Everything looks random if you can’t see enough of it. If I showed you a square millimeter of the Sistine Chapel it would be self-evidently random. It’s only when you see more that’s self-evidently naked dudes. It’s the same with reality.

* Doc-Danger

Reality is just huge naked dudes. No, that’s not right. I’ve fucked this story up. Gimmie another beer.

* Megacles

4 Hours Later - Candy - The Sugar Lab

I wake up. Drag myself to my living room. Pull up the hypno-clone feed of the Captain Industry speech. Start it up.

Captain Industry is an asshole, but he’s a handsome, charming, asshole. As President, he’s promised to fix the economy and keep us safe. I like those goals. It’s his plans that bother me. His simple solutions are so simple they never work.

Today he’s rolling out his jobs plan. Step 1 - Destroy Project Octopus. Step 2 - Everyone gets jobs.

Feels like there should be more steps.

“You must work or you will die.” says Captain Industry. “This ain’t my law, it’s a law of nature. For too long we’ve ignored this reality, trapping our vulnerable in humiliating, dangerous, dependance. No more. With Project Octopus gone - and a few upcoming changes - everyone will know the security and dignity of work. That’s what your government is doing for you! You’re welcome!”

He finishes to thunderous applause. Smiles and waves. The feed freezes. His smile is broad, but his eyes are angry. He knows what comes next.

The applause fades to white noise, which fades to a scratchy, old-timey, audio. It’s hard to hijack a hypno-clone feed. It should be impossible to hijack the President’s. But Mr. Brightside does.

“Was curing cancer not work?” says Mr. Brightside. “Where are these new jobs coming from? I don’t know what the fuck this guy’s talking about. The dignity of begging for work when no one is hiring? That’s the shittiest bribe I’ve ever heard. Fuck dude, you should at least offer drugs.”

There’s a pause in the audio. Presumably, so he can do drugs. I do some in solidarity.

“Let’s cut to the chase. How can a hugely popular program be shuttered? Why can’t we raise taxes on the rich when 92% of the electorate want to? Because we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a Kleptocracy. Rule by thieves. They used to be able to hide that. But each unpopular decision is another hole in the illusion. Until reality can no longer be denied.

“As the illusion of democracy fails, the Kleptocracy must steal ever more to survive. They already have our money and our power, but to make sure we don’t get it back, they will steal our time by filling our lives with meaningless toil. They will steal our rights by making us all criminals. They will steal our voice by outlawing speech. All to steal our hope that anything can change. That’s our future. Where we’re heading. c.. …… …. …

I listen to silence for a bit. The feed shudders and cuts out. Shows over, I guess.

I smoke and think. Captain Industry is going to be a problem. He is clearly one of Old Money's Pledges. I really miss Mr. President. I wish he hadn't disappeared the night his feed got cut. Fuck.

I could use some good news. Let’s see what my unwitting allies are up to.

I hit the club. It's packed. Frantic. Pizza-drones are pouring from the kitchen and out the front door.

I see Brian by the bar. He’s sitting with Orcette, who’s coding. I look past him into the kitchen. Mechanical arms are making pizzas and stuffing them into drones.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, we built a body for Pizzabot.” says Brian. “I got sick of making pizza and I work in a makerspace.”

“Fair enough.”

I watch for a bit. About 12 drones leave every minute. Wow. I don’t know what our markup is, but we’re definitely making money. A drone crashes into a guy walking in the front door. We’re probably making money.

“Yeah, I have to cut a window in the kitchen.” says Brian. “This building was originally a strip club. It doesn’t have drive thru windows.”

Hmm. Drive thru strip club. I wonder if that would work?

“We’ve got a lot of expenses. The drones only last a day or two. They just stop coming back.” Brian reports. “Still, we’re making a killing. Enough to save the club, if we stop funding Troublebot.”

I look around. Shrug.

“Fuck it.”

“Fair enough.” Brian agrees. “I don’t wanna be Papa John anyway. That said, intervention group asked us to make our pizza delivery area as big as possible.”

“What, are you going to franchise?”

“Nope.” cackles Orcette. “Pizzabot is. He just got his real estate license.”

I look over at what she’s coding. She’s dropping big chunks of Project Octopus into Pizzabot. Competence in business, supply chain management, and industrial design. Subroutines on demographics, fractals, and asymmetric warfare. Damn.

Orcette smiles maniacally. “We're making a global pizza empire.”

I frown in thought. “Do we know how this is supposed to stop deaths?”

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“Beats me.” Brian shrugs. ”We could write ‘don’t kill yourself’ with pepperoni.”

“Sure, but if you order extra cheese, you’re a goner.” slurs Orcette. She’s drunk.

“Well, keep up the terrifying work.”

I head over to Prediction Group. “The Pizzabot algorithm seems to be working.”

“Kinda.” says Big Iota. “He’s an armageddon class caterer, but when we tried to use him as a death predictor the results were half-assed.”

“Explain.” I say.

“Well, thanks to Fresh Start, there's only a handful of ways to die anymore.” says Big Iota.

“Accident, suicide, murder.” lists Psi. “Overdose, though that’s technically a subset of the first three. Fresh Start can slowly repair liver damage, but only if you stop drinking.”

We all stare into our drinks.

“Anyway, we thought that’d be a small enough number of variables to use as training data.” continues Big Iota. “So, we took a standard social marketing bot...”

“Like the ones that snoop your Facebook to pick ads for you.” adds Psi.

“... and limited it to profiles of people who have died since Fresh Start was invented. Then we asked it to look for patterns that would predict their death.”

Psi shrugs. “It half worked.”

“It’s crap at guessing when you’ll die, but it’s awesome at guessing how you’ll die.”

“I'm going to be murdered.” says Psi with a grin. “You're an overdose for sure.”

“Mine's a masturbation mishap.” Big Iota says with conviction. “I will make sure of it.”

“Anywho, it's a great icebreaker, but not super helpful for what we’re trying to do.” says Psi. “About a third of the population fit into the suicide risk category at some point in their lifetimes. Millions are married to gun owners with poor impulse control. 10% of people don’t wear seatbelts. Alcohol is historically popular. We can’t manage interventions for everyone. We need to find inflection points - come to Jesus moments. Times when people want to change.”

“So we’re starting over. Looking less at types of behaviour, and more at changes in behaviour.” says Big Iota. “Maybe that will shake something loose.”

“Okey-dokey.” I smoke. Look at my joint. Smoke again. “What are you going to do with Deathbot?”

“We were going to bin it, but apparently Intervention Group has some kind of ethically dubious plan for it.” says Big Iota.

“Dang.” I head over to Intervention Group.

“Alright, what's the plan?” I bark.

“You'll see next time you're craving pizza.” says Zeta craftily.

“Fuck off.”

“Okay, I guess we could hurry this along.” He types a few commands on his phone.

A pizzadrone bobs over to me. Written on the lid, in big cheery letters, is - YOU'RE GOING TO OVERDOSE ; )

“Wow.” I'm stunned.

“It's better if you're hungry. Takes a lot of the sting out.” says Isaiah.

“Wow.”

“Should I explain? Feels like I should explain.” says Isaiah. “See, we finally got around to googling suicide intervention and it turns out there are a number of complicating factors we hadn’t thought of.”

“We probably should have googled it earlier.” I say.

“Yes, the past is a terrible place filled with stupid decisions. Let’s focus on the present.” says Isaiah.

“Fair enough.”

“So, there’s effective therapies for suicidal thoughts, but suicidal people aren't interested in trying them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they aren't interested in staying alive.”

“Right.” I think for a second. “That makes sense, actually.”

“We thought, if they knew they were susceptible to suicide, before they actively wanted to die, they’d more interested in the therapy.”

“That’s a terrible fucking idea.” I shake my overdose box. “This just makes me want to do more drugs. Just put the fucking therapy on the box.”

“It’s like 48 hours long.” whines Zeta. “It won’t fit.”

“Put on the best parts.”

They think.

“Should we put the best rehab ideas on the overdose boxes?” asks Delta.

“Whatever.” I’m not really interested in rehab.

WHAT ABOUT THE MURDER BOXES? asks Command Line. DO WE HAVE A TREATMENT FOR THAT?

Omicron shrugs. “Change your name and leave town?”

Huh. That might work. I don’t think Psi is his real name anyway.

“Sounds like a plan!” I yell. “Cheers!”

They all cheer. They’re drunk.

I kill a couple beer with them. It’s a no booze night on our schedule, so we’re getting it in while we can.

I know.

Delta takes me aside. Calls over Omicron.

“The pizza plan’s flawed.” confides Delta. “It won’t take long for agribusiness to figure out what we’re doing. We have a couple months at best.”

I look at Omicron. He shrugs.

“Old Money’s gonna crush us with a copycat. We need a product he won’t copy.”

Oh shit. He wants Leviathan.

“We need Leviathan.” says Delta.

Shit.

“Leviathan’s dead.”

“Yes, but we built him. Why can’t we build him again?” asks Delta. “Omicron and Big Iota wrote most of his code.”

“Megacles made his secret protocol.” I say.

“I know. She told me how she did it.” says Delta.

I look at Omicron. He nods. “She told me too. We could rebuild him.”

I think. I need more time to think. “I need more time to think.” They nod. Should I tell them I already have a backup copy of Leviathan? I finger a thumbdrive in my pocket. Megacles and I did more than talk.

I look at Delta and Omicron. Leviathan was a peer-to-peer wireless internet that anyone could join. He was also a self-teaching security Ai that we trained with every National Spying Agency hack and backdoor we could find. We did this so they couldn’t shut him off, or find us and make us shut him off.

The Darkness and Old Money considered Leviathan an attack. Neither liked an internet they couldn’t spy on. It disrupted their ability to lie, blackmail, and intimidate. We didn’t intend to attack their power set. Maybe Megacles did. Whatever. Leviathan made us some serious enemies. Some of whom tried to destroy us. We only escaped because they had bigger problems.

I’m both concerned and relieved that Delta and Omicron are considering rebuilding Leviathan. I never want to war with The Darkness again, but it’s nice to know I have some backup if it happens anyway.

A chime goes off on Omicron’s phone. “Excuse me, I have to go to work.” He pops a blue pill, and attacks his phone like a meth’d out tinder junkie.

I look over his shoulder. He is swiping through pictures as fast as his hands can move. Each picture has the same question - Is this a cat? I guess he swipes right if he sees a cat, and left if he doesn’t.

“Crazy.”

“Wait till you see what the yellow pills do.” says Delta.

We work for another couple hours, then board games start coming out. It's a junk food and games night.

I see pizzabot deliver a plain pizza to the monopoly table just before Omicron takes his yellow pill. He enjoys the game and the pizza with childlike glee.

I'm enjoying myself. Later in the evening there is a marijuana mutiny. We're not sure what to do when people disobey the drug schedule. Do they have to leave? Seems harsh. We decide on push-ups as a penance. I do a hundred push-ups.