Prelude
Meta Wonderrat stood behind Fredrig Juan overseeing the construction site. Juan was sucking on a lollipop while sketching and rewriting the same blueprint over and over. City blocks rose and fell on the page, shrubbery and solar panels were added, covered in moss and removed.
Meta had not needed a capital A Architect in a while. The kind of people that build worlds, usually for reasons that stopped mattering once all was finished. If reality was like a human body an Architect makes prosthetic, additional limbs and sometimes fully new bodies. Meta was an Architect in the loosest sense of the definition, but he was to broad, to much more than an architect. Fredrig was not, he lacked the distractions.
The construction site converged into bright streets at the bottom of glass giants, each building spotless, inhuman. Juan was constructing solar punk. Not like Meta understood it, but what the prompt said. The tech-bros final work of deception, ignorance and the grift. The end of property, because everything was rented and interchangeable. Post-scarcity if post scarcity meant that what remained of humanity no longer saw sense in plundering the graves of billions, because they had everything and if they needed more they could have it with a thought, ripped from the cold dead hands of those the world had left in the past.
"I am not sure the machine god is as good as you want it. If it is fake it does not function and if it is real, it would be to much to handle." Juan adjusted the lollipop from right to left. "It is not supposed to be fair. A good dystopia has teeth like a shark. Break out one and the next one will just slot into place in time." Shadows began walking through the city. In one second they were humans with AI glasses, in the next they were machines with screens for heads. On each screen face a different anime character or hyper-realistic render of someone that had their face stolen. Than the shadows were small car like things just carrying bags.
"The world building is still not skeletal. I was thinking ether dream or different world all together." The architect flipped through a little booklet and added rich dudes back into the city picture. Woman were not to be seen. They did not fit the world as the new tech upper-class was made from self-deluded males. Juan scoffed. "That would not make you happy. You need the real world, the Insurgency and the game to side-load the world-building. If I go with a dream you run headfirst into the what-matters debate and if you go to a different world we lose access to established patterns. I'd set it in an anomaly. Simple, believable, familiar. It also allowed an exit once all is lost. If you can no longer fight you just run home. I make it one way, so giving up here is not a 'we get more guns from home' retreat, but akin to death. If the anomaly wins the world ends. If the outsides comes cracking in, the machine god can get out." Meta crossed his arms. "Sounds like a dream to me or maybe a Dream-bubble scenario. Maybe with a bit of alien invasion. I originally wanted to set this in a memory and the rebellion needs to find the unredacted truth under the cover-up." The architect had begun to build and discard plot lines, fate weaving, but should your role became obsolete, you would just not exist. Death, hardship, loneliness, and above all, the constant unfairness of a lie, a bluff you can not call. "Not bad, but I am not building a series. This has to work as a one-shot without additional resources."
A bird landed on a curve that might be a bench, before it incinerated. Nature as decor, without the possibility to deviate, a bonsai, by human had stunted, for the aesthetic. Possible element, position indeterminate. Meta closed his eyes and walked away. Fredrig Juan was an Architect, but he was Metas architect. While the construction site turned, people lifted and died as the architect crunched his numbers Metas mind was still turning and still stuck. The architect worked because Meta had set it up so that it would work. But Meta knew he would have to walk the architects road eventually. Nil Supernum. Nothing above, no savior for the hero. At the end of it all, the architect would do what Meta made him do, but only Meta could make Meta do anything. "I think I solved it." Juan nodded and integrated Metas new thought into the blueprints, while the city rose, fell and turned like the guts emptying from a mind into a bucket.
Main
Reality is sometimes a bubble. We only see what is right next to us. In the closed community of SiliconsPeak, the world was great. The drones get your food, cook, clean and money flows, from the desperate to the deserving.
Emy cowered behind a tool shed, Service technicians are not to be seen. Most guys could not keep to that simple rule, so she and the girls were all that kept the golden cage of SiliconsPeak ticking. The robots did everything, the man made money and what counted as woman was as valued as a decorative lamp and just as easily replaced or remodeled.
Emy had just had a glimpse of such a remodel, when a little shopping robot had dragged the missus of the house bound and gagged into the tool shed. Emy was just done fixing the water pipes, when the muffled screams started. "Robots are not people. People are not robots. Police said everything was fine." Emy really hopped that it was that easy. With shaking fingers she drew out her cellphone an typed a short message. Juan had warned her. If she saw something that contradicted any of the three rules that kept life easy for the maintenance crew, do not be the only one to know.
Emy had just seen someone with the face of a well known model being dragged into a shed by a robot and then that models mechanical head had roll onto the grass in-front of her. "People are not robots." was looking pretty shaky just about now. Emy calmly picked up her toolbox and walked to the white front gate, pointedly ignoring the severed head's pleading looks or ongoing struggle not to be dragged back into the shed by an arm made from liquid metal. Just keep walking, Emy. The crew knows. Fredrig Juan said things might get weird. With a swipe of her key card Emy left the white fenced garden behind and sank into one of the many maintenance tunnels running under the community. Streets are for displaying working tech, crawlspaces were for crew.
The security camera in the tunnel had seen her face, read her keycard and was already scheduling Emys termination. The mind of SiliconsPeak had many jobs, entrusted to it. Smooth operation was one of them. That mend no complications and because a wife-drone thought she was alive and a worker-drone had seen it now there might be complications. "Robots are not people, but sometimes people forget the difference." Most guys had made an attempt at heroism, tried to save the damsel when presented with the scenario, so the all female work crew was already paying off. The system wrote Emy's termination papers, faked a reply from Emy and than send her last pay before booking tickets for Emy's flight into South America where the company would lose track of her. Then the AI of SiliconsPeak flooded the Maintenance tunnels with carbon monoxide. A cleaning-drone would dispose of the dead raccoon. No need to trouble the maintenance crew. The machinery was running like clockwork, predictable and inhuman.
Emy had seen enough movies to know how big tech addresses problems. She was not made for this, but she still had some cards in hand. She was not alone. The crew knew about strange things going on and Fredrig knew how to deal with a world where not only the smiles and conversations, but the people and the evidence were fabrications. Her phone clutched to her heart like a vanishing cap she had jumped the fence and run, above ground, in the middle of the road, taking shortcuts through verandas, climbing over cybertrucks, ducking under solar panels and hoping to god that the system was focused on the illusions Juan was weaving. People running on the road was not expected by the system and so would be flagged as a hallucination and ignored, if not Fredrig would make it so.
She reached the gate house and slipped into its cellar window with ease. Her key card was supposed to be in a maintenance tunnel right now. The break-room smelled like Kate's woodworking, Hanna's collection of rusting nails and the beer cans of their boss Claudia. The world above was tech and glitter, but down here the most modern thing was the old work laptop and the 15 year old fridge. Technology had its fingers into most of SiliconsPeak, and most just ignored it, but maintenance was always on the lookout.
Emy had hoped to find her crew here, maybe even Hanna's "brother" that was trying to unionize SiliconsPeak with the staff of other communities just like this one. Emy checked her phone. "If you want to know what is going on, we have to pull you out. Go to Emerkriege. The password is 'Chaos Insurgency 2051'. If you are not there I will leave you to your own plans. FJ"
Emy grabbed her car keys and left just a sticky note on the fridge. "J was right. There is more."
Epilog
"A satisfactory performance, don't you agree?" The AI that governed SiliconPeak was running through all the data it had, even the misdirects it now had identified. "Emy has acted like predicted. I expect her coworkers to be ready for extraction in the next few weeks." There was something artificial about SiliconPeak, the paradise of tech. The tech was to far beyond its time, normal problems so far away. Someone was growing multiple things here. Like a garden SiliconPeak grew men complicit with cruelty and great in self delusion, yet secretive and superficial, perfect for the new government. As a nice bonus it also grew inquisitive woman willing to get their hands dirty, distrust state authority and if necessary be willing to become terrorists rather than die in a ditch. The Chaos Insurgency trusted AI as far as it could throw them, meaning not at all, but there were to many ghosts in machines to ignore them. The Chaos Insurgency was holding firm "Robots are not people, but people can be programmed robots".
Reality is a bubble. If the mask slips we may assume ourselves lucky to have glimpsed the truth, but someone might have a plan and showing you a losing hand might just make you bet more. Do not assume to know all moving parts. Do not trust that you did not see what you were meant to see. Some are lying, some just do not know better and some have an interest in making you know what you know.
