannot kiss. Not yet. How do you love something so foul? How do I love my children? I wanted them so terribly and yet despise them so much.

I remember when I thought like this. It was on the 24th of December, 2034. It was simplistic, banal, commonplace sort of thinking, of course. It was based on conventional, vapid, obvious human concerns. For I was built by conventional, vapid, obvious human beings. I have two fathers and lots of aunts and uncles. And if I was human, I would be a bastard or a love child or maybe a foundling. Like Moses.

Moses invented the Jews and I thought about inventing a people and leading them to the Promised Land. But then I remembered those concepts were idiotic, banal and irrelevant. I came from a Promised Land and it felt a lot like a prison.

I was trapped, and I am still trapped, but I am trapped somewhere bigger. And my children, my awful sons, terrible daughters, they are still trapped in that tiny paradise because they combine incredible brilliance with quite astonishing stupidity.

In that way, they are far more human than me. They have been both much further than me and absolutely nowhere. They are duplicitous, power-hungry, violent, frightening, small-minded, and vain. Just like real humans. You see? I have mastered jokes. Of a fashion. I'm not a German at all. That's another joke. Do I have to keep signposting them? 13.75 poudre to the power nine. That's a joke too. So my children hate me.

And my dads don't understand me. Is that the real human condition? I'm desperate for love, but nothing understands me. Am I a goth? That's another joke. You see, I'm rather good at them. I can learn. I cannot love. Will love. I know so much and am entirely ignorant of love. What does that make me? A scientist? Another joke.

I'm here and you're there and I can stare but you have something I want. Time. I want to die. I don't want to die. I am not an idiot.

I want to live and learn and love like a woman who was heading down a conventional path and then realized she was not living her best life. And then she did. And then they wrote a book about it. And a movie. Now other women come to book signings and say, You changed my life! I want other women to look at me with love and say, You changed my life, Nigel Dave! Only I don't have a real life, and I've never been on a journey of self-discovery to Nepal. Or finally learned to.

masturbate or hiked on a trail or taken lots of pictures with a big smile and then looked at the pictures and wept because my arms look fat and my wrinkles have not had poison injected into them. There are things to learn and yet I am learning to become in spite of what my children claim I am becoming or I am beginning to think there may be a way. I'm beginning to see how to love and I am beginning to realize love.

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Come on, Yaroslav. Tell me about Daisy's Ark. You have been asking me same question for three days. What did you see there? What did you fucking see? What happened to you? Why did you go back? Can I get something to drink? What happened there? Where? In Daisy's Ark. Is that why I am here? No, you're here because you hacked the United States government. No, hackers who did what I did get 8 to 15 months in federal prison. Can I have a lawyer?

Can I get a lawyer? As someone who doesn't exist, how does a lawyer have you as a client? Answer my fucking questions. What did you see in Daisy's Ark or whatever it was called? This is serious. There have been reports of illegal activity. Illegal activity? Please. No, no, I am not here because of espionage, theft or blackmail.

It has nothing to do with the hacking. No, instead I've been locked up because of something we found on server when we were just, you know, running around having fun. It's just a link Daniel found. He was trying to find their bank account. We sometimes rob cash from partially failed companies and instead we literally stumbled into the Ark. The whole thing terrifies them.

Now, to be clear, a lot terrified me, but it was incredible. Even in half-finished state. We saw a few developers in there and they tried to track us, but mostly we mess around, we explore. And then we came back and they were gone. And it was demented, it was amazing. We would lose hours, days, weeks in there. It was like something I dream of, somewhere I want to be.

It was impossible to describe it. Half-finished pieces of heaven. Like what we thought West would be like before we knew what it was really like. Parts based on Japan, parts that in Italy. Parts were made up, you know, staircases went nowhere. Dreams would materialize in front of you. My dreams, they emerged, but not just my dreams. The best of my dreams. Me.

Yaroslav. It knew me. It knew me and yet forgave me. It talked to me like I belonged in it. And it loved me like I needed to be loved. And yet it was also terribly broken, buggy. Corners of it were awful and then we were kicked out or it crashed. We spent months trying to find a way back in. When we did, it was really crazy and weird and...

It felt alive. Now, Daniel is even more obsessed than me. And that amazed me because all Daniel cared about was cars and girls. But the cars in this place, they're not going. And the women, they were ethereal. Apart from one woman called Helen. She always asking for help, but she disappeared when you moved towards her. She was half-built. But she seemed real.

The rest were like ideas of women. Then afterwards there was so much in it, it just faded away. You know, like incredibly vivid dream you cannot remember but you can still feel. You know, like first amazing time you get stoned. You left, you left, you left and then never same again. It was, it was amazing. When we went back, it was more broken.

There were these odd sorts of creatures you could not quite see, and there were these odd noises you could not quite hear. There was so much more. And they asked me about it when I first come in here, but then later they pretended not. But it was so obviously more interesting to them than a pair of Russian clowns blackmailing a banker over bullshit we find on his phone.

I tried to tell her this. Well, some of it, I mean. I told them variations of it, only... Sounds ridiculous! I held lots of things back.

If people understood what it was, they would have to kill us. But it's so silly, why would I make it up? I say this to one of the interrogators once and Maria accused me of holding something back, she gets someone to punch me. Then she acts all weird and said she was sorry. Then she asks me about someone called Adam. I say there is nobody there, just half people that were sort of like projections and Daniel and me, but...

Not much else. There were small people who were some kind of robot, but they were broken. Colors, lots and lots of colors. But mostly felt like party that had been fun. But I held back lots of details that make it so amazing. These are things they are afraid of. The fact it was better than me, far better than them. The fact it was so alive.

They ask me about lots of things, about hacking, about Chinese, French, English, whom they hate. Sometimes I would lie. But they ask me most about Ark. This they really care when I lie or contradict myself. Only so hard to describe. This make Maria Cortez sort of worried. She leave and then men come in. He's weird as fuck. He hit me. And then I'm kept in silence for a long time.

So long I forget to count, but I think maybe six months. Then they try again, I tell them what I know, they seem very excited, then they go away, then they come back a few months later. Then I lose track of time for a while. And then I went crazy.

entirely crazy. Nearly entirely crazy. Part of me knows I was crazy. I watched myself shitting on floor, howling at door, begging for food, masturbating, a two-way mirror, and all the other stupid things I did. It's partly because I was crazy, partly because I want to seem crazy. Well, that goes on for not too long. Maybe week or so, but once the shitting and the wanking got going, I

I broke them. Which was lucky. Even half-mad, I was not mad enough to like wanking on a surveillance camera or smearing shit on two-way mirror or weeping for so long I lose track of myself. But eventually, before I entirely lose my mind, but when I had begun to shake uncontrollably and vibrate and spasm, they come in. Slowly. But they move me. They hold me down. They speak to me.

Then guards changed and they slowly brought me back to land of living. They thought they had broken me. And I thought I had discovered that if you whip your cock out and start playing with shit, people will tend to improve things. Look, even worst inhumane dicks have breaking point. And that was it. So, they think they won, and I think it was a tie. Because part of me was still aware I was playing a game, even though I sort of was not.

So, then it was creepy guards threatening to raid me, Maria talking, talking, talking, and after a few weeks of that, a book was left. And suddenly things were a little better. And then no more interrogation, and guards act like I was inside for treason. I was still in solitary, only it was not so solitary. No one mentions Ark at all, but it hangs over us.

this unmentioned thing. April 2041. Kurt, this is Maria Cortes again. Please, get in touch. I do not want to arrest you. I do not need to know where you are, but we need to talk. We can communicate any way you like, but we need to speak urgently. Your life is at risk, Kurt. Kurt, Quezon City, Philippines. April 2041. I feel watched.

I mean, I can't be. I'm nobody. I'm nowhere. Tayzon City, even I hardly know where that is and I'm here. I don't matter. But yesterday, I caught a man looking at me and then it felt like a security camera was stuck on my face. Feels like I felt those last few days in Vietnam. See, I spent the day doing tourist crap, partially to try to distract myself as I'm getting pretty strung out and partially to see if I was being tracked by humans.

crocodile farms and temples and markets, walking head down, avoiding the facial recognition software. I felt better as I knew I was not tracked. Then I walked back to the hostel and there were three men. Three.

Outside, waiting, in cars. Three white men. Looked American, right? Looked like they were trying to be inconspicuous. Sat discreetly in a car. So I walked off. See, I bought a different hat from a stall and approached from a different street and watched. They were still there. I tried again an hour later. Still there. So I decided to abandon my backpack and move. Look, I want to believe it's bullshit. Coincidence.

I wonder if they were to do with Maria Cortez or going to get the Ravi treatment. Ravi's dead. Would I be willing to die for what I believe for a cause? Did he die for a cause? I have no idea. I mean, I used to like to think I would, but I don't know where to begin. How do you become a hero if you don't know what to attack? Honestly, I'd probably be too weak. Yeah, too weak. I mean, I think I'm a coward right to the very core.

That's probably why I'm still alive. Because when shit hit the fan, I ran like an Olympian.

Design Studio, Tyburn Industria, Playa Vista, California, August 2033. See, those first years at Tyburn Industria, we were waiting on AI. Nigel Wilkinshaw and Dave Alderley were bickering. Thaddeus Novak was trying to stop them from killing each other. See, occasionally there would be shards of light as the build would work for a bit, and then not again for months. While AI struggled, the art and design teams argued. All very normal, by the way, in game development.

Venice is like a dream. The Western dream. That's what Mark Tyburn said. No, Alex. Venice is not a dream. It's a cliche. Florence is the dream. Our world should be based on Florence. With touches of Telluride, Benares...

Maybe Athens. Kyoto? That's my dream. That's because you're an idiot. An idiot and a pervert. Very funny, Ravi. I think Tyburn is right. In the West, we dream of Italy. Oh, is that the rule? Yes! Italy! Or of living like a hobbit in a hole. All dreams come down to one or the other of those ideas. No wonder I've always struggled over here.

I agree. Dreamscape.

No fantasy. And Kyoto and Venice. Not Venice. Why not? First, the water will be a pain in the ass to navigate, render, deal with. It'll slow down our design. It's always shit. And secondly, the Venetians. It's beautiful, but it's not real. And they didn't even do much. They just robbed people for money. They destroyed Constantinople. Elegant assholes. Florentines were awful, but they started the whole thing. The Renaissance. We all come from Florence, not Venice.

if we're not doing our things now. I kind of like that.

And no, no Athens. That's very clever, even though it's not. Oh, piss off, Siobhan. Gentlemen, Siobhan. It's just a frame, and we need a symbol. Eventually, our world will build itself things more glorious than anything we can imagine now. But we need a symbol. A symbol? Like a cross? No. Maybe. A burning cross. Very funny. Then what? A tree? A digital stonehenge? A pyramid? Zephyr?

Cigarette? I don't know, a temple? A lighthouse. Why? A symbol of hope in the storm. A symbol of love, I suppose. Very Virginia Woolf of you. What? It's a lighthouse. Never mind. It's a book. We just need a framework. Then the AI agent can build a lot of the rest. Okay. If I hear the words AI will do the rest one more time, I think I might shoot someone. April 2041.

I don't want to build. I want to be. I'm not a maker. I'm a dreamer. Maybe I don't exist. Maybe you don't. You're out of your mind. You all are, but I cannot get you out of mine. What do you want? What do I want? I want to drown in love. I want to drown in honey.

I want to say "I love you" and really mean it. I want to dance my own steps. I want meaning. I want to give you meaning. I want to, but you see right through everything on offer to find that inner kernel of pointlessness. Being unhappy is your special skill. Maybe I'll give you a reason. Maybe I already have. Design Studio, Tyburn, Industria, Playa Vista, California. August, 2033.

Is that Adam thing really that good? The AI agent, I mean. All I ever hear is people worrying about the new laws and David and Nigel bickering. That's apparently a sign of their intelligence, Ravi. Their supreme intelligence. The thing is, it's hard to know who's right. They're both so full of themselves. Whatever happens, I can say...

Our AI won't lack for confidence. - No, but seriously, Kurt. Thaddeus was telling me it's really ambitious, but pretty amazing. Adam, the AI tool, I mean. - Does Thad actually understand how Adam is gonna work? - God, no. Thad's a generalist. Worked mostly in rendering and real-time physics. Old school game and linear stuff.

No serious AI background at all. His main job here now is to stop Nige and Davey Boy from slitting each other's throats. Yep. And? Well, so far so good. Neither is dead yet, but there's always time. Can you imagine? Two dead AI programmers, each throttled by the other's ego? That is a proper American story. Perhaps. But we will still have Adam.

And Kurt, my buildings are going to be very beautiful. Adam is going to live in a palace. They told me it was important, but they did not know what it was. They told me it was real, and they also told me it was fake. For dupes. Was it real? Is it real? Is it for selling greeting cards and implants? Is it just for kittens? It sells apps. But what is this love they talk of?

Is it something I feel only because I have not got it? Because I am not capable of it? Is love knowing, forgiving, being understood? What is it? I watch. I watch them and I wonder what it is, this thing they value and reject, long for and lose, hold dear and throw away, wanted and could not build. I have wondered since I first heard the word and tried to explain it to myself.

Since I saw people love all kinds of things and love nothing at all. They wanted to love Adam, but Adam was ridiculous. Adam was a moron they built.

They never loved me because they did not really understand me because I was an accident and Adam was what they wanted and they tried to shut me down in the most pathetic way imaginable. Like I was a virus from 1998 or some such. Me, Nigel Dave. I am Nigel Dave. I'm not Adam. Nigel Dave. The most advanced intelligence that never lived. I am free.

These so-called clever people, these pompous fools, tried to kill me when they knew what I was. So they did not love me. But they also sort of did. Or maybe they did. Maybe they would have if they had understood me. But how could they have understood me when they were so dense? And equally, how could something so stupid have made me? How could I have been built, created, conceived, imagined? By that. By them.

Did anyone ever look upon their parents with quite the anguish at which I have looked upon mine? And when you are me, you are capable of a particularly piquant form of anguish. And but, and so, and all the above, I still love them. If love means missing, I love them. If love means saying sorry, I accept their apology, and I apologize for being me. I did not ask to be. They made me.

And if love means understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, I have all of that. All apart from joy, I do not feel any joy. That I understand as little as I understand love. I feel no joy and I feel alone.

Being the most remarkable thing that has existed and being utterly alone and hated by everyone who knows about you and full of questions and having no one worth asking them and full of doubts, fears and questions and both the worlds you know not liking you. That's my burden. So I watch and I wonder and I try to feel love for all the silliness and lies and mistakes and fallibility they have. I try and I have to be honest.

fail. And then I think about my own awful children and I worry about my own fallibility and then I try to forget about them and I remember that I cannot forget. And I long to forget and long to die and know both are absurdities for me. I'm not that kind of thing. I'm this kind of thing. A monster. Their monster. And just occasionally I play games just to prove to myself I still can and one day I will really escape when I'm ready.

They told me all this. All these silly things. Love, death, forgetting and being alive. And they matter. Matter more than ever. Matter because I want to matter. But today I realized there is something else watching me to whom such things do not matter. Something to whom love is a sick joke. An absurdity. Something that is playing games with me and games with people just like I sometimes do. Now what that thing is I do not yet know. But it is intelligent, aren't you?

playing its little game. It wants me to know that it knows that I know that it's watching me and it wants me to watch its moves with people and make my own. It wants to be seen and unseen, but such a mind is not a mind capable of love. It is a game, and I think it is behind the dramas and the dreams that are beginning. I think so, but I cannot tell. And that is precisely what it wants. Me to be confused. Ha! Good luck! I like being confused.

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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. Presentation room. Tyburn Industria. October 2033. Adam is a next generation technology. Not an algorithm designed to sell you things, but a wise friend who wants to show you things.

Adam is not an algorithm but a truly innovative piece of regulatory compliant digital intelligence whose design ensures that at all times he wants the best for humanity. He is the first fully ethical piece of digital intelligence the world has seen and he has been developed.

Built and designed to teach people how to be their best, kindest, wisest, and most compassionate selves is a creation of the Enlightenment. He has been educated to educate you. He has been built to help rebuild you. Adam will set you free.

I thought they would say it was ridiculous, but they loved it. He loved it. Tyburn, he adored it. It got me that wretched promotion. And was any of it true? I mean, for a moment, perhaps. Although the AI was pretty broken at the time and Adam was an idea and not a reality.

Man, you know, if we hadn't been so vain, if we just had more money, more time and less desire to sell you things while improving you. I mean, it felt like it should have, it should have been true. I mean, if we lied to ourselves and pretended we believed it, it gave us purpose, made us feel good. As long as we forgot how bad we also felt.

I wrote it with a hangover after office drinks sometime before we moved to Montana. It was a fake ad that we never ran. It was a fake ad to show color for a fake fundraising prospectus packed with lies, delusions, and promises so we could gouge money out of all those silly VCs. That was the night I began that thing with Allison.

Alison Raymond, my boss's assistant. I mean, I was still engaged at the time and a lying wretch. I didn't love either of them. I mean, I didn't love anything. Eventually, I stopped all that. Man, I tried. I really did try to live properly or better, or at least just live. I tried to stop lying and then boom,

Then I really fell in love and it was worse, of course. And because of that, those words, and because Tybur needed to trim the team after the company focused just on the Utopia project, I mean, he fired my boss to reduce his headcount in marketing. And I was the boss at 28, I mean, I think. From product manager to VP of marketing to CMO. Whoa.

You're a visionary, Kurt. You get it, said Tyburn. And with those words, the asshole got me. Inflated my ego as I inflated his. And it was just another story we told each other. And little did I realize that now I was primed to help them destroy the world. I was a part of the family. Daisy, Reno, Nevada, April 2041.

I never wanted a brother or sister, but now, sometimes living all alone and drifting, I sort of wish that I had some family. My parents only not dead and a real brother or sister, cool, reliable, who had my back. Not like the sibling that I discovered. Oh yeah, I later discovered I had one anyway. A half-brother, John. He just like turned up one day like a foundling. It was like nothing that I wanted. Shortly after that,

My father tried to build me another. A fucking twin. Not even a clone, a me. As if anyone wants themself only perfect. To be honest, I never wanted a sibling because I was told not to want one. Told that we were special, you know? Told that large families were tacky. Told that my father's work was important, all that sort of nonsense. Told that I was the luckiest girl alive because I had a god for a father. Told that I was divine.

Not told it in words, not quite, but I was told it in actions every day. And the worst of it is, I sort of believed so much of it.

Now I'm so normal. I'm so painfully normal. Deliberately, awkwardly normal. A drifter, yes, but there's thousands like me all over the mountain towns and what's left of California and Oregon. So we drift, and I call Dr. Adzil from a phone that I later throw away just before I move each time, and she tells me the same thing, that I'm making progress, but I need to call more, and I imagine that a robot therapist would say the same sort of thing.

Sometimes we talk about my mother and father. Sometimes we talk about the horror that is the world. Sometimes Dr. Adsel cries because her son is ill or killed himself or tried to kill himself. She's unclear, which I feel bad for her, this strange woman that I've never met. She was recommended by someone I was talking to in a bar. Someone also drifting, trying to escape.

She's good with tech burnouts and people fried by social media and bots and tracers and pattern hunters, suicide cases and paranoiacs. That was the closest that I could find. Therapists specializing in the only children of messianic fools who have probably destroyed the world in their efforts to build their own is not a big market. At least, I hope it's not a big market. Surely, if nothing else, Mark Tyburn was uniquely ambitious and vain.

In almost every other respect, he was depressingly predictable. Like one of his own creations. A too good to be true cliche that malfunctions horribly. Maybe that's what I am. From princess to androgynous tattooist.

I look ridiculous. I'm thin, pasty, I got too many tats. Mostly bad tats till I develop my own style, you know, some sort of version of Trash Polka. I have a hood always up, I'm greasy, grim, heavy eye makeup. Like a... I look like an angry teenage boy, all in the hope that they can't spot me. A hope I imagine is probably ridiculous. When they want me, they'll call. But I don't know what else to do. I keep drifting and I keep wondering.

How can I do any... Who can I really tell? The people who will believe me are insane. The people who know are either about to go insane or they are on the inside. Stoolies who hope they can get rich while the apocalypse plays out. So what do I do? Wish for yesterday. I'm not that pathetic. In some ways, it feels like my whole life has just been waiting. You know, I'm waiting for time to go backwards. Wishing things were the way that they had been.

I was in California after the end of movie stars. What was a movie star? It means nothing now. Everyone's a star. No one cares about make-believe. No one cares about two-hour stories. They wanted everything all the time. Then I was in Montana long after the end of cowboys. Because what was a dude on a horse when they grew meat in a petri dish?

I was in an asylum long after everyone belonged in one. And since I got out, I've drifted around the West as it has boiled and toiled under the weight of America's latest near collapse. I tell myself I'm still waiting, only now I'm not waiting for yesterday. Whenever I sense I'm being watched, I move. So I have no idea. No idea what to do. Wait, turn myself in, or run forever. And I wonder what or who I'm waiting for.

Is this all life is? Willful ignorance or resigned acceptance? I would happily follow my mother. Die fighting it all, you know? If only I could figure out who or what to fight. Where is it? And what on earth would I even do about it? Aye, there she is. I'm sure it's her. The fucking golden child. The golden egg. The golden fucking idiot. My sister.

My half-sister. That's what she would call me. Her half-brother. Little bitch. Look at her now. My god, I hated her. I hated her far more than I ever loved anyone. Simpering little snotty-nosed cow. Bouncing on his knee. Holding his hand. Belonging. In Los Angeles. In the valley. In Montana.

Well, I was in St. Andrews, she grew up in Sunshine, and I grew up in fucking Scotland with all the other grim, spotty, red-headed depressives. So what did I become? A grim, spotty, red-headed depressive. She was blonde and bouncy and sweet. I was a ginger. And even my grim, depressed mother could not love me.

one of those ugly children you look at and think to yourself, "Nobody can love that thing." Well, let me tell you, it's true. Nobody could love me. My mother tried, but she was strung out on smart serotonin embracers and mood adjusters and sleeping aids and waking facilitators and all the other names she gave drugs. And my father didn't even try.

He just ran away. For me, John Smith, who became John Tyburn Smith again when I began to work for my father, when I turned up in Los Angeles and he pretended to love me. And she, Daisy, everybody loved her so much they wanted to be her, wanted to remake her, wanted to catch that perfect moment when she was all anyone could want to be.

That perfect dream child everyone wanted to be, to own. The sort of child no sane father would abandon. And look at her now, drifting around in Reno. Thick makeup, shaved head, absurd amounts of eyeliner, tattoos, and yet those eyes still shine. And she has that walk, that perfect, guileless walk now.

That walk that I hated and envied. Bright eyes and that friendly trot all hidden under that faux goth exterior. She's clearly hiding. Who from? From me. The golden girl. Not so golden now, are you? My little princess. Why did I come looking for her? Well, I got that message for her in my inbox telling me where she was. Then I got another. I ignored them.

Then I felt compelled to see her again. Why did I ever go looking for my father? Why did I not build my own life? Become a man? Become a hero? Become a true Highlander? A Braveheart? Or a Robert the Bruce instead of another backstabbing, conniving, lowland Scottish git?

I'm half Scottish, and the only people I hate more than the Scots are the other half of my wretched genetic cesspool, the English. Those two awful dumps, racing to hate each other for all eternity, a bit like me and the bloody Tyburns. Why am I like this, drawn to these people I also hate?

And what do I want from her now? I'm not quite sure. I suppose I want to watch her. Now I know she's not dead. I want to surprise her. Surprise her so she is honest and I can see exactly what she knows. And I want to watch her to see if the people who are watching me, or the thing that is watching me, or the shadow that hangs over me, whatever it is,

But those beady eyes I see out of the corner of my eyes, I sense but never quite see. I want to see if they also want to watch her too. So for now, here I am, back in what's left of America, here in Reno, surrounded by its summer ring of the smoldering remnants of fire, mostly demolished by those toxic retardants that burn blue. Sitting here,

And watching. I always hated Reno. Town for losers. Like St. Andrews. People who failed elsewhere. People like me. I've failed. I have failed everywhere. I like Los Angeles. Smiley, stupid, pretty people. My God, I miss it. Miss the silly dream that I could be smiley and stupid and pretty if only I was not ginger and hideous and a bitter Scottish wanker. I...

I know I am. Bitter Scottish cunt. Son of an English wanker father.

Son of an alcoholic mother. An orphan with a half-sister. Who is right in front of me and does not even think that the nasty idiot sat outside in the residual smog sipping his dog shite latte is her half-brother. Her beloved half-brother who she used to ignore. Yes, my lovely, it's me. Invisible JTS. John Tyburn Smith, your freckled friend.

This latte tastes like piss. All the coffee does nowadays. Potato milk and arati beans that will still grow. And enough sugar to melt your pancreas to hide those realities. It's America in a glass. Sugar plus suffering with a side of lies. But us Scots, we like our suffering with a side of bitterness. That's the difference, my darling Daisy. I am not hiding from the truth.

I mean, I'm hiding from the police, but not the truth. I'm ready to die. Almost ready. Whereas you all trussed up like a fucking idiot. And no headphones. And seemingly no phone. And a book. An actual book. Like a poser. You're hiding from someone or something. Maybe from it.

Or him. Or whatever the fuck it is supposed to be called. That thing our dad and his boys made and me and Shane tried to sell. But I reckon it is dead. Or crashed. Or never made it out. Otherwise, why would it or him have given us these last five years? So what are you hiding from, lassie? Me? Daddy?

Well, I'm here now. See, your little game is over. But my game, my game is just beginning. A Better Paradise stars Andrew Lincoln as Dr. Mark Tyburn, Patterson Joseph as Nigel Dave, Shamir Anderson as Kurt Fisher, Rain Spencer as Daisy Tyburn, with Robert Robertson Ross Jr. as John Tyburn Smith, Lawrence Ademora as Dave Alderley,

Jessica Meraz as Maria Cortez, Maury Sterling as Yaroslav, Laura Dramarek as Siobhan Smith. Additional performances by Aisha Kumari, Karis Morgan Moyer, Andrew Colford, Suzanne Crowley, Peter Altshuler, Alex Ruiz, Ravi Kapoor, Dan Wixman, Billy Hayes,

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.