For a while the two best friends stood at the small Russian Fortochka window, one of them gazing out on the concrete below and the landing strip beyond, and then the slow drizzling orange ball rising higher and higher but taking a long time in doing so for a man whose fate rested on time. Once upon a time there was a real man there, but since he had forfeited his childhood friends for success in the world, he had become merely a shell, an abstraction, an idea, a mirage, an illusory ‘thing’. He had taken over the family business and built an empire out of it, but at what cost? There was no turning back now, not even for childhood friendship. “You want success? It’ll require the death of you,” Aleku muttered underneath his breath. “It’ll require the violent, metaphysical torturing, the symbolical storm that will result from the cutting of the umbilical cord. Papa has to throw you to the wolves.”

Jam stood slightly behind his right shoulder, his sharp, pointed jaw almost touching it, as his eyes also trained intently on something, except they were upon his friend, more precisely his neck.

“But when he finally wakes up and comes out of the System,” said Sophia from behind, who, with an apparent boredom plastered on her face, eagerly sought the full extent of the facts, “won’t his new personality become a threat to you?”

“Yes; but that if he gets out of the System,” said Aleku, his attention still focused on the outside. “You don’t know the man who we’re dealing with, frankly.”

“Pff, all men are the same,” replied Sophia, rolling her eyes.

“After many years upon this earth I would have to agree with you, much to my younger self’s chagrin; although I will add one caveat: people are all the same.”

“Sounds awfully egalitarian even for you,” said Jam, raising his eyebrow.

Aleku folded his arms. “A capitalist learns to treat all his slaves the same,” he said. There was a pause, before he added with a sigh, “But this is no ordinary man.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sophia, flipping to the next page of her book. “Isn’t he just an incel?”

“Yes, but he’s an incel to the core of his being,” replied Aleku sternly, as though what he had just said had some significance.

“What does that mean?”

Aleku sighed and clasped his hands together behind his lower back. “Must I explain everything to you? It means simple tools used for population control and manipulation won’t work on him.”

“Control?” repeated Sophia with a look of concern and then intrigue.

“It means that public humiliation and shaming won’t work to modify his incel behaviour,” said Aleku frustratedly. Then, perceiving that the woman did not understand him, he went onto explain, “Why do you think bullying not only exists but is allowed and perpetuated by the social institutions that pervade the world?”

Sophia simply shook her head with perplexion.

“Because it facilitates future group cohesion. Destroy all individuality and you have a less troublesome society for us to control.”

“Us?”

“Oh, the elite,” said Aleku. “Back to Rod, here,” he muttered, leaning over the windowsill and he placed a hand on the drizzled panel. “It’s starting to rain.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” said Sophia. “What are you going to do about a changed Rod? If he’s no longer an incel, why wouldn’t he just exit the System and rejoin the real world?”

“That is what I don’t understand, either. You should just kill him,” said Jam.

“It will work,” said Aleku. “You two just don’t understand.”

“No, you need to tell us!” replied Sophia; “I say it is honestly frustrating how condescending you are. I want to know why you are bothering with all this. What’s so special about him? You could get any geezer off the street to test your system.”

“Yes, but that ‘geezer’ might be missed; that ‘geezer’ has ‘geezer’ friends. This man, however, has none, is incapable of forming any, and is neglected by all the services. He falls out of the cracks. He isn’t sick enough to be provided any help from the government, yet is too sick to be a part of any society. I’ll give you an example: an attractive woman flirts with him and asks him out. They go and mutually enjoy their time together. Both of them want to do it again, but it never materialises.”

“Why?” asked Sophia, frowning.

“Because he rages at her. He has an absolute meltdown every time.”

“It’s true,” said Jam, turning to reply to her. He noticed the pistol lying on the table and his eyes lit up. Afraid that Sophia would notice his wandering eyes, he refrained from meeting her eyes and turned back to the window, a cold trickle of nervous sweat reaching his brow. He stood there, motionless, though feeling inwardly like the swaying trees outside in that grey misty morning which had yet to fully throw off the dark cloak of night.

“You said yourself that the System has yet to be tested on a live subject-”

“Human subjects: it has been tested on chimpanzees.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say it wasn’t designed for animals...not those types of animals anyway.”

Sophia cringed. “You’re telling me that this young man might die, then?”

“T’wasn’t it a minute ago you asked me to kill him?” Aleku said.

“I have no qualms about death, don’t misunderstand me. But if you care not whether he lives or dies, why go through all this bother with him then? He, being your friend, will certainly demand a lot from you.”

“Like what?” asked Aleku.

Sophia sighed and thought for a moment, putting a hand to her lip, “Well, from what I have heard about him so far, he seems to be an intelligent man, albeit an odd one. No matter how sweet the dream is, no matter how serene his new life within the machine is, he’ll want to come out eventually. And if he has the brain that you claim that he has, then he will want nothing more to do with the illusion, but rather seek such glory in the phenomenal world. Basically, he’ll learn what we all know here in there and then come back and use it against us.”

“Interesting point,” said Aleku.

“Yes; it is a reason you ought not to go ahead with this plan, I urge you, as a government official I say that this is not a good plan,” Jam interjected, shaking his head. He cupped his chin and looked thoughtfully, and said, “I say we at least strap him into the system in some dark cellar, lock him up and throw away the key.”

“An also interesting proposition,” replied Aleku, nodding his head.

“Well,” said Jam nervously, more sweat trickling down his oblong face. After a minute or two of silence, he could not take it anymore and blurted, “Out with it!”

“Fine, we’ll lock him up in the cellar. Though I am interested in hearing about his experience within the system for research purposes.”

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“Oh,” said Jam with a scowl.

“No problem. We can observe him on the TV.”

“Observe him?” repeated Sophia with astonishment.

“Yes, we have a television where we can watch a livestream of his experience in the noumenal world. Although I expect it will be pretty boring since there will be a lot of filler... We’ll us AI to create snippets of the best, most interesting moments. I don’t really fancy watching him shit on the toilet.”

Jam saw in the stoic face of the businessman the struggle that was waging for dominance of his mental faculties, for the corner of his lip was sagging downward and his cheeks were flushed red; turning to the gun on the table, and then to the door, he said, “I must go and see if our subject is still alive.”

“They’re only a bunch of teenage girls,” said Sophia with a funny look on her face.

“The worst of them,” muttered Aleku, looking out of the window. “I think he’s bleeding.”

Sophia put down her book on the table for the first time and stood up, darting to the window. “They’re really attacking him? I thought you told them just to scare him a little.”

“My girls are trained warriors, what can I say?”

“It looks like you won’t need to kill him because they’re doing it for you,” she added.

Aleku poked his head out of the window, and shouted, “Hey, knock it off!”

“Do you really think that you can pull this off?”

“What?” said Aleku, lifting himself from the windowsill, and then turning to the woman.

“Everything.”

“I have full confidence in myself.”

Jam was halfway between them and the door when this was said. He looked over his shoulder, and said, “It is not you that I am worried about.”

Aleku looked at him with a note of concern, but this was not at all shared by Sophia, who thought it repugnant such a young man could have so high an esteem upon two of the most powerful men in the country.

“I still do not understand the importance of this man. He’s just one incel. One can easily crush him with a simple stomp of a boot or a heel.”

“Cockroaches always lay eggs in places that are hard to reach,” said Aleku, turning to Sophia. “This is what the two of you don’t get. Rod’s soul must be crushed completely and utterly. The only way to do that is through this System. Sending him back in time and making him realise that what had happened to him was not anyone’s fault, but his own. He thinks that he can change it, that he can just act differently, and things won’t turn out the same. But he is absolutely wrong. I know my system proports that it can change memories, but that is only with the cooperation of the subject. The subject must be capable of acting in such a way as to alter the formation of the objects in his environment-”

“But if the subject can’t act differently to begin with, what sense does it make to presume that he-” said Jam.

“Or she,” interjected Sophia with a stern look.

“...or she...can act differently in the System?” Jam finished, his eyes returning to the desert eagle on the table.

“Ha! That is where you’re both wrong. That is why the both of you are where you are at in life, and I am up here. I thought of this potentiality initially, way before you both thought of it, I assure you, and it stumped me for quite a while, but not as long as it would have stumped you, I am sure of it. I have thought of an ingenious solution!”

“Well, spit it out then!” they both cried.

“I have introduced AI avatars into the game.”

“I thought the whole thing was AI,” said Jam.

“Well, yes; while it is true that the whole System is built of AI, or more precisely, AGI (Artificial Generalised Intelligence), the NPC’s that inhhabit the noumenal world are, of course, AI controlled, but they act in accordance with a prescribed ruleset that is in line with the neurology of the patient’s memories.”

“In other words, those ‘people’ that the subject interacts with in the noumenal world are AI characters, but act just like the subject remembers them?”

“Exactly,” replied Aleku happily.

“Except, if these NPCs act just like how the subject remembers them, then how will the NPCs act when the subject interacts with them differently?”

“That is where my genius truly shines. I have developed an algorithm that hits at the core of each NPC, so really, each NPC is almost indistinguishable to a real person. If the subject interacts with the NPC in such a way that the phenomenol counterpart never experienced, the AI controlled NPC will act just like how the counterpart would have acted.”

“How can you be so sure?” Jam said, unsure as to the possibility that such a program could exist. He had studied computer science, but he had never believed that such a thing was possible.

“Although each NPC has an algorithm attached to it, this algorithm is procedurally generated according to the subject’s actions. There will be avatars in this System that will guide the subject, if he is so willing, to act differently and learn a new set of rules than the ones that he had learnt previously. I have programmed quite a few funny avatars in the System that will help Rod learn the social skills that he is sorely lacking-”

“I know not why you keep the man alive,” said Jam, striking the air with his arm. “Would a man concoct such a deception upon another if he did not at all resent his very existence? Would you? Then why did you have me pretend that I was drunk out of my damn mind earlier? Why did you order me to stumble out of the podcast room at the time that you did? Why orchestrate this madness? Just kill the cockroach already and do the world a favour.”

“If you want him to die, why don’t you just do it?” said Sophia, her eyes watching him with curiosity.

“I? Kill a man? Never by my own hand! I see very clearly that Aleku wants this man to disappear from this world, and we want the same thing; that’s all; but I am a lawful man, a man -”

“A man who speaks out of turn,” said Aleku, flattening his expression. “I have said that I will not kill him.”

“But he is a dangerous narcissist!” hissed Jam, clenching his fists and throwing them up in the air in frustration.

“We can cure him,” said Aleku. “My system will show the world that even the most depraved individual can be cured and released back into society as a productive member. My system will retrain him.”

“Since you believe that this man can be changed, and not only that but is worthy of such change, then I must just satisfy myself by watching him suffer instead through the process. I will be honest though; I hope he burns. And if you are intent on letting this creature live after he has gone through the system, then, then-”

“Although I am usually the hardest on him, I feel somewhat an inclination, no, a duty to defend him somewhat,” mused Aleku.

“...then I will kill him myself!” spat Jam.

“You must restrain yourself,” warned Aleku, “for a government official cannot be heard spouting such venomous nonsense. You kill him you destroy yourself.”

“Argh!” Jam yelled, grabbing his scalp and snarling like a dog. “No, no,” he said after a moment, restraining himself from leaping for the desert eagle on the table and shooting them both, and then those outside. “It doesn’t matter to me whether he goes into the System or not, whether you will kill him or not. I just hate him! I say it plainly, he is the most terrible person on this planet, bare none. I fucking hate him. He is so fucking despicable. His existence is illogical. If there is such a way as for me to enter into this System to join in on his experience in the noumenal world, I will jump at the opportunity and make sure that he does burn and suffer for eternity, because you are right in that simply killing the man is not enough to exact vengeance on such a depraved soul.”

At once the prosecutor ran out of the room in a fluster.

Aleku, who began stumbling from side to side, steadied himself by leaning against the table, breathing heavily and wheezing like an old man, had allowed his head to drop, raised it now, and started to salivate as he looked at the woman with his hungry and greedy eyes, though tinged with pain, said, “I tried to help him, you know; I tried to help him as a friend. Though, I didn’t help him when he was with that woman. I just sat back and watched him burn. Thought to myself, ‘Well, here’s a fun show.’ What a miserable friend I was. When he had started writing that novel for her, I should have stopped him. I should have said something at least! But no, I just sat there, on Jam’s bed, and laughed; I just laughed; and laughed, and laughed and laughed,” and he began laughing in between coughing miserably so much his eyes started to swell and glisten, and his nose started to run and droop with snot.

Sophia, who had sat down and returned to reading a moment earlier, put down her book and said, “Come, sit back down.”

And so, the man sat down, slightly glassy-eyed, and said, wearily, “I was in part a cause of the mess that this man is in. By my lack of action, I allowed a monster to be born. And worst of it all is that I profited from it. That’s why I must give him this last chance.”

“Have you told Jam this?”

“Jam, being the lawful man that he is, cannot bear upon his good conscience to realise this. He is a man inflicted with his own demons,” Aleku said, lowering his tired eyes and falling back into his chair.

“And that young woman,” said Sophia, trying to change the subject, “She is your daughter? She is a headstrong one.”

“Yes, I am worried about her. She has the mind of myself, but the heart of her mother. She has to eventually choose; although which, I do not know... Jam, Jam, Jam... Jam isn’t serious about killing him; he is best friends with the idiot. They’ve been joined at the hip for over a decade, give or take a few years when they weren’t speaking – you know, birds must leave the nest and all that.”

“No, I do not know,” said Sophia with a bewildered expression.

Aleku laughed and rested his hand on the table next to hers, though his was trembling terribly. The cigar in his mouth twitched in his mouth like a trapped worm.