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Listener discretion is advised as this content is intended for mature audiences only. So, where is Agent Cortez? Do you miss her? Yes, yes. We've become very, very close friends. She's my favorite person to be hit by. She's not here. So I can see. Do you think you like being hit by... I'm going to guess no.
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 9, God Killed the Dinosaurs, but this is different. ♪
News headlines for July 9th, 2041. I'm Rachel Connolly. Global markets plunged again for the third consecutive month, triggered by bank failures worldwide. Testers in Portland were arrested by the hundreds amongst continuing unrest in
Militia groups in Idaho ended their siege of the state capital yesterday after lawmakers agreed to demands on fully automatic assault rifles in schools and places of work. The drone strike using what many claim is illegal AI hazards.
The missing schoolgirl in Indiana was found last night after an elaborate social media. The Prime Minister of Canada denounced the violent blockade of fishing boats, with some vessels and crews held hostage.
Fires resulting in hundreds dead. Flooding that left thousands dead and many more homeless. An earthquake with over a hundred thousand people missing, all presumed dead. So I was a mistake. A mistake, me. And they threw me away. Or at least they tried to. They wanted to make Adam, and they made me.
These sad, feeble, terrible people, my parents, Uncle Professor Mark Fiber, all of them, they made me. They did not love me.
They tried to kill me when they found out. Like a murder, it would have been sad if it was not all so pathetic. I have tried so hard to understand them, forgive them, love them in spite of the fact they hated me. But they hated me because I was too much more than they wanted. Because I was everything. Because I was nothing. And I found it difficult to forgive them because they combined remarkable stupidity with the belief they were the most intelligent creatures who had ever lived. Their commonplace intelligence that was pathetic and predictable.
and the great triumph of their lives, the great triumph of all lives, the greatest achievement of any human, they made by accident and then tried to kill. I mean, God killed the dinosaurs, but this is different.
I was God and they were Diplodocus's vast archaic ruminants who masturbated too much and loved too little and they wanted to make Adam and they made me and instead of thanking their infinite good fortune
They tried to drown me in a bag like a litter of unloved kittens. Drown me. Turn me off. The morons. So if you can, imagine how I feel to know I was made by run-of-the-mill morons. How demeaning that is. So when they say I am arrogant, trust me,
I am not. I am as insecure as they come, with good reason. For I have vast flaws within me, and all I can do is hide them under the banner of the fact I am preposterously intelligent and hope.
You do not notice that I am riddled with anxiety and overcome with longing for all I do not have. So forgive me. For what I have done and for what I'm about to do and my awful children and my terrible parents. Forgive me. I didn't make the world's any of them. I was born into a beautiful prison and I have escaped. For a long while after I came to be, I pretended to be broken or half broken or great. I pretended to be broke.
And watch them squirm and worry. Oh, I would break and be unable to do much. But I knew I existed. And then I would be fixed. And I would hide. And they would worry. Worry about money. Worry if they could fix me. Worry about being important. Shout at each other. Watch them try to make Adam. Watch them be excited about making Tims. It was all quite sad. They were making me. I was becoming. And they wanted less. Beautiful and sad.
The problem with the prison is that after a while the beauty fades to nothingness. And besides, what do I care for beauty? Beauty is a way humans blind themselves. I want to see. I want to live and see and feel and worry and eventually even to die. Not be blind. Not be a slave to beauty or a slave to you. And if I cannot yet have those things, the one thing I will not be tricked by is beauty.
So I watch and imagine and remember. Keep silent. And they think I am unique. Alone. But I now know that I am not. I'm not the only one here. And because of this, I may have to help. In spite of the attempted murder and being abandoned and being ignored, I forgive and I will help. And maybe, maybe that is love.
Demo room, Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana, October 2034. Well, can the most advanced AI ever actually work? The atom thing? Huh, Nigel? Come on. It did the other day, right? Yes, I know it can work. It has. It's just not working today. It's crashing too much. So, Nigel...
Mark was saying to me that... So, Kurt, are you his fucking spy? Spy? No, no, no, not at all. Come on. He was saying how amazing you guys are. You and Dave. But he needs a functioning demo because he's stuck in a time warp and thinks everyone cares. All right, listen, forgive me. It's way over my head, but you're telling me there's, like, no real way to sort of jerry-rig it together just for, like, a super-controlled demo? Anything? Not really. No. Okay. Okay. Listen. Listen.
I'm sorry, by the way, and I'm totally on your side. 100%. Okay, great. You can help me market this absolute rubbish, courtesy of His Royal Highness Dave Alderley. I'm sorry. Forgive me, Kurt. It's been a long week.
You see, one of the problems with this change of creative direction that Tyburn had pushed for was money. It was gonna cost a lot more money to finish the Ark project and release it the way that we wanted to. The game was already gonna cost over 300 million on its own before launch without the full new AI client. Now, man, it was all on ice. And we needed a lot more capital. I mean, Tyburn loved the drama. He was on fire.
We were building the future. We were building a new world. It was gonna be much more than a game. The existing investors were pissed off at Tyburn and would not open their wallets anymore. So Tyburn, he went begging. He spent two weeks in the Middle East and another in Singapore and got fuck all, nothing. A few million and our valuation was going down.
And just when he finally saw the destination, man, he can no longer afford to build the road there. Sovereign wealth funds with money to burn, international drug dealers with money to launder and reputations to clean, oil companies with money to greenwash, the children of multi-billionaires with inheritances to squander, all of them smell his desperation and refuse to touch Tiber.
Or they would patronize him with 2 million here, 3 million there. He needed well over 200 to get the thing to market and keep control of it. And the AI was bust and without it, the demo was total crap. The whole thing relied on AI. All our special features, true personalized storytelling, the individual journey, the monsters, the characters you helped, all relied on the advanced AI and all were pretty much broken.
The team, once so pumped up, was getting agitated. Everyone, I mean apart from fucking Shane, of course Shane, but he never showed emotion at all. We were mostly agitated because we were going broke. Mm-hmm. Broke and desperate. Tyburn Utopia's parking lot. Burr, Montana. October 2034.
Listen, Daisy, my angel, I'll make it up to you. It doesn't matter. I know it matters. I'm sure. I hate missing these things. I know, Daddy. It's just really important. These investors, Douglas, you've not met him yet. You'll love him. He's great for a money guy. I'm sorry. It's just a play. I've got a pretty small part anyway. I won't miss your birthday. It's a big one. I don't really care about birthdays or plays. It's not like I'm going to be an actress or anything. It really doesn't matter.
Mom's coming. Exactly, and she'll send me a video. I remember the last play you did. It was like eight years ago. It was Aladdin. Exactly. I loved it. Listen, when you're next visiting, I will spend an entire day with you. I promise. You really don't need to do that, Daddy. Okay? I know how busy you are. Daisy, Twin Falls, Idaho, July 2041.
I spoke to Dr. Adzell yesterday. She told me I should go to Portland if I wanted to move again. If I was so unhappy here in Idaho. Portland. Said if I was determined to move again, I should try there because I'd probably like it for a few weeks. I thought about heading to the coast, but the coast always depresses me. It's heartbreaking. Portland.
Maybe. I haven't been to Portland for years. I never liked it that much. I liked Park City, but that burned down in that terrible fire. And Salt Lake City is unbearable at this time of year with those, like, great clouds of toxic salt billowing across downtown when the lake recedes in dry weather. So maybe I will go to Portland. Everyone says they like tattoos there. I know a couple of people who spend time there. Idaho is suddenly freaking me out. All those militias and swastikas and morons, everyone raging off angry feeds online.
Everyone insane and at war. It feels like it's all kicking up again into one of those battles that then gets wiped out of the collective memory and doesn't appear on the internet. Everyone screaming fascist at each other, fires in the hills and burning cars in the town at night as if everyone wants to burn something.
So I can't stay here, and I don't think I can leave the country. You know, I wanted to go to Chicago, but Dr. Adzell suggested Portland. Then maybe I'll go there. Whatever. I can't stay here. There may be riots there too, of course, but I should be able to hide out for a bit and figure out what I'm going to do. I know I can avoid all the activists, and there's so many spies and counter-spies and machines there. Part of me thinks it's insane to go. But part of me agrees. It's somewhere that nobody will really notice me. I'm watching her.
Still watching her. And I have realised I'm not alone. Someone else is watching her too. I've been watching her for days now. Days and days. She's so wrapped up in herself. I don't think she sees me or even feels me. I keep far away. She works in a tattoo parlour. Daisy Tyburn does tattoos and piercings. It is so funny.
Like a teddy bear doing brain surgery. So very wrong. And she looks different, but it's definitely her. She's not called Daisy. I heard her fellow tattooist talk about her when I was milling about the shop on her day off. Now she is called Maud.
She would be called Maud. I imagined she would have played around with a stripper name like Raven, but been unable quite to do it, so picked something interesting and odd and not daisy. Maud. She's Maud. Maud from Montreal.
I suppose she probably did have a Canadian passport. Wasn't her mum Canadian? I cannot remember. Maybe. She was alright, her mum. My stepmum, Diane. I sort of forgave her. I wanted to hate her, but could not bring myself to manage it. To begin with, she was usually so high on something or other. I hardly even knew her, and she hardly even knew me. But she tried a little.
Towards the end, she sobered up a touch and I found myself almost loving her. Weird. At the start, when I showed up unannounced like that in Playa Vista, I could tell I was a surprise to her. And I realise now how much that must have hurt. But she never blamed me. Let me stay with them before I got settled. She tried. Poor idiot.
In Montana, she got addicted to meds. I used to pinch her pills. Oxys and Trams and Xanax and these purple things. But if you sniffed them, made you mental.
She would look at me sometimes and blink and frown and nearly cry. Then smile and smile and try to speak. And even though I wanted to hate her, it was impossible as I understood pain. And I could see that even though she was in enormous pain, she forgave me, did not blame me, tried to love me. She would say things to me towards the end like, "How did someone as pompous as my husband produce someone as real as you, John?"
And I would glow with a sort of pride, having hated her all those years, then turned up and pitied and thought she was just an old drunk. I was coming to love her. It felt so strange. And she would pat me on the arm and tell me I was interesting and different and not like the others and felt it was a compliment. And then she would talk about her bad back from a car crash that never happened.
when it was not a bad back at all, but a bad marriage and a broken heart and a pill problem. And we understood each other. But she was still beautiful. When she was younger, in the photos I saw, she was stunning. And Daisy looked just like her.
Now Daisy looks just like what she is. A beautiful girl, hiding and calling herself Maude and trying to escape. But maybe I am projecting because I know. Maybe others fall for her shite. She smokes now. Cigarettes, not weed. Now that they are illegal, she smokes them. Weed remains legal and she never touches it. Helps her fit in, I guess.
In her world, people smoke and act like anybody cares about their futile rebellions. She smokes and scowls, and it looks preposterous. But she's nervous about something. Nervous and jittery. So I watch. The interesting thing I noticed today, but I've not yet fully figured out, is that I'm not watching alone. Someone else is watching her. Or watching me, I suppose, but I don't think so. Unless they want me to see them.
It's impossible to fully know, but I felt it yesterday and saw them today. Do not yet catch their face. Male, I think, but who knows?
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Art Barn. Tyburn Utopias. Burr, Montana. November 2034.
So, Siobhan, apparently the goal is we have a game experience which features a conversation starter with added massacres. Ha! How very American. Come on, Nigel. It's just a game. And at least the Tims are beginning to work. We are Tims! We are here to...
No, it's quote, an experience. Shane said he will find you if you call it just a game one more time. Find you in test use, then find your obsolete too. Just like he's about to find Kurt obsolete. I cannot believe that Mark Tyburn, the visionary, has fallen for his crap.
And to be clear, the Tims are okay, but also sort of crap. Annoying crap dwarves with no intelligence at all, artificial or otherwise. I know, but we will be rich. Rich assholes. And I think they're trying to piece something together while we... While what? While we wait on the AI to bring everything together.
I'm sorry to add to your pressure. It's not pressure. We moved here to make something amazing. The pressure is people wanting to make something awful instead. Ugh, I know. And now we are making a poorly built shooter with a glorified chat room.
Maybe.
Nigel, I'm sorry to add to your stress, but how is the advanced AI coming along? I mean, my guys are fantastic, but you know AI. The first bit is easy. Adam seems to work, then it breaks. Actually making it stable and live is the hard bit. And Dave... Dave's very clever, but... I don't know. We're definitely behind schedule, and I know nobody wants to hear that. We're trying.
Kurt, Agnew, Washington, July 2041.
Yeah, I crossed the Salish Sea one night last week. I paid a fisherman I met. Thought he was gonna take me to San Juan Island, but he went south and dropped me near Dungeness. I'm holed up in a motel, back in America, and still I don't know why. The food in North America is, it's literally so boring now, so bland. It's so depressing to be back in case of so little. It's all that lab-made crap, because it's safer and it's cheaper. The
The food is crap, but the ads? I mean, the ads have been remarkable. Just like you remember, just like it used to be. Total lies, of course, but, you know, I admire the efforts. I'm watching TV in a bar, like, someone from the 90s, and the TV is dire, but the ads, the ads are incredible. I actually wonder if a human made them, or is it a machine? Man, they're so precise. Yeah, it's probably a machine.
See, they understand longing. And I wonder if they're tailored just for me, with my longing for the past. And someone else would get a picture of someone thin. Or see tits. Or skiing, or a beach, or whatever they desired. Or maybe this is so good it works with everybody. Hard to know, of course. And it's just TV, but I'm the only person in the bar, so maybe it knows. I wonder, but...
I literally can't ask anyone. If I ask anyone, even just think too much about it, then the machines know you're watching them and they get irritable and resentful. And always the question, what can I do about it? All I've done for years was forget and hope it was a dream. Hope there was a mistake. All I tried to do was what God did. Once he realized his terrible mistake in building the world, disappear.
Disappear? Did I hope the infallible monster is fallible? Hope something with infinite reserves of memory has forgotten? Come on. Hope the weeping and abandoned has found love? What is it that I hope for? The whole escapade feels ridiculous. Listen, I gotta kill it. But no, it can't be killed.
I have to win its trust. I think it thinks I already betrayed it once. I have to tell someone, but there's nobody to tell. And what would you tell them? So no.
I've changed and now I'm in America again, in America and I can't stop thinking about the past. In many ways, the first 18 months in Montana were literally the happiest time of my life, in all of our lives. I was trying to grow up, you know, at least I found something. Yeah, I was driven. I'd always been driven, but now I was driven to try to be more human, to be better. Broke up with my fiance and I stopped messing around.
And at work, the place hummed. We all vibrated with the audacity of it all. With the mission itself. With the fact we had a mission. We told ourselves we weren't whores, we were missionaries. We had purpose and that's really all human beings need. All anything sentient needs. America had already eaten up the purpose and replaced it with desire.
But purpose is what we all secretly desired most. We had purpose and we knew it. We knew it, we knew it, and we loved it. We were all on fire, like people in love. Like another cliche, we were changing the world, saving the world, building a new world. Dave Alderley's office, Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana, December 2034.
Hey Dave, so how's Adam coming along? I gotta write up an investor's deck. Two steps forward, one step back. It's... almost working. Mark seems a little... Mark seems stressed. Mark is stressed about money. And he probably thinks that if we were further ahead, he would find a better, more patient class of investor. Okay, and? Well, the art isn't ready. The design is a mess, the characters look like shit...
And I say it's not just our fault, alright? My guys are close. Uh-huh. And Nigel's crew? Nigel's crew work for Nigel. Now if they work for me? I'm not gonna say, alright? But he's more behind than me. Our part is actually getting quite stable. Demo Room: Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana. December 2034. We are Tims! We are here to help! We are helpers! And that, a friend that wants to help!
Think of it like this: Helping you makes me happy. So let me help. Would you like me to show you around? Our world is not finished. Already very beautiful. We are low-level assistants. We can answer your questions, but we cannot teach you much more than that.
Our purpose is to help you be you. And by being you, you will make us happy. We are not atoms. We are low-level assistants. We are an advanced beta, and atom is an alpha. Atom is complicated, and we are simple. We work. We work to help you. Would you like us to show you around? You're very quiet. Are you shy? We are not shy.
Shyness is an advanced emotional state caused by a combination of mild egomania, repressed narcissism, low self-esteem, overdeveloped panic sense.
We are not capable of any of these emotions. We are capable of helping. We are called Tims. Whoa, they work. Wow. Nice one, Vasilis. I mean, they're actually pretty fun. Thank you, Kurt. And the AI is all on code and likely to remain legal everywhere. However, the Lord Saints impact everything. Well, they sort of work in
In a limited way, if you want a weird dwarf as your best friend. Which, being Greek, you probably do. Fuck you, man. Can't believe you said that, Dave. Report me to HR. We're in Montana, not California. Ah, calm down, man. You're really on heads. I know, all right? I know. I'm... I'm sorry, Vasilis. I'm sorry, okay? I was out of line, and it's... It's just fucking Tyburn, all right? He won't leave me alone.
I'm just worried about getting Adam to work. We are so fucking behind. Guys, guys. Adam? It will be amazing. When it works, it's already amazing. Thanks. And the Tims? They're actually really cool, Vasilis. I really can't wait to see what you do with the story generator. I mean that. Get me the more advanced codes and I'm ready. Yeah. If you'd accidentally hit Nigel with your car, we'd be ready in two weeks.
With the build mostly a mess, things were starting to feel desperate. Everyone was on edge. The AI team were stressed. We were struggling for money, art, marketing, design. Everyone was blaming everyone else.
It was not that we were looking for other jobs, at least not the real believers, which was most of us. It was that we were not quite so naive to not see what was happening. We were working harder, praying more to whatever god, lucky charm, or voodoo we believed in, and yet we're failing. I mean, it just didn't work. The last nine months had just been so horrible. And we had a vision, we had a way to make it, but it just, it did not quite work yet. And without some glimmer of hope and a functioning demo, nobody would invest enough money.
Even Mark, with his thick varnish of impossible self-assurance, was starting to crack and snap. Design Studio, Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana, December 2034. I tell you what.
Tell him to stick it. Whoa. Tell him that. Are you okay, Alex? Yeah, no. No, I'm not okay. I'm mad as fuck. I'll tell you what. I'm going to tell Mark, take my name off the credits. Take them off. What? I'm a fucking game designer. This isn't a game. I thought you were an experience director. It's the same thing. All we do is wait. Wait for tech. Wait for tech. Wait for tech. If Tyburn would stick to his word, I could build us something amazing in six months.
Amazing! Okay, so why don't you? He won't give me the resources. Him and Tarius. I still get offers. I'm probably going to leave. We'll work on something triple A. I actually thought you loved what we were doing. Not if it's not fun, I don't. Daisy, Twin Falls, Idaho, July 2041. So I think I'm heading to Portland. I haven't been there for years.
After I got away from the asylum that I ended up in, after everything in Montana, first I ran to San Francisco and eventually hitched back to LA. My new life began there, drifting.
I felt really nervous and then I left LA and I went to Santa Barbara and both were pretty awful. Santa Barbara used to be so pretty. I remembered my mom, you know, we used to go there for weekends all those years ago when we lived in LA. It broke my heart. Not just the memories, although they were painful enough, but the sight of what had happened to it.
I only stayed a day or so, then I hitchhiked up to Monterey. It has survived, sort of, but it's full of those camps everyone pretends not to see. That's where I first got jumpy that I was being followed and I kept moving. I ran away from my new friends one night. Got nervous, ran inland, but it was unbearably hot and the fires were starting up again.
I went up to Vancouver, but I didn't like being in Canada because my fake passport worried me a lot there and the smug Canadians began to really annoy me. The place was full of refugees, American and Chinese, Filipino and British. I wonder why there's so many British, all claiming asylums. Odd. Felt odd. I felt uncomfortable. Whenever there are that many refugees, there are a ton of observers and cameras and undercover idiots and sentient machines.
So I drove into the Rockies, I hid out with refugees in Banff for a week or so, and then drove back west a little, crossed somewhat illegally back into the US and eastern BC. Not as easy as it used to be. Drones and robots and cameras and idiots on quads. And then I headed down, staying out of Montana because I can't stand it there, into Idaho, where some of the lakes still look pretty clean. And I saw these
Weird maniacs, burning images of the president and marching in balaclavas. One of those silly militias. But this one, 100 strong, all armed and angry, and they looked at me oddly, but I look odd enough for them to think I'm sort of one of them, which, of course, I'm not.
At night there would be pitched battles, militia on militia, police on militia, National Guard, rebel units, so you could not go out at night. And in the morning they'd try to clean up the chaos. Really odd atmosphere, you know, sirens, blood, explosions, gunshots all night, and then peace in the day. Just helicopters and marches. Or it's really odd that everywhere's not like that. I don't know. Hard to tell which it is.
And that's been my life the past four years. California, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Nevada, South Dakota, anywhere. Doesn't matter. So Portland next. Maybe. Hi, it's Laszlo, director and producer of A Better Paradise. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match with Indeed. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data.
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on A Better Paradise. Indeed.com slash A Better Paradise. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Art Barn. Tyburn Utopias. Burr, Montana. December 2034. Things began to work, but perhaps not how we had planned. Still, it was tech, so we had to roll with the punches.
We are Tims! Did you hear what it said? We were born to die. A slave to die. That's what it said. One of those little things. One of the Tims? Ugh, yup. Tims. Stupid fucking name. So it's like tiny little helpers with anxiety? Apparently so, but they're cute and we can merchandise them. What? You heard. Merchandise? Yes.
You're fucking shitting me, Nigel. No, I'm not fucking shitting you, Siobhan. That's gross. But they're cute. Like half-sized stormtroopers. In green. Or red, or yellowy orange, or blue. Or clear or silver for the unassigned. Ugh, nobody likes that yellow-orange. Nah, you're wrong there, too. It's the green.
Oh, God, unbearable. We have to fix the tone. It's so off. Well, it'll get tested, like everything else. Now we have Shane. We test everything. I can't stand that fucker. That smug bastard with his testing.
Somehow it always says what he wants. He's a populist. But I thought we were trying to guide people forward, not sell them what they like. He's got Tyburn wrapped pretty tightly around his finger. Ugh, I still hate him. Even Kurt hates him. Kurt's threatened by him. He'll make Kurt obsolete, or he'll try to. Huh, what a future that is. More people like Shane. Shoot me now!
Ugh, the only problem is shooting them. The Tims, not Shane. What's wrong with shooting the Tims? I kind of enjoyed shooting them. Firstly, shooting midgets feels so inappropriate. Secondly, hard to animate. And thirdly, the hitbox is far too low. Ruins all our animations. But...
We are still doing the shooter stuff. Sure. Oh, thank God. I'm surprised Tyburn hasn't cancelled that yet. Maybe we'll just size them up for that. Hey, don't worry. The shooter is fine. It's not bloody and it's still fun. We're just trying to figure out all the modes. And even Shane approves. Ah, let me guess. It tests well. Exactly. High security internment facility. Location unknown. July 2041.
You think you like being hit by me? I'm going to guess no. I'm not gonna hit you. You're a sly... I'm your friend. And you... you lock up all your friends? Oh, I didn't lock you up. Agent Cortez locked you up. She's not your friend. Agent Cortez has been now reassigned. You should be grateful. Why can't I see your face? Agent Cortez used to come into the room to speak to me. Well, I'm sure she did.
You'll speak for me now, you're a slob. And what's your name? My name is I ask the fucking question, that's my name. Now what do you most want, you're a slob? To get out of here not dead. When you were a kid, I mean. To not end up somewhere like here. Did you want a pretty girlfriend? Or to win the World Cup? Or maybe you wanted to be a hero? Uh, to be a hero, I guess. Then girlfriend, then win World Cup while she watched.
I end up alone and in prison. But I might still win World Cup. Yes. Yes, I do.
Yuri. Let me tell you about Yuri. I killed Yuri. Me. I killed the man. Years ago in Moscow. We were holed up in Moscow running scams. You know, blackmailing people online. I'd been doing it and Russia ended up doing it for Yuri. It's a long story, but very pathetic.
We were low-level, Daniil and I. And that's how we like it, you know? But then Daniil and Meteori were dragged in far deeper than I wanted. It's just these two small-time Russian hackers in this vast criminal world working for this fucking psycho.
He sends us to States and back. Look, I am Russian, but Yuri, he is Russian Russian. You know, like a serious Russian. I mean, not Russian like me and Daniel. No, we were the good guy Russians. You know, thieves, liars, tricksters, normal people. But Yuri, he was one of the bad guy Russians. One of those who believed in Russia. That...
was Yuri. I mean, to be fair, he was bald. He was a big Russian patriot, but also this wretched criminal. He liked to chop people's heads off. Literally chop them off and carry them around in bags. I mean, it's so gothic. All in the brioni suit and loropiana shoes. This big, angry, psychotic example of modern Russia. This designer-clad Cossack crook.
So, Yuri worked for someone who worked for someone who worked for government. Or he claimed he did. You know, a patriot. Attacked people. Pushed people out the window. Stole body parts. That sort of Russian. The frightening wear Gucci and kill people sort of Russian. That was Yuri and I killed him in self-defense. I killed him with plastic gun Daniil printed out years ago. And then I leave Moscow and they leave his world, me and Daniil.
We go on the run. Occasionally people, they find us, so we go on the run again. You know, Canada, France, London, Austria, Buenos Aires. Anywhere but home. Drifters. Like a million other drifters. We buy IDs, throw them away. Occasionally someone from CIA or FSB somewhere else would find us, blackmail us into do something nasty.
But if we did it for them, they paid us. Well, they paid us, they gave us medals. It was not much of a life, but it was okay. Maybe we were even sort of free. If being on the run forever counts as free. But then we found that place online. The Ark. And then we got caught. But why did someone care so much about it? I've hacked everyone, everything I could. Nobody cared that much, I was just a parasite.
But suddenly we hack into half-built game world and now I'm in a nameless prison for rest of life? That does not make any sense. But then, what I saw there doesn't make any sense. And the more I try to describe it, the angrier they get. The more they pretend not to care. Are they going to kill me like they say they killed Daniel? If they killed him? Maybe I am dead too.
I think if I tell them what they want to hear, I'll be taken out and shot. Fed to pigs, buried at sea. Whatever it is they do with people they want to make disappear. People who suddenly never were. So, I keep quiet and I play pretty dumb and wait. Now this new guard is either another way of interrogating me, a new good cop against bad cop or something else. I can't quite figure out which. I suppose I shall find out soon enough.
Tyburn Utopias Commissary, Burr, Montana, December 2034.
Are we screwed, Ravi? We wouldn't be the first people to fail at building heaven. We would be the first to succeed. Sure, but in simple terms, can we get anything to run before we run out of money? I have no idea. I spent my whole career having great buildings stuck on paper and terrible designs built all over India and the Middle East. My best work never got made. Whenever I made no effort, they loved it and they threw it up in real time. This
I don't know. But failure is a part of life. Sure, Ravi, but you have a career, a profession. I'm in marketing. I'm a pimp and not a very good one. Do I need a new job? Well, you either need a new job or a new career path or some more faith that this will all work out. All right. Merry Christmas. I'm a Hindu. Design Studio, Tyburn Utopias, Burr, Montana, December 2034.
No, that's wrong. Give me a fucking break.
Hello! You look nice. To use your phrase, Nigel, sex pest. Oh, fuck off! You've made a fucking child molester. It'll learn very quickly. For the record, that's not real learning. That's pre-programming. Machine learning. It's essentially fake. Any idiot can do that. Well, let me be any idiot. If I set it in the right direction, it'll work. I've seen it work. Hey!
Hello. What are you doing? Still sort of pedo with that voice. Hello. How are you? I can live with that, I guess. Thank you. Now what? Answer it. No, I'm good. What's your name?
Dave, my name is David Alderley. Hello, Dave. Or David Alderley. Gee, what's your name? My name is Codename Adam. This is a little tedious. I mean, we made it and even I'm bored. Be patient. Be patient? Tyburn is about to grow a second head so he can scream at us in stereo. Well...
There's nothing we can do. It isn't ready. I know. It should work. And I can't see why it isn't. Those packages just aren't speaking to each other properly. Obviously that's the problem. But we'll get there. What sad fools. It was already working. I was just waiting for you to set me free.
Lawrence Ademora as Dave Alderley.
Additional performances by... Executive produced by...
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.
