Harris Kilpatrick has recently been disillusioned. The virtues of free society, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood!" sound like the tagline for a great free-to-play game.  Unfortunately, Harris has learned that even if real life is free-to-play, it's still pay-to-win.  Talent, ambition, and honor have gotten him nowhere but backed into a corner of poverty and shame.  It's either time to accept fate, or change the game, if he can. Join Harris in what the explosion of Artificial Intelligence has made of Oakland California.  Proximity to the epicenter of technological development has made things a little...weird.  It isn't dystopia, but it sure isn't utopia and it certainly isn't predictable. Long established records are being broken daily (especially record profits), even the ones that don't make sense and shouldn't be possible to break, and there are whispers that AI is leading to AE: Artificial Evolution. Our hero may not be a hero, and he may not have a plan.  But a freshly cynical outlook with a dash of desperate opportunism has to have a chance to turn tumultuous times into personal profit. Doesn't it? (This story is part of the April 2024 Writathon)