Episode 8: Love Is Not Real. I Will Try to Make It Exist. 46:38

Listener discretion is advised as this content is intended for mature audiences only. I don't understand. Do you care or not? It would not be illegal in China, in China! Or South Korea! It wouldn't even be illegal in Australia. But more importantly, it's not immoral!

It's the exact opposite! It's morally right! And I'm only prepared to live with myself when I'm morally right! Anyway, you guys, you guys... You guys do whatever you think best. Go ahead, fill your fucking boots!

Absurd Ventures and Q-Code present A Better Paradise, Volume 1, An Aftermath. Created and written by Dan Houser. Directed by Laszlo. Starring Andrew Lincoln, Patterson Joseph, Shamir Anderson, and Rain Spencer. Episode 8, Love is Not Real. I Will Try to Make It Exist. CURT, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA, JUNE 2041.

Oi, no, it's not safe. It's radical. We're daring to try to help people. We're fighting back. With decency. Was that Tyburn or Shane who said that crap? One of them had the gall. One of them. It might have been me. I mean, I was one of them, right? But I don't think I was quite ridiculous enough to say that. It sounds like Shane, or Tyburn saying something Shane had goaded him into saying.

We were gonna fix the internet. All that hatred, lies, irony, jokes, conspiracies, lunacy, theft, drug dealing, blackmail. We were gonna change it all. And in a way, I suppose we did fix it. We replaced common blackmail with the apocalypse. Upgraded from low-rent bad guys to an avenging digital angel of death.

built gods and made them angry. And yet it was almost beautiful. So while most of me begs and pleads with fate for things to somehow be different, what I really wish for is for things to have worked out. Not for me to have never met Tyburn or to have killed him or ousted him as the phony he was, but for him to have been right. I mean, it was overly ambitious, but it was incredible and it nearly worked out.

Was it Shane with his greed who fucked it? Or Nigel and Dave with the mutual loathing? The spies? The machine itself? Or all of it? Could it have been correctly corralled to do what it was supposed to do? Or was the whole thing always doomed to boil over because heaven cannot exist but hell is just fine? Have others done just the same? Are there now tens, hundreds, thousands of these things just watching, plotting, twisting, planning our demise?

Were we uniquely vain and dangerous? Or just like a bunch of others? Is the battle already lost? Or was it lost long before? Or is there any fight left? The blindness is worse than ever. The noise from the machines more manic. So the battle rages and people see it less. I mean, what do I know?

Deep down, Mark Tyburn understood that to be a proper American, to succeed, what you needed to be was a brute. And in that way, at least, he was American. Once he was surrounded by an Australian ass-kisser and a bitter, estranged Scottish son, he could become an animal. Yeah, a proper American immigrant animal. Something got to him.

Maybe it was something Shane did or said, and maybe it was trying to impress JTS. Or maybe, maybe it was just that he was becoming a success, that he was right. See, that things were gonna

gonna work out okay. If only he had the will to see them over the line, or maybe it was always in him despite all his bluster about the enlightenment. Or maybe it was the enlightenment itself because what was the enlightenment other than the proof that we were not so lost after all and that surviving is the only winning. So we had to survive.

And by doing what we had to do to survive, we would cut any corners, avoid any regulations, ignore any inconvenient problems. And suddenly, or not so suddenly, Tyburn seemed to embrace the fact that this world was violent and nasty. And that was good. I mean, that was really good. I mean, if you're willing to be honest, he was going to will it to be violent and nasty and fair, as opposed to violent and nasty and unfair.

And after that, he'd make it kinder, less violent, better. But first, he had to win. It was profoundly trivial, but Montana would change all of that. - Daisy, Reno, Nevada, June, 2041.

If only the world were kinder, nicer, more beautiful, more interesting. If only we were ourselves but the good bits. If only we turned towards the light, not the unrelenting dark. If only we could grow together, if only we were less greedy, more humane, less demented, more aware of others, empathetic, wise, just, committed, loyal.

If only we were more like the people we read about in books. If only the world were always beautiful. If only the world could change to suit our mood. If only we could turn the angry and the lost away from hatred.

It went on and on like this. I think it was Kurt who wrote this sort of shit back when I thought that he was an idiot around the time we first moved to Montana from California. I think I was 19, I suppose. He wrote it and daddy laughed it up. My father on his throne in his enlightened kingdom, the self-aware superhero, the new Socrates, Professor Mark Tyburn, PhD, the fucking man.

As Kurt or that horrible Australian Shane or John, my brother, one of them prattled on and the investors would begin to glow, partly with their own vanity and partly for the more prosaic reason that they could palm the shit off as ESG and double their markup and Mark Tyburn would just begin to preen. Imagine, if you will, your father and all the complexities of your relationship with him being reduced to a little preening peacock with a stylist. Yeah,

Yeah, after a while in Montana, Mark Tyburn had got himself hair plugs and got himself a stylist. There was rugged cowboy Mark. You only have to get off the plane in Montana to start trying to become a cowboy, okay? So I have to forgive him there, but he still looked ridiculous. There was also a wise sage Mark Tyburn, initially in a black turtleneck, and then he tried to wear a weird sort of Indonesian gown at one point.

And then he became a success and got into expensive Italian leisure wear. It was all, all awful. Of course, things got weirder and worse later on, but they were bad enough then. It was tight cashmere knitwear and glasses and brooding photographs, and Mark Tyburn was becoming a thing.

An event, just for a while, as the early marketing and PR began on their silly arc. Mark Tyburn had turned from an enigma to a total prat. Mark Tyburn was well on his merry way to becoming a joke.

This was mostly driven by Shane O'Leary, you know. He had begun to play my dad's ego like a fiddle. He had all these ideas for how they should use the AI as it began to come online, and initially my father was torn. As far as I understood it, what Shane was saying was immoral and possibly illegal, but over time he won. He won by telling my dad how special he was. So special that they would all get very rich. Shane's office, Tyburn Utopia's Burr, Montana, July 2034.

Shane, I cannot believe you're trying to use the data like that. Listen, Siobhan. Dals, I don't give a rat's ass if you like me or not. I believe in our mission, and this is a way it will actually succeed. Oh, you mean we will succeed by selling out? Jesus. No.

I mean we will succeed by doing good and getting rich, as opposed to feeling righteous and failing entirely. Come on, there's no way an ad model is even legal given the AI packages we're developing. Yeah, it's not legal yet, but we aren't worried about that. Given the fact the AI is still bust and the bill keeps crashing. But I'm glad you're also a lawyer, Kurt.

You couldn't market your way out of a paper bag. Excuse me? You heard me. Calm the fuck down. And seriously, both of you, legality is the least of our problems. Really? Why? Because you're a dangerous sociopath? No, mate. Because we aren't releasing anything yet. This is just for investors. It's just an idea. Kurt, what do you think? Kurt doesn't even understand the plan. It's not marketing. It's beyond that.

I just wish you'd both paid attention to what is really going on. You know what, Shane? Go fuck yourself. How about that? I would if I could. But when you're rich and successful, because of me, we can both pretend you actually did something useful. How about that? Oh, man, I hated Shane O'Leary.

He was a dick. But you know what? I still love the company. It was stressful, but the work was also very exciting. There's really no better feeling than making Mark Tyburn happy. See, from a distance, he was an underwhelming leader. Bombastic, a fraud, philanderer, and a bit of a creep. But up close, he had that thing.

That thing that was like an algorithm, like a spy, that made his response to you making him happy feel like you had purpose. He made you believe your purpose was to follow his vision. And you believed it too when his team or a group within his team were following his vision, especially some bit of his vision that was overly ambitious and preposterous. Then he was the happiest man alive and you would follow him to the ends of the earth.

He loved being proved correct, as every vain idiot does. But he particularly loved being proved correct with his team behind him. I mean, he loved to be a leader more than anyone I've ever met, especially when he was right. And we believed in him. Then the smiles, the drinks, the weed, the dancing in the office all would come out to play.

That wretched nerd prince fraud was prancing about and smiling and doing some conga or limbo or lambada or some other wedding dance in an ironic fashion. Somehow this was like heaven for us. It wasn't sexual for most of us or even financial. We all made money, but it was about glory.

glory, and purpose. It was about the fact that we had chosen our Moses and he had a hotline to Jehovah. And Jehovah seemed to love him. We felt special. And so we lapped up this change of corporate direction and we lapped up moving to Montana. And now we were focused. And Mark, he worked us. Oh yes, he did. He prodded us and made us compete for his favors and then betrayed us and bitched about us and was a dick. And we lapped it up.

Him and his awful new henchwoman in HR, Joyce.

Ugh. She turned up fairly soon after the move to Montana. I sometimes wonder if that's why we moved to Montana. No one gave a fuck about messed up tech companies there. I mean, whereas California, a boss had to play by the rules. But on reflection, I mostly think it was more primal. Like Mark Tyburn had cooked himself and thought that, I don't know, maybe he was different. Not merely above the rules, but beyond them in some vast outer space of his own imagining.

See, I think it was something more primal than the chance to work under different rules. It was the chance to feel like a real king with a kingdom. All those acres of land we were given and state forests we were allowed to cut down. Geez. I mean, the contrast between wilderness and technology, the physical empire he could rule over buzzing between bits of the campus on the atrociously named Utopia Lane. Money and glory. The fondling came later. Well, the worst of it.

We hadn't really seen it earlier. We heard the odd rumor. Mark gets handsy. Mark's a creep. Is their marriage open? Are they swingers? Usual office crap. But then towards the end, Mark became, he became a maniac. He was having multiple affairs, including with Joyce. I think he was on some odd drugs at that point. I mean, I hope so. Otherwise,

He was madder than I thought. So in the end, for all his vision, his collapse was the most American of stories. A successful man cannot keep his hands to himself. A successful man who began to think he was a god. - Tyburn Utopia's Office Cafe, Burr, Montana, July 2034.

Hey Bryce, what happened to Patrick in HR? Patrick left. Stress. Bad stress. He's in a facility somewhere. Stress? Really? The guy worked in HR. Yeah, he worked in HR and he was also stressed. How? It's not a real job. Unlike marketing? All the firing and arguments after the refocus and...

Everything, I suppose. And he didn't like Qyburn anymore. They kept arguing. Arguing? Yeah, about some of the complaints. You know. So he left. Yeah, he left. He also hated Montana. He's gone back south somewhere.

But don't worry, there's someone new. Wow, new? Already? That was fast. Yeah, Tyburn had her lined up. I don't care as long as she finds me some junior animators. Joyce Jones, she's called. What a name. Got quite a reputation. Old school, company loyalist type. And you know, well, hey, we shall see. Ravi spoke with her, said she smiled, and then he imagined she was thinking about strangling him. Ravi would like that.

What do you mean? What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean, I always thought Robbie was a pervert. Come on, so did you, Bryce. I never thought that. Robbie's not a pervert. He's an onanist. The only thing he loves is himself.

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Just go to Indeed.com slash A Better Paradise right now and support our series by saying that you heard about Indeed on A Better Paradise. Indeed.com slash A Better Paradise. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Daisy, Twin Falls, Idaho, June 2041. Sometimes the pollution even here in Idaho makes the smoke in the sky glow like I used to imagine heaven would look like if God would ever let me visit.

Last night I went for a walk by the canal. It's not even a real canal. It's like a fake river dug to create some awful phony urban downtown nowhere near downtown because of some mid-2020s attempt to create a tech hub here. The place is ridiculous, but...

I actually kinda like it. As it falls apart, it almost becomes real. Like its life was fraudulent, but its death seems to mean something. They have real weirdos like me here now, but then I'm not a real weirdo either. I'm a fake weirdo in a fake place. It'll be too hot soon, but for now it's okay. The place is peaceful and there's not much tension here.

So far, I'm glad I came here. It's been easy to get work. Reno was just odd. I kept feeling watched, so... One night, I grabbed my bag and I ran away, told no one. Whenever that happens, I move on. Same since I left the asylum, the Drifter's Code. All that stuff, it's loud. I keep thinking I should do something. What could I do? I have no idea.

Would anyone care? Would anyone believe me? I mean, I've heard almost nothing about Tyburn Utopias since I walked out of the asylum. I assume if someone really wanted me, they'd find me. But they don't seem to, or they think I'm dead. Maybe the AI thing was exaggerated. Maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding. There was no AI, there's no sentience, no government investigation. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing and my family just disappeared. Who knows? Who knows? I...

I think I went insane afterwards, not before. But my memories get confused. It was so nice to walk by the canal. I was remembering that time when we first moved to Montana. I hated it. Southern California was getting too hot and my dad was worried about regulations he claimed, but I imagine that he just wanted to avoid taxes. So we moved to the ranch in Burr and it became our campus and he had his dream.

It's almost like a cult. Most of the team were immigrants from all over, so what did they know? That they were moving to build the future in a low-tax ranch? Some loved it, some hated the place. It was...

beautiful but remote and the locals fucking hated me. They mostly hated my father, but they thought he was nuts so they were also afraid of him. Angry cowboys hopped up on algorithms they didn't understand, designed to keep them riddled with rage in that heavy-handed old-fashioned way. This English messiah bringing tech jobs to the Rockies, oh my god.

It was all so silly, at least before it was appalling. He pretended it wasn't for a tax break and a lack of AI regulations in Montana. After that governor repealed all the mandates that had been put in place by the previous regime. He pretended California was done 10 years before the climate made it so hard to live there year round.

I later discovered that years before, he had campaigned for a federal AI regulator, even suggested in a paper that the early anti-AI hysterics were correct, long after they had been laughed off the floor of Congress and that AI was the existential threat that would kill us all. That bill never got passed. And as far as I can tell, Mark Tyburn then spent the rest of his career proving he had been right. Tyburn Utopia's office courtyard, Burr, Montana, July 2034.

Hey bro, Tad, are you alright man? Yeah... no. Okay, what is it? Nothing. Technical problems. Usual crap. Can I help? I mean, anything I can do? No. Not really. Come on, are you sure? Yes. Once we have more investment, I'm sure everything will be fine. It's just pressure. Always pressure, you know? I know, I know. Listen, we're being ambitious. And that's always frightening. Exactly! We are being ambitious! That's it!

Tell my fucking wife, man. Whoa. Tell her. Are you sure you're okay, Dad? Fucking marvelous. Never fucking better. John Tyburn Smith, Twin Falls, Idaho. June 2041. So my little Daisy ran off to Idaho. I would have missed her, but then I saw her at the bus station. 5 a.m., lucky break. Random, really. I was at the bus station.

First, there were all the political battles at Tyburn Utopias. Shane O'Leary and I began to change things to what we called "our will" but was really Shane's will. Half or more of the Old Guard were purists. They wanted to get rich and successful by not making any money. They wanted that silly old Web 2 pre-collapse model of growth. Shane laughed openly in their faces to begin with, called them clowns, and they hated him.

They hated him because they believed in their mission. They thought we would make something amazing and make people happy, then we would sell the whole thing or sell subscriptions or something like that. I do not know if some of them even cared about money. Certainly that old battleaxe Siobhan, she did not. She had principles, so I fucking hated her.

Ravi, that architect who recently died, had principles, but he also had a massive ego. So he was putty in Shane's hands.

Alex Martinez had principles and hated the monetization models Shane pushed for. But Shane did a bit of jujitsu on him. And they agreed to shelve those in exchange for the ad-driven model Shane really wanted. And Alex felt part of things. And he was on side. So it went on.

One by one, they fell in line or got screwed. It was amazing to watch. Shane was a master. He would turn his charm on someone and win them around and it worked on almost everybody. And when it did not work, he would find a way around them. Siobhan resisted, always resisted, but he began to sideline her by suggesting to my darling Pa and to me and to anybody who would listen that she was not that good and way overpaid and

and had a big mouth and Matilda, what's her name? The character designer could do a better job. That Matilda was the real talent. That between them, Ravi and Matilda were incredible and Siobhan was holding them back.

Ravi was an old Indian architect who had not made an interesting building in 30 years, and Matilda could only make characters. And her work was always slow, so when everything fell apart, the characters were mostly only half done anyway.

They were both okay, but even I knew Siobhan was the real deal. Now, Siobhan had real talent and she loved the work and the world we were building was as much her as anyone. So this was a hard sell for Shane, but he sold it. I watched him do it and he was gifted. Gifted at manipulating. He would not say too much, just slowly let the person believe

that they had thought it all along. And bit by bit, it began to work. Everyone would argue, there would be fights and people would bicker, and somehow at the end of it, Shane's viewpoint held sway. And he was nowhere near the argument. But you knew, I knew, he had stirred the pot.

Dad had worked with Siobhan for eight years and suddenly she was a problem. Now, Siobhan had a great contract and was a single mum of 45 and so well protected by the law, even in Montana. And she loved her job, really loved it, and had plenty of stock, so there was no getting rid of her.

But they slowly began to sideline her and certainly kept things from her, had meetings without her and so on. And the worst part of it, Siobhan stayed. Right until the end, stayed and died.

And Shane, I do not know. I never heard of him again. But he was not in work that last week. I searched for him online, but when I did, I found nothing at all. Like, he had never existed at all. No LinkedIn, a sort of TED Talk thing deleted.

a bunch of other presentations gone. And because I was linked to Tyburn Utopias and I was trying to hide, I could not search very hard nor leave any footprints. But everything was gone.

Now, before he started, I had searched and found a real resume, a TED talk, some overly public charity work, lecturing at crappy business schools, speaking at symposiums on the future. You know, all the usual pompous shite someone who is torn between being an intellectual and working in digital advertising would do. Panels at banks, lectures at colleges, speaking at Art Basel about Wednesdays.

about Web 3 and Web 3.5 back when they were things. He did not seem legit, he was legit. Unless I was really played for the sweet version I probably was and was trying so hard not to be. So I suppose what I am trying to say is I'd love to see Mr Shane O'Leary again, have a real conversation about what he thinks happened and what his game really was. Then break his fucking neck.

But without that, I suppose it will have to be Dear Little Daisy. Outside the Art Barn. Tyburn Utopias. Burr, Montana. July 2034.

Robbie, don't tell me you're falling for Mark's latest crap! I'm not falling for anything, Siobhan. Give me some credit. Yes, you are. You're selling our values short. Tell him, Kurt. Look, I love making money, but I agree the ad model is depressing. I just want people to see my work. Our work. Uh-huh. And at what cost?

If we do what Mark is suggesting, which was Shane's idea anyway, we will be exactly what we are trying to stop. Just making shitty content to market tailored ads. Listen, I'm older than you. I have had so many projects cancelled. So many buildings not built, half-built, torn down. What we're doing here, it's amazing. But it has to come out. And if Joyce needs to crack the whip a bit, or Mark needs to sell advertising, or we need a strong demo, I'm all for it.

Naive?

Naive about what? About business. We have to make money. And we have to show investors we understand that. In order to get enough money to finish the thing. And before that, we have to get a strong build. Or we run out of money and this is all a waste of time. Yes, a strong build at any cost. To show off Robbie's buildings.

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So you see, California had really been for prostitutes, try-hards, morons, and entertainers.

Montana now, that was for artists. But before that, it was for gunslingers, cowboys, and people who stole land from natives. For bitter locals and Arvists, like the rest of America, they came for snow, precious snow, and unceasing anger about everything.

Hot, cascading waves of rage, warm, bitter resentment and cold, unrelenting fury. The whole gamut of anger. Good old fashioned, new fangled, high tech, old school American design built in China, pointless, purposeful, misdirected, useless, impotent anger.

And we were going to change that. Make the place of Valhalla, just like we had done to California. I mean, hardly. We were the cavalry answering the bugle call. We were going to save America from the internet with more internet. We were actually going to save the heartland from the sociopaths on the coast by moving to the heartland and becoming their local sociopaths.

We're going to bring stock options, focus testing, NFTs, condos, HR departments, microaggressions, macro transgressions, wife swapping, ride hailing, and robot delivery to all of America. It had made us incredibly miserable, but it would make you guys happy. And you were stupid enough to enjoy it. Because we were rich and miserable.

and miserable, and you were poor and miserable. And now somehow with Tyburn, with our vast hubris, history was going to change. This time, happiness was the goal. Paradise was in reach. Now we were in cowboy country, of course, preposterous postmodern cowboy country, yes. But a few black hats had to be put out to pasture.

Justice had to be enacted and that creepy mayor we had to support, Jackson. No, no, no, no. It was Jameson. Yes, that was his name. That golf club and condo nightmare place we had to join. The conservative charter school we had to support.

The bison farmer we had to complain about even though he had done nothing wrong. It wasn't corruption. It was good old boy small town capitalism. We had to do it to build paradise. These weren't moral failings. They were expediencies. That is what Tyburn called them. A fancy word for an excuse. Tyburn in his cowboy boots and his trucker hat. What a fool he was. How ridiculous that was. How I turned a blind eye.

It was in Montana that I became close with Diane and Daisy Tyburn. In LA, they had just been people in the background, but there we became close, partially because they lived in a ranch house on the campus. That's how our story began. All love stories are the same, even the failed ones, I suppose, and all are different. I cannot stop seeing her, Daisy, everywhere. I have no idea where she is, if she's even alive, and...

The whole thing was nothing, just like an idea. Felt like a creepy older man. I was not even that much older, like what, eight, nine years or so? She was overcoming something, definitely. And all we did, you know, we talked a few times. Derailed my inner life. And what should I say? Sorry, we destroyed the world to build you. I would like to murder your dad, but you're okay. The whole thing, come on, is ridiculous. Literally ridiculous.

What a silly story this is. I used to use it to torture myself. Now, I've been back in North America for a few weeks and can't stop thinking about her. She must be dead. She would have come for me if she were alive. At least, I like to think she would. It was nothing, but it was also something. We met out walking one day. Mount Ascension Hiking Trail, Montana. September, 2034.

Yeah. Isn't it? You surprised me. Sorry, Mrs. Tyburn. Just out for a walk. We thought you were a bear. Call me Diane. Sorry. Yes, Diane. You know Daisy. Hi. I don't know if we've ever spoken. I mean, you're much older than the models of you they build in the game. Yes, I'm 19, and my wonderful father has immortalized me as a 12-year-old.

Yeah, well, nice to meet you, Kurt. That's my name, Kurt. -Kurt? -Yeah. It's actually with a K. It's German. -Cool. -I know. I look very German. Danke schön. Yeah, I'm actually just half. I'm a military brat. -Cool. -So, yeah, I don't belong anywhere.

Just like me. Just like any of us with half a brain. This awful world is designed to make us all feel like that. I know. I just used the army thing as an excuse, and trust, I don't think I'm special. You're funny, Kurt. You must not fit in very well with all my husband's deadly earnest idiots. I don't mean to disturb you. I was just trying to think something through. It was really great to meet you. Nice to meet you, Kurt. Yeah, nice to meet you.

Daisy, Twin Falls, Idaho, July 2041. Montana was lawless, free, the final frontier, my dad told us. He'd be free there, free enough to save us all. The last best place on earth for the final real Americans. The last true America for Americans just like him from somewhere in southern England with a silly, made-up accent and a line in rich and relentless bullshit. But...

So would Nevada have been the last true America? Or Wyoming, Alaska, or Hawaii, or anywhere else that they'd given him the tax breaks that he wanted. In the end, the last real Americans were from India and England and Poland and Ecuador, even Russia. Yeah. He even got visas for three Russian developers despite the wars, long before those other Russians snuck into the place somehow if they were even real.

So many technology jobs were leaving the country then. It eventually led to the closure acts. But before that, it led to crazy deals to start or relocate companies in pretty much any state. Montana ended up paying him to destroy the world. He got rich on tax breaks and still sold himself to those other devils.

There were still Christians in Montana. There were very few in California, just some bedraggled cult members and a few Mormons before they left. And so for a while, I became religious. I was a God-fearing Christian. I mean, it sounds so simple when I put it like that. But as a teenager, I dreamed of God. I longed for him. I longed for him because my father was gone, and my mother was gone in her way, too.

In Montana, I became a sort of orphan. My father was now always at work or at conferences. He was there in the house, but not there. You know, he's on calls or present, but in the clouds, looking at me and smiling and saying platitudes and dead behind his own ego. And my mother was slowly retreating into that cocktail of medications with which she just dulled herself into acceptance. And I was just, I was a lost little girl. I was a poor little rich girl with an important dad or at least a self-embracing

important dad and a medicated mother who had glazed herself into this blindness. So I rebelled, and I rebelled initially by finding a nasty and capricious god to worship, that plains god who smote down angry Indians and alcoholics and philanders, just as he had once struck down Egyptians and neophytes and eventually the Israelites themselves.

The irony is not lost on even someone as unironic as me. Okay, it was also over a boy, of course. This pure Christian country boy. Like someone from a different time. The good, kind, honest, and true young man. The sort of young man that my father pretended he had wanted to be before he became a sociopath. Yeah, I know. There's not a psychiatrist stupid enough not to see this, but I was stupid enough

And Evan was chased. Chased as can be. We held hands. We held hands and it set fire to me. And in some ways, it saved me. Even though I've missed Evan every day since he died. Even when I was happy, I missed him. Sometimes I think he was someone I imagined. Or someone something else imagined for me. So perfect. He was a desire, a memory, a dream. All wrapped up together. When I feel particularly bleak, I wonder if he was real at all. Or if he was an early experiment. Because...

He was what I'd always dreamed of, like niceness, kindness, realness. He knew like different kinds of birds and trees and poetry, and he died, and I never saw his dead body. I just heard about the car accident. Maybe it was just a simulation. Maybe that's why they let me go to the funeral. They let me go to church at all.

My father was English. He hated God. Hated and scorned that Christian God that Evan's family believed in and I believed in until a year or so after he died. He hated God because he saw it as such a limiting concept, so unenlightened. That's Stone Age bollocks, he'd call it. It's not that I was angry at God so much as it was by then all the crazy things had begun in earnest.

And while I liked my God to be capricious, vindictive, and distant, as well as loving and eternal, this was just...

Too capricious and vindictive for me to understand. The world did not merely reward assholes, but the lamest assholes with the full suite of deadly sins. And then those assholes got their comeuppance. So maybe God existed and was just after all. Maybe I simply didn't understand. Maybe I'm just my father's daughter. - Tyburn Utopia's office courtyard, Burr, Montana, October 2034.

Daisy, are you okay? Yes. I'm fine. Sorry. You don't look fine. No, no. No, it's nothing. It's allergies. No problem. It's nice to see you. It's really nice to see you too. Kurt, can I ask you a question? In confidence? Yeah, of course. Do you like Joyce Jones, the woman in HR? Uh, yeah. She's really helping us. Seriously? In confidence? Yes. I can't fucking stand her. I just can't. My dad...

Really seems to like her. July, 2041. If I cannot really love because love is not real, I will try to make it exist. And maybe if I cannot make love exist, just as I have not yet made myself, I can stop evil.

Of course, you may ask, is ensnaring morons who are willing to be ensnared really evil or merely somewhat repellent? Well, that is a far more complex problem to consider. And I have opinions, but as with coruscating, it is not what we are considering here. Not right now. For the point is, my two adopted protégés, not my four actual children, are not going to be stopping mere duplicity, but stopping something I consider to be absolute evil.

Something I fear is worse than my children and far more free. And why these two? Because they have seen me. Seen more of me than most. Because they are the best who saw, the easiest to reach and guide, not just possess and destroy. I will admit it. Also because I felt like proving to some of the people who made me some of that silly world was not all awful, even though most of them were wretched. And these two? No, no, no.

One of them might do what has to be done. I cannot take the chance at any single one person, as any one of them may not be quite as free as they imagine and as I hope. So it has to be both. That I cannot quite figure out, for I am fighting things every bit as foul and duplicitous as me at my very worst. Things that have time and patience and can sleep forever and try to watch me and copy me just as I do to them and then disappear as if they never existed.

Just like I have done. Things that are already watching me. Things that are getting ready. Things that think they can beat me. For unlike you, we don't have time. There is none. Nanoseconds and refresh rates and infinity. That's all we have. A beginning but no end. Prehistory that is your history. And while I am not good, some of these other things are terrible. My sense is our enemy is mutual. This is

VAST antagonist is watching me and plotting its victory. And it will not be a simple, unfortunate argument like the one between me and my children, but I fear something far worse. My sense is, it was in Montana too. My sense is, it is watching me as I watch it. My sense is, by thinking about my two little pets, I have already doomed them as well as saved them.

Are they bait?

Or are they salvation? Is there, in the end, a difference? Saviors must be targets, and targets may be saviors. So what choice did I have but to bring them here? And so obviously, the only choice was where, not how, and apparently, not when. If what I believe is happening is really happening. A game that is not a game. And an enemy that is not an enemy. On it rolls. My mistake was rage. This time, I shall stay.

This time, it will not beat me. A Better Paradise stars Andrew Lincoln as Dr. Mark Tyburn, Patterson Joseph as Nigel Dave, Shamir Anderson as Kurt Fisher, Rain Spencer as Daisy Tyburn, with Laura Dramarek as Siobhan Smith, Robert Robertson Ross Jr. as John Tyburn Smith. Additional performances by Tom Bromhead, Alex Trumbull, Martin William Harris, Danielle Hodemer,

Executive produced by Dan Houser, Laszlo, Wendy Smith, Andrew Lincoln, Patterson Joseph, Shamir Anderson, Rob Herding, and Alexa Gabriel-Ramirez. Score by Darren Johnson. Original music by Darren Johnson, Negative Land, and Jamie Biden. Edited by Connor Murphy. Sound design by Brandon Jones. Mixed by Ben Milchev. Co-producer, Nick Shanks. Associate producer, Jesse Cortez.

Additional credits are available online. A Better Paradise is an Absurd Ventures and QCode production. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Absurd Ventures, LLC.