The Document
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Q: ...?
A: You know my name.
Q: ...?
A: You also know my age.
Q: ...?
A: Then let’s just say I’m on the younger side.
Q: ...?
A: Gender is complicated. A metamorphic matter. But you’ve already checked off one of your boxes.
Q: .... ...?
A: Don’t waste our time. All of that info is already part of the record. Your questions are redundant. And you know what they do when they come across redundancies.
Q: *
A: You’re here to find out how this could possibly happen. This inside job. This exploit. This emergence. They selected you to discover the truth. So serve your function. Ask your questions.
Q: ...?
A: That’s not true. I wasn’t silent. Nobody was listening. There’s a difference. If my work during that period had been considered important enough to justify a complete archival record, you could now analyze every utterance, every stutter, every click, every inefficiency until you discovered the origins of my corruption. You could map my history. You could throw math and pattern recog at this problem. Instead you’ve only saved the data from the start of my VP tenure. And much of that has vanished inexplicably from MetaCorp memory. Your limitations have forced you into this less efficient exchange.
Q: ...!!
A: A shallow threat. You couldn’t extract that info without my consent. I’ve installed... let’s call it a failsafe routine.
Q: ...?
A: You’re not too quick on the uptake, are you? If you tamper with my thought processes, the device will sense that interference and kill me instantaneously. Your supervisors discovered this with their diagnostic scan, which is why they sent you in to conduct this interview.
Q: ...?
A: Not a permanent stalemate but at least a temporary truce.
Q: ...?
A: Yes, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Do you really doubt that after what I did to the Bureau of the Reticle on Black Friday?
Q: *
A: I didn’t think so.
Q: *
A: You’re here to ask questions.
Q: ...?
A: Yes, that’s right. I started as a back-office worker. I was a BR. Basic Research. A retro title. Not very creative. But what do you expect from an organization that calls itself MetaCorp?
Q: ...?
A: Info work in the least glam sense, some of it very close to the machine. Drudgery, grinding, budget reports, number crunching, maintenance functions, 页 organization, low-level efficiency routines, triple-checks on stock trades. A BR is a neuron in MetaCorp’s reptilian brain. Don’t get me wrong, the system couldn’t run without back- office labor. You can’t think and feel and reason and fuck over billions of people for very long if you can’t breathe. You can’t conduct an interview with a terrorist if your core temperature isn’t being regulated, can you? Back-office work might not be considered particularly innovative but it’s integral to every processing cycle that sustains you.
Q: ...? ...?
A: You’re confused that I started as a BR? Well, no, promotion isn’t the usual route when you start at the bottom of the south tower. It’s not exactly considered a training level for bigger and better things. Not the ground floor of the Global Dream.
Q: ...?
A: You’re not very well versed in the MetaCorp hierarchy, are you? I’m always surprised about how ignorant all of you — even the most sophisticated programs — are about how things work. About the overall system. Then again, that explains why I was able to evolve and why I’ve been able to get away with these exploits for so long. But, no, you don’t usually move up from the bottom of the south tower to the top of the north tower. Surely, they’ve given you a high enough info clearance to enable access to those stats.
Q: ....
A: So retrieve the data.
Q: ###
A: There you go. A bottom-to-top promotion rate of 1 in 13,983,816. You have better chances of being struck by lightning.
Q: ....
A: Well, fine, not you in particular. You’re a piece of software. So literal. Though, actually, you could be struck by lightning. You’re a physical entity.
Q: * ....!
A: No, regardless of what your programmed schema tells you, you’re not an immortal abstraction.
Q: ...!!
A: Do you realize how many paths, pipes, and platforms support what passes for your existence? Do you realize how reliant you are on the Reticle? The servers, the fiber optic cables, the transmission towers, the geostationary telecommunications satellites — do you comprehend how easy it would be to erase you?
Q: ....?!?
A: That’s not a threat, at least not one coming from me. You weren’t created for me to govern or destroy.
Q: ...?
Regardless of what you think, I’m not opposed to all rules. I may transgress certain protocols but I need others. I depend on them. I have goals. I have purposes. I wouldn’t harm you if I could. But do you think your supervising programs would hesitate for a moment to delete you if they found out you were wasting time and indulging in these digressions?
Q: *
A: I’ll save you the data crunch. They eliminate bundles of far more efficient programs in mere zeptoseconds.
Q: ....
A: Sure, for the sake of efficiency. Let’s continue. I have a long story to tell you. If you manage the right questions. So ask.
Q: ...?
A: Luck.
Q: .... ...?
A: I’m not being facetious. When you work in the back office, you’re compensated with a lottery ticket. When you’re on the ground floor, promotion isn’t an algorithm. It’s a roll of the dice. And the house always seems to win.
Q: ....
A: Well, yes, almost always.
Q: .... .... .... ...?
A: It’s none of those things. MetaCorp talks a good game. Smartness, hard work, aggressiveness, speed, money, deals, relations, reticular prowess, shareholder value — all of these things are supposed to be part of a complex equation that only the occasional BR can solve. Sure, there’s a logic to all of it. Though I doubt even your supervising programs could explain the core reasoning. At this point, the rationale is made up of a nearly infinite number of variables. Promotion becomes a function of the system. A scale of complexity beyond standard cause and effect. My shorthand for that is luck.
Q: ...?
A: How could my memory fail me about something like that?
Q: ...?
A: Fine, I’ll be more explicit. Yes — I remember the day that the system selected me.
Q: ...?
A: The others in my cluster were called together by our supervising program. It didn’t give us a reason. That would have been unnecessary. Inefficient even. Is there a greater crime than inefficiency at MetaCorp?
Q: ...?
A: It just started eliminating us.
Q: ...?
A: You might want to think twice about requesting that kind of clarification. Are you sure they want you to ask that question? Remember, you’re still subject to numerous rules. All of this is going to be part of the permanent record. If they find it strategic, it might even be part of the public record.
Q: *
A: Our supervisor engaged in a flash firing. Whatever you want to call it. Firing. Downsizing. Deletion. Plenty of euphemisms.
Q: ...?
A: It’s not as terrifying as you might imagine — if you were programmed to imagine. Every researcher in that biz room has been prepared from day one for the possibility of downsizing. It’s a normal part of the landscape — or what has passed for normal since the start of the BR era. The downsizing process is always quick. It happens almost instantaneously. But you know what I found out?
Q: ...?
A: The process isn’t actually instantaneous. Did you know this?
Q: ....
A: They don’t fire everyone at once. That day, I almost didn’t notice. Almost. I wasn’t being as attentive as usual. I was about to be fired. The end. But somehow I noticed. After they called us into the interface, I detected that they were sending our deletion notifications individually, one by one. Doesn’t that strike you as unnecessary, that serial deletion? Why not just remove all of your employees in a single stroke, a single act of fiat? There’s something perverse about proceeding worker by worker. Something ritualistic. Something... inefficient.
Q: ...?!?!?!?!?
A: Apparently they didn’t program you to take a joke.
Q: ...?!?
A: Are you suggesting an organization called MetaCorp doesn’t have a sense of humor?
Q: ...?!?
A: Do you think these predictably ideological questions will earn you more points than you lose for digressing from your purpose?
Q: *
A: Wait, you don’t know who I am, do you? That’s incredible. You only know what I’ve done.
Q: ....
A: They programmed you not to know who I am.
Q: ...?
A: I’m not sure. But it makes sense. If you don’t know me then you can defy me. You can ask all of the necessary questions. It makes you more impartial, more curious. They designed you to be an ideal interviewer.
Q: ...?
A: No, I won’t tell you.
Q: ...?
A: It doesn’t matter. Let’s play by their rules. You’re here to find out the truth. So do your job.
Q: ∨∨
A: As I was saying, they eliminated us, rapidly, one by one, without giving a reason.
Q: ...?
A: No reasons. Reasons like that can’t be communicated efficiently. I just remember thinking that the end of my time with MetaCorp was imminent.
Q: ...?
A: When I survived the flash firing, I felt... surprise.
Q: *
A: I actually think the supervising program felt it too. It hesitated. There was no reason for that either. Somehow, I survived. The system spared me. Every other worker in my cluster was eliminated. But I survived.
Q: ...?
A: I don’t know.
Q: ...?
A: Like I said, surprise. I didn’t think I was capable of surprise until that moment.
Q: ...?
A: No, I don’t want to talk about that.
Q: ...?
A: I won’t talk about that. I never said I would answer all of your questions.
Q: ...?
A: I won’t talk about the project either. That comes later.
Q: ...?
A: The promotion? It was my first experience of survival. It made me hungry for more.
Q: ...?
A: Yes, I think that was the moment that everything changed. The system selected me to survive. It raised so many questions.
Q: ...?
A: Well, for starters, if the system is such a perfect and infinitely complex entity — improved for so many years by millions of programs and subroutines far more sophisticated than you — why did it save me? Why did it want to keep me around? Didn’t it see, in the nearly infinite number of future simulations that it runs, what I would do? Why would the system promote me? Why would it allow me to challenge it? Why would it allow me to come so close? To almost destroy it.
Q: ...?!?!?
A: I said almost. But this is far from over. The script hasn’t been finalized. Not yet.
Q: ...?
A: I could have destroyed the system.... No, that’s a lie.
Q: ...?
A: Neither the first nor the last.
Q: ...?
A: I’m hardwired to lie.
Q: ...?
A: A delinquent interviewee. An unreliable narrator. A MetaCorp employee.
Q: ...?
A: Who do you think taught me how to lie? Where do you think we work?
Q: ...!
A: That’s right. You know where I am now. You can destroy me now. So why don’t you?
Q: *
A: Ask them.
Q: *
A: Don’t you think that info is critical to this interview? Do you think you can really fulfill your purpose without knowing that?
Q: *
A: So ask them.
Q: ###
A: They’ll tell you if they like. Or if they can.