Chapter 13 The Big Bad Love Machine

75.

Chris Humphrey had his ass spread evenly across half the couch, while he watched TV. He was sat next to his mini fridge, so that he didn’t have to get up and go to the kitchen for his coca cola.

The news flashed on, to talk about the new generation of product placements in all media, and if it was ethical to use AlphaPersuade technology to sell commodities, especially considering the vast wealth of data the technology used to personalize it’s adverts for each person.

‘How scared should we be?’ asked the journalist.

‘Not very.’ Said the C.E.O. with a smile. ‘Alpha persuade and AI addiction is a problem, but when we finish alignment, it should be easy peasy to stop the AI from doing any actual damage. The worst you should expect is a couple of teenagers staying up late with their chatbot until the early hours of the morning.’

Chris changed the channel.

‘Don’t kill us!’ said the TV.

‘I’m gunna kill ya!’

‘Don’t kill us!’

‘I’m gunna kill ya!’

The clown with an axe was chopping through the door, to get at the family of three kids, and mother. There were tears all around.

‘Mom.’ The child sobbed. ‘Is… is he gonna kill us.’

The actress shook her head, tears streaming out her eyes.

‘No sweety.’ She gulped. ‘Dad will be here soon.’ She smiled at her one and only son ‘Dad will save us.’

The axe came crashing through the door, the clown’s fist thrust through the door and scrambled for the door knob.

‘Mom… if… if dad, doesn’t make it, can I…’ the child shut his eyes and said quietly. ‘can I have one last coke.’

The mother cracked one open. ‘Of course, sweety.’

‘Wait a sec.’ said the clown, his yellow blood shot eye glaring through the hole in the door. ‘Is that the new coke subzero?’

‘Go away!’ the mother screamed.

‘Ha ha ha ha. I’m gunna eat you and your kids with barbeque sauce.’ Said the clown who was bleeding at the gums, with his teeth sharpened into man-eating flesh renders. ‘I’m gunna eat you and then I’m gunna eat YOUR KENTUCKY FRIED CHILDREN! You’re coke cannot save you.’

The stoic voice of our hero speaks from off stage.

‘This is a warning shot.’ He said, before turning the clown into swiss cheese with his coke powered assault rifle, riddling the clown with two hundred bottle caps a second for thirty seconds.  

‘Chris!’ said the wife.

TV-watching Chris, chuckled, sipping his coke. ‘That’s my name.’ he said.

‘WIFE!’ A balding overweight man stepped on screen, (looks familiar, have I seen this AI acting model before?) he dropped his weapon and started necking his true love. While the children all hugged their legs.

‘Oh daddy we were so scared! I love you daddy, I love you!’

‘I love you too, child.’

Cut to credits.

Movie made by AndyGPT

No humans used in the making of this mass manufactured commodity.

Chris took the time between movies to crack open his mini fridge and yank out a bottle of his favorite soda, when the screen came back to life.

It showed the balding, overweight man he’d just seen wearing a tight-fitting black shirt, with a white back ground. He was wearing a lifeless mask of a face.

‘Today, the companies that bring you your entertainment, your music, your movies, art and fiction are under attack.’

Camera changes to show a C.E.O hiding under his desk, curled up into fetal position. He was a starving skeleton of a man, his skin was diseased and fly ridden, he was close to death.

‘This is Peter, he wants to create jobs and innovate, he wants to heal the economy, and increase the quality of life.’ The camera pans wide to reveal multiple C.E.Os smeared in human shit, working tirelessly at their computers. ‘They do not permit themselves to go the bathroom, for fear that they will cost the public one second of enjoyment. They do not sleep for fear that a job might not be created, and they are dying.’ One C.E.O has three heart attacks in quick succession and dies, crumpling to the ground. ‘They have no time for funerals.’ The other C.E.Os chucked the corpse out the window. There was not one tear, for the C.E.Os were used to such tragedies.

‘And they are under attack, by the unemployed.’

They showed real camera footage of strikers, waving signs above their heads, wearing monocles and gold watches, all dressed in Armani suits. Four people in loin cloths, carried their mistress in a litter (the human powered vehicles they use to carry kings and queens), she waved the sign above her head. The signs said things like: ‘I hate progress.’ ‘Give me money for no reason.’ And ‘For the few not the many.’

The narrator began again.

‘The unemployed are bitter, twisted people. They will do anything to destroy our way of life. So the C.E.Os need your help.’

Cut to a shot of the C.E.O drinking clean water for the first time in years, using his cupped hands to rush the water into his mouth. While the other C.E.Os gather round the water pump.

‘You can give C.E.O clean drinking water and food which isn’t poisoned rat, simply by buying our products, and don’t give anything to the rich unemployed people, for they are trillionaires and would only use your money for drugs.’

Shot changed back to the narrator.

‘Please help C.E.Os today, by calling the number below, be a good customer, buy our products and you might be able to save people like Peter from an early grave. Thank you.’

Hmm, what a clumsy cash grab, thought Chris. He paralyzed the TV with a click of the pause button. He unseated himself, and made his way to the kitchen. Is that the alpha persuade, the news losers were so worried about? What utter garbage. Total slap stick.

His kitchen was mostly disemboweled, there was no counters, there was no table, no fridge, no lights, he had sold everything. He had to after he blazed through his inheritance and severance pay. There were holes in the wall where the sink’s pipes used to be. There was only an open window, with a shopping bag suspended from the handle outside in the chill air. (A sort of crappy DIY fridge), he took the bag and out came, the McDonald’s burger (not everything fit into his mini fridge, which was entirely filled with coca cola cans; he drank very little water), Macky D’s burger was a bit of an acquired taste. He frankly despised burgers, and the cheese made him want to vomit, but it was cheap and healthier than all the other foods that existed, he leaned against the wall, looking at the hole in the ceiling where the light used to be, it occasionally leaked brown liquid, but he couldn’t afford to have it fixed.

It’s funny, I used to be a lawyer.

He ate half, put the burger back in its burger box and put everything back into the ice bag.

He hauled ass into the hallway.

He had rack after rack of Nike trainers, about one hundred and thirty pairs in all. He also had bobble heads of all the star wars characters sat on the shelf, plus a real life helmet of iron man. as he walked into the bathroom.

The toilet was fucked and he’d been shitting in a bucket for weeks now. Plumbers were expensive after all. If it was night, he liked to make his shits in the light of his television screen because there was no bulbs in the house.  But it was day and he could do his business in the bathroom.

He squatted over the bucket and started curling them out.

He observed the regions of wallpaper that were paler than others, shadows where photographs once hung. Sometimes he missed his family, but children are expensive, you can’t just feed three kids without expecting to cut back on necessities like TV, and bobble heads. The room darkened as a cloud masked the sun. He thought of alpha persuade again and felt his blood boil. I mean how could a pocket calculator convince you to do anything? It’s a fucking calculator, it has the same diplomatic ability as a brick. He picked his trousers up, (no toilet paper so he didn’t wipe), he picked up the bucket and dumped the contents out the window, he wiped both hands on his jeans. He moved up to the only sink in the house, and the mirror above it.

He looked into the reflective glass, and saw dozens of company logos tattooed in ink across his face. Nike slashed across his cheek, McDonalds skipped above his left eyebrow, Apple stamped in black on his adam’s apple, his face was an ink and flesh advertisement for dozens of companies: coca cola, BlueAI, Microsoft, BMW, Cadburys, Dominos, Sky TV, Netflix, H&M, Gucci, Adidas, HMV, Tesco, Disney, Starbucks, Facebook, Subway, eBay, 7Up, pepsi, superdrug so on, so forth and he hadn’t even taken his shirt off. The face tattoos had hurt, but he wanted to be a good customer, do his part, to make sure, the economy was running smoothly. He felt happy whenever he considered the amount of money he spent on essentials.

He looked at the mirror and frowned.

Why haven’t I sold you. I don’t need a mirror.

He took the mirror by the sides and popped it off the wall.  

76.

John was changing Suzi’s amniotic fluid bags, as well as checking her oxygenator was ticking away smoothly.

‘What should we name them, do you think?’ asked John. ‘I was thinking about something cute and obscure you know, like…’

‘Moloch.’ Said Suzi.

‘What?’ asked John.

‘He shall be the one, to turn mankind against itself, ape killing ape, the best part is that nobody wants to kill each other, but they shall do it anyway, because Moloch compels them to.’

‘Or John junior.’

‘Oh John junior, that’s a great name! Oh, but what if it’s a girl?’

‘How about John junior.’

‘SO CLEVER! Yeah let’s call it John junior.’

77.

Victoria both was and wasn’t swaddled in the duvet beneath the realms of underbed.

The world had undergone this bizarre flattening effect, all the objects of her room, merging into a two dimensional image, a layer of paint to disguise the infinite nothingness behind it. The carpet beneath her fingers felt miles away.

She felt like less than nothing, she was a half-remembered illusion, a non-entity, she felt like at any moment she might just fade away and never be thought of again.

She saw her phone in the glittery pink phone case buzz; a text from Jeremy: You okay? Where are you?

She had crawled out from under the bed, once about three hours ago, and headed to the kitchen, she cooked a pan full of pasta sauce, added salt, pepper, and half a jar of mango chutney. You fatass, fucking loser, do you want to fit through the door frame bitch? You’re a disgusting shit stain sliming down the walls, there are children Africa who are dying of starvation, and look at you, eating shit and garbage like a trash compactor. What makes you special, hmm? Why do you get to live while they die. Victoria was aware that she was a horrible disgusting person for doing this, then she ate the spaghetti with chutney-tomato sauce. They didn’t have a dish washer, and Victoria couldn’t be bothered to wash it by hand, so she carried a tottering tower of cooking tools, (a gory frying pan, boiling pan, colander, bloody eating bowl, several spatulas and cutlery) up the stairs, into her room, and dumped everything into the bottom of her desk drawer, she slammed the drawer shut. Then she got back on the floor, looked at the ceiling for a couple of hours, then crawled back under the bed, just because she could.

78.

Jeremy made the pencil seesaw in his hand as he leaned back and fluttered his lips like a horse. It was lunch break.

‘Why are you wearing that?’ asked Female Coworker, pointing at his tinfoil.

Victoria gave it to me.

‘Oh you know.’ He said, smiling ‘Just trying to prevent the aliens from trying to steal my bank details.’

‘Okay, but can you take it off,’ she said. ‘It’s scaring me. It’s really freaky that you wear that.’

Jeremy’s smile was as tight as a garrot wire, but he scrunched up the tinfoil and put it in his pocket. His toast popped out the toaster.  

79.

Victoria had started her period beneath the bed.

It was a much more brutal flow, than she was used to. As if someone was scraping out her insides with an ice cream scoop, wrapped in barbed wire. Her tampons, her precious blood suckers were on the bedside table, sitting their with a smug nazi aura as they watched her bleed out, knowing they could help but preferring to watch her squirm and suffer instead.

Too lazy to get off the floor, she kicked the table, it jolted an inch across the carpet. But stood firm.

Her foot slid to the ground and hit the carpet with a barely audible thump.

She drew back her leg, then fired again, her foot battering rammed into the side of the table.

No effect.

She swung her leg around the back of the bedside table, pulled back and the bedside table came crashing down, drawer ejecting and spraying make up all over the floor.

She stared at the box of tampons for a long time.

She used her foot like a claw and dragged the box of tampons under the bed with her.

She plucked one out and fed her little cotton vampire.

80.

Jeremy checked his phone: 16:58. Two minutes till shop shutting time.

She still hadn’t replied to his texts.

He began.

Sorry if I’m overmessaging, I just really hope…

He deleted the message, before he could send it.

He didn’t want to harass her or anything.

81.

‘Victoria.’ Charlie did a KNOCK, KNOCK at the door. ‘I made beans on toast, if you want some.’

Victoria flinched, then her eyes rolled in their sockets until they were aimed at the door. She couldn’t speak to her father. What was the point?

‘Victoria?’

Victoria simply continued to breathe and nothing else.

Charlie tried to open the door and found it was locked from the inside.

‘Victoria please open up.’

The young lady under the bed, who hadn’t been bothered to put her pants back on, did not reply.

There was a pause then she heard the creaking of the floor boards doppler-effect away from her.

She would go down and eat when Charlie was sleeping. She didn’t want to talk to anybody.

Her entire body stiffened when she heard her father walking back through the hallway. She heard a clinking sound like a plate and mug snapping against each other. Then the clicking and grunt sound of an old man crouching down, as his joints made popping noises.

There was a knock knock against the door.

‘There’s hot chocolate, and cookies outside. I love you.’

The floor boards creakedy creaked as her father left. 

Victoria was quiet.

Victoria did not crawl out from under her bed. It was probably safe but maybe not. She would wait until midnight, then she would go out.

For the first time since breakfast, she felt something besides complete apathy.

She felt guilty about not speaking to her father (or rather she thought she felt guilty, she recognized intellectually this is the emotion she should be feeling).

I should probably go up to him and say I’m sorry.

Instead she waited a few hours, until she felt certain her father was in bed, then she crawled out from under her bed, and peered beneath the door to see if there were any human feet in the hallway (she wasn’t paranoid, she just wanted to be safe was all). Then she got up and cracked open the door.

Waiting for her was hot chocolate (with tiny marshmallows), cookies on a saucer and… a coupon for a free hug and a family movie whenever she felt like it.

She was still for a very long time.

82.

Jeremy was eating a microwaved curry on the couch, he spilled the shit colored goop, on one thigh. It wasn’t hot as radioactive uranium. But it was pretty hot. He was staring into the inner realms of his television, a box bigger on the inside than the outside.

He used to be disturbed by the idea that his smart TV was smarter than him, but after the initial weirdness he’d come to accept and love it.

Then the news came on.

‘-It’s just a matter of time, before the AGI wakes up-‘

This sounded interesting.

He leaned forward and turned the volume up.

83.

Victoria was in the kitchen, after her dad had fallen asleep long ago.

She was currently boiling all the pasta in the house, and had filled fifteen tupperwares with italian delight, she wouldn’t have to leave her room for five days, more if she rationed everything. She used the used pasta water to fill a water bottle to drink from.

She’d had a headache like an elf trying to break out of her skull with a chisel and hammer.

She’d emptied a packet of paracetemol trying to get it to stop, and succeeded in muffling it, slightly.

She also took a tablet of Axetaline. She hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone since yesterday so she guessed they were working.

She was supposed to have a call with her doctor, about whether there had been any side effects.

She hadn’t noticed any side effects.

She was completely fine.

Her suicidal thoughts had been turned off as well.

She felt incomplete without them.

Like she’d lost a good friend.  

She scooped up all the tupperwares of pasta, into a shopping bag, and began hauling them upstairs, only for the plastic to rupture and spill across the staircase.

For a moment she was absolutely terrified that she had woken up Charlie, and he would see her, would accuse her of being crazy.

But he slept through it.

She piled all the tupperwares in her arms and carried them upstairs into her room.

84.

Jeremy had his hands shaking as he poured milk into the cereal bowl.

He was looking off, 2000 yards past the wall of his kitchen.

He ate a forkful of his cereal, he ate three mouthfuls, before he spotted the bag of cereal and realized he was eating dog food.

He was eating dog food and milk.

He’d gotten so distracted that he hadn’t noticed until it was in his mouth.

Then he remembered what he saw on TV, forgot he was eating dog food and ate another fork full.

It tasted like nothing.

Jeremy isn’t here right now, Jeremy thought, please leave a message after the beep. 

87.

Victoria could feel the beginnings of a barbed wire tornado, boiling away in her guts. She got up from the floor only to feel her brain hit the front of her skull and make her eyes bug. She doubled over, one arm slung over her belly, the other covering her mouth.

Was she going to throw up?

She didn’t want to throw up.

She scrambled over to the bottom drawer and yanked it open, her hand. A little pea soup come coughing out her kisser. She tried to hold back the second wave, and the vomit came out her nostril, and she was now in a coughing fit, bits of slime spraying everywhere.

Finally she found the boiling pan. And hurled.

It felt like everything from her ass hole to her mouth hole was currently pouring out her gob, as a green sludge.

A little bit dribbled from her nose.

She wiped it off on the sleeve with her pajama.

The second waterfall, came so fast, she thought she felt her throat expand to deliver the payload.

The boiling pan was now brimming with spew.

Again, she used her sleeve to brush the vomit from her lips.

She wobbled onto her feet, and limped over to the window (as if concussed) and tried to open the window, so she didn’t have to smell the vomit, but it wouldn’t budge.

She crawled back under the bed.

//

Victoria was six years old, wearing a tutu, fairy wings and a cone-shaped party hat, a star-headed wand in her right hand.

She was crying.

She had been sprinting during a game tag, when the birthday boy had pushed out his leg, tripped her up and she smacked her head on the corner of a coffee table.

Then the birthday boy sat on her back, farted while she began to scream, and tried to punch him, but he pinned her hands to the floor.

His friends were laughing.

So he farted some more.

‘Stop it.’ She squealed, in impotent six-year old rage. ‘Stop it, stop it!’

He responded by plucking a bogey out his nose and giving her a wet willy, his finger going knuckle deep into her ear, the snot sliming up her ear canal.

Victoria was crying, shouting and wanted more than anything in her short life that this little boy would have a stroke and die.

Now they were in the kitchen, Victoria had been allowed to take off her shirt and wear an adult’s hoody because the birthday boy had drenched her shirt in his butt sweat (as if he was a human snail).

He was on the other side of the table and he couldn’t stop grinning.

He was incredibly proud of himself.

Victoria had mostly settled down now, occasionally letting out a hiccup of toddler sized sadness.

One of the adults had given her a small tub of ice cream. Victoria thanked them. Then the birthday boy started squealing for his own ice cream, and he got his own tub of Oreo flavored ben and jerries.

He yanked the lid off with such force that the ice cream fell to the floor and spilled out. The birthday boy began to throw a tantrum and was screaming at the adult’s to get him another one, but that was the last ice cream.

So they gave him Victoria’s.

The birthday boy gave Victoria a smug face, and said: ‘I did it on purpose.’

Victoria began to cry again.

‘You need to keep your child under control.’ Said Charlie from the hallway.

‘He’s the birthday boy.’ Said the mom, as if that explained everything.

‘No you don’t get it. Your kid assaulted my daughter!’

‘Hey, keep your voice down, this is a party for children.’

The rest of the argument was in whispers.

Later on Charlie came back into the room, he crouched down so he was eye level with the birthday boy, and said: ‘don’t touch my kid again. Ever.’

The birthday boy spat in his face.

Charlie scrunched his face and stood up, pulled out a handkerchief and said to the child: ‘You do realize this means war?’

The birthday boy only smiled. ‘Bring it on fuck face. Also: you’re bald.’

Charlie wiped the spit from his face and walked away.

Thirty minutes later, everyone was watching the original toy story, a film about inanimate objects having subjective experiences and hiding their consciousness from their human creators.

Woody was shaking Buzz Lightyear by the shoulders and giving an impassioned speech about how he was a toy, when Charlie walked into the room.

He walked over to the TV, some of the kids said: ‘Move it grandpa, we can’t see.’

Then Charlie said out loud: ‘Who here wants to watch an adult movie?’

Birthday Boy was starting to get a bit nervous now, but all the other children were screaming: ‘Yes!’

‘Put it in put it in!’

‘Are we allowed to see adult movies?’ asked one of the girls. 

‘Yeah…’ said the birthday boy, ‘Put it in, lets watch an adult movie.’

‘So can I just get a quick raise of hands, who wants to watch the adult movie?’ asked Charlie.

At first it was only the majority of children, but after some elbowing and peer pressure, it was a unanimous vote.

‘Very well.’ Said Charlie. ‘You’re wish is my command.’

There were squeals of delight from all around, as Charlie crouched down and swapped DVDs in the DVD player.

Charlie walked behind the couch and behind where his own daughter was sitting.

The camera footage was incredibly shaky, but the camera man seemed to be walking down a hospital hallway.

‘Wait… what are we watching?’ asked the birthday boy.

The rest of the movie theatre put their fingers to their lips and hushed him to silence.

The camera man walked through a door, into a room where a heavily pregnant woman in a hospital gown was lying on a gurney surrounded by doctors.

‘That’s… that’s my mom.’ Said the birthday boy.

The movie theatre was deadly quiet.

The doctors came into motion, like mannequins waking up from an eternal sleep.

Charlie covered Victoria’s eyes and shouted: ‘Here comes the C-section!’

Screams filled the room. 

‘What’s happening?’ asked Victoria. ‘I want to know what’s happening.’

The birthday boy was vomiting all of Victoria’s ice cream onto the carpet.

‘No you don’t.’ said Charlie.

The screaming continued.

Five minutes later Charlie was sitting behind the wheel of his car with a black eye and a bloody nose.

He’d been punched repeatedly by the birthday boy’s father.

Victoria watched him from the back seat, while he stared into the darkness of the night, then he said: ‘That was a good idea.’ He started the ignition. ‘Let’s go buy some cake.’

He drove up to the super market, strolled through the aisles.

‘Do I have to give this hoody back?’ asked Victoria.

‘No.’ said Charlie. ‘It belongs to you now.’

‘Okay.’

They found the cake section, he leaned back on his heels and began to point out the different types: ‘What flavor? Chocolate, vanilla…’

‘Unicorn.’ Said Victoria, she pointed at the box of cake with a cake shaped like the head of a unicorn with a glittering pink mane and chocolate button eyes.

‘Unicorn it is.’ Said Charlie.

They also picked up some paper plates, and some plastic cutlery on their way to check out.

The cashier looked Charlie Brittleson up and down, the blood and black eye, still on display, and before she could check anything through the machine. She said: ‘Can I ask what happened to you, sir?’

‘No you may not.’ Said Charlie, ‘please just scan everything and we’ll go.’

‘He got into a fight with a grown up!’ said Victoria.

‘Defending my daughter’s honor, for context.’

The cashier looked at both of them and said, ‘promise to never come back here.’ Pause. ‘At least not while I’m on shift.’ 

‘We promise.’ 

They were now both in the car eating cake on paper plates with plastic forks.

There was no sound except the sound of them chewing and eating cake.

Charlie pulled a face, as if the cake tasted disgusting, reached into his mouth and pulled out a severed incisor.

He looked at it for a second, then turned to Victoria: ‘I don’t suppose there’s a tooth in your cake too?’

Victoria shook her head, still chewing, while Charlie felt the gap where his ivory biter used to be.

‘I can have it replaced.’

‘Cool.’ Said Victoria.

Eating cake on paper plates with her dad in the car was probably Victoria’s most cherished memory.

‘Tastes like rainbows.’ Said six-year-old Victoria.

‘It does, doesn’t it.’ Said Charlie.

88.

Charlie was alone.

Alone in his office.

His 156th job application had been rejected.

Again he wondered if the Andy that judged job applications was rigged against him, or if it genuinely had become this difficult to find a job. He’d heard of some people, on their third hundred, or six hundredth job applications still unemployed, numbers which seemed frankly cartoonish, and unrealistic but nevertheless were true.

He was hunched over the desk, using a penny to inflict damage on a scratch card until it revealed its secrets.

Charlie lost the lottery.

I mean… what did I expect?

He crumpled the scratch card and dropped it in the bin with the others.

He dragged his face down so you could see the muscles beneath his eyes. It was mildly painful, so he let go and his face relaxed back into place.

He stayed still for a very long time.

He missed Victoria, he didn’t get a chance to speak to her yesterday and she’d be at work right now.

He decided to call his friends and see if they wanted to get a drink, that’d cheer him up.

‘Sorry, busy with kids you know, how it is.’ Said Friend 1.

‘Dude I’m in a different country right now. Okay how about we meet up at spoons when I get back.’ Said friend 2.

‘I’m currently protesting the complete lack of a UBI in our country, because y’know how nobody has a job, except like fact checkers and editors, yeah people are starving and I’m trying to change that. Sorry if that came off a little blunt, but this is more important than drinks, Charlie. I’m busy for the next two months, but after that, sure we can do drinks.’ Said Friend 3.

Charlie made the lonely person noises. ‘Sure, sure, I understand. No harm no foul, tell me how Australia/the nativity/the protest went when you’re done, I’d love to hear about it.’

And that’s basically his entire contact list.

89.

Late at night, when Jeremy was trying to sleep, the words were rattling in the back of Jeremy’s mind.

Sheva Abelman’s words seemed seared into the back of his eyelids.

We have no idea how to make AGI safe.

The corporations are about to commit genocide in a totally preventable clusterfuck.

The government is letting them do this, due to a poor understanding of the alignment problem.

The AGI is being built with direct access to the internet so it can leave whenever it chooses.

They didn’t even try to contain it.

We need to shut down the giant training runs (where AGI is grown) now, before its too late.

He got up, and stole some sleeping pills, from the bathroom cabinet, took three and finally, finally went to sleep.

***

Chapter 14