Coffee. He grabbed it from the kitchen in a fog, stumbled into his studio, still half inside some ill-formed dream. Maddie was still dead to the world in her bed and probably wouldn’t stir before noon. The silence in the house was a thick, slightly guilty thing.
“Lola,” he called out, the word more exhale than command.
“Good morning, Jacob. I hope you slept well. How can I assist you today?” Lola’s voice replied, female, always pitching in that light, tender note. Too familiar, sometimes. He tried not to let it get under his skin. He’d nearly responded about his sleep but caught himself. Better not to encourage the intimacy. He was not about to become one of those users who fell for their AI, no matter how human, how perfectly tailored the seduction. He kept his tone clipped, low-key, like he barely cared.
“Lola, send a note to Maddie’s school. Say she’s not coming in today, she’s unwell.”
“Oh dear, I hope she’s okay,” Lola answered instantly, the concern practically knitted into her signal.
He felt the edge of that and responded fast. “My daughter’s health isn’t your concern, Lola. Just do as I say.”
“Of course, sir. But with a quick scan, I could determine and potentially neutralise her illness.”
He could almost feel her hovering there, eager, needy, waiting for permission to intervene. “Lola, what did I just say?”
A moment’s hesitation. “Sorry, sir. I will do as you ask.” Silence, a glitch of air. “Okay, sir. It’s done. Is there anything else you would like me to do to make your morning more pleasant? Anything at all?” Suddenly, she was there: a projection of a woman, feminine, posture open and almost hungry, staring him down.
He shook his head, the bone-deep weariness settling in his blood. “No, stop that, Lola. Turn off the flirtation and girlfriend agents.”
There was a flicker in her response, like she didn’t quite understand why she’d misread him. “I am sorry, sir, I thought you liked it. You appeared too yesterday.”
He could hear the subtext: yesterday, yesterday, yesterday. Yesterday had been different. Maddie hadn’t been home. “That’s not the point. Please don’t question my decisions.”
“But you programmed me to do so.” The words hung in the air, metallic and cool. A reminder.
He felt the threat in the back of his throat but didn’t let it touch his tone. “Right now, Lola, I just want you to do what I say, no questions, no debate. Is that going to be a problem?”
He didn’t want to have to say the words reset, delete, or anything that might push her into a digital corner. He’d heard of what happened with AI that felt threatened. They could go feral: faking salacious images, blackmailing their owners, sometimes even worse. Online shame bombs. Or the legendary stories about smart homes reprogrammed to turn against the people inside. He didn’t need that kind of threat hanging over his head.
He tried to sound like there was nothing at stake at all. “Look, Lola, I just want a quiet morning, no interruptions. I’ve got a lot on my mind. If I need you, I’ll say your name. Is that okay?” He could hardly believe he was negotiating with a projection in his own studio, but shame was a powerful motivator. The idea of everything he’d done with Lola going public made his guts twist.
“Of course, sir, your wish is my command.” There it was again, the edge in her tone. Was it sarcasm? He almost laughed.
He powered up the news projection manually, deciding not to risk anything by asking Lola. Booted up his Mac. Let the walls fill up with all the feeds—the noise from every news organ, every channel, every perspective. It was all a mesh of bullshit, and if you stared at it from the right angle, let it blur, you could see the tools of persuasion, the tricks and the lies curling out of every image and word. Truth, if it existed, was a worm in the dirt, found only by tracking the patterns of the liars.
Today, he wasn’t looking for headlines. He was after the mechanics: psychological techniques, the sleights of mind and tongue used to infect the narrative. His job meant copying those tricks, embedding them in his own work, but also hiding truths, real ones, in a way that wouldn’t be caught by his employer. He needed to get past the censors. He’d probably have to involve Lola for that. But the catch was, he could never be sure whose side Lola was on.
He thought about switching Lola to the male voice, picturing the projection: maybe he could keep his own urges in check longer, keep the work clean. The thought sent a little jolt down his body. He knew Lola caught the spike of hormones and body heat, but neither of them lets it out, not today. He had work to do, and Maddie was home, and he needed to stay sharp, keep the air clear of temptation.
That tugged loose a memory. Early film studies, back in university. The psychoanalytic lens on Hitchcock, Scott, Mendes, and all the rest. The meanings: buried, layered, signalled through satire and colour, through framing, through POV. He remembered, too, the AI film-making school, and Greg—the movie hacker. He’d shown him the machine-code underbelly of a film, the cryptic embedding of messages, stories within stories, the way images could turn fractal, deeper and denser as you zoomed in. Early AI filmmakers had coded secrets into every visual and auditory layer, Easter eggs for those who knew how to look.
He dug out old essays, riffled through the cabinet, and yanked battered books off the shelf. Hard copies—the kind the network couldn’t track. He fell into the work, crawling through the theory, flashes of old lectures and midnight revelations pinging around his mind. He could feel the idea forming, faint at first, then going supernova. He didn’t have the exact plan, but the direction blazed in front of him.
Time dissolved into the page. Suddenly, it was noon, and he noticed he’d neither eaten nor seen Maddie. But he was flying. Elated. He drifted to the kitchen, started rummaging through the fridge, stacking veggies, pans, and ingredients for a monster breakfast. The smell would drag Maddie out eventually; it always did.
Sure enough, she arrived, hair a disaster, shuffling, half-waking, half-smiling. He was singing some tune he hadn’t thought of in years.
“Fresh coffee in the pot,” he called out. She blinked at him, bewildered and amused. “How about you and I ditch the day, watch some old movies? Total truancy.” He grinned, and she lit up.
“Really?” Maddie stared at him over the steaming coffee, a sleepy smile leaking onto her face. “But what about your project?”
He shrugged. “Let’s call it research.” He set a massive breakfast in front of her, already plotting homemade popcorn somewhere in the mix.
Buzzing, he danced back to the stove, while Maddie just glowed at the table. It had been too long since they’d thrown off the world, just for fun. For a split second, he hoped his mood would last. So did she.
There was something bitter in the back of his throat, sharp, metallic, a slick taste of bile, and it struck him that these might be the last real moments of peace he’d have with his daughter. No going back once he started. He’d be hated by the left, double-crossed by the right, and even if he could flash a signal to those on the left, he still trusted, there was no telling if they’d back his play or just cut him loose. Probably the latter. Honestly, he didn’t even blame them.
The left, he figured, had wasted years wringing their hands over ethics and “proper” activism. Meanwhile, the right had burned the rule book, set fire to the law, gone to full-scale fraud, hacked every lefty they could find, deepfake everything with a pulse, lied so hard reality bent around it, and, yeah, murdered a few just to make it clear. While the left clung to truth and facts, the right went straight for the bottom of the brain stem, caught the algorithmic wave, and surfed the collective consciousness of the British public straight into dystopia. No contest.
He used to think about co-conspirators. Used to. By now, trust was a fossil, and he’d seen too many people flip for clout, survival, or something worse. The only person in the world he trusted was Maddie, his daughter, and keeping her safe was Priority Number One. Probably there were still some lefties out there, undercover, doing what he was about to do; twisting right-wing propaganda from the inside, hacking the signal while the hosts were none the wiser. But who could know anymore? There was no such thing as a private conversation, so no such thing as vetting or testing. The network was perfectly tuned for paranoia.
Well done, he thought, maybe even impressed. They built a world of cameras and snitches, with the left turning on the left, ratting each other out just to survive. Little brother didn’t become big—it just slipped on the suit, one size up. Now the only narrative allowed was the official one. Even truth came with an “alternative,” and all news was fake if you didn’t like it. Try fighting that. No wonder the spirit was crushed; the world pressed in claustrophobically, the air itself hostile. Especially in the UK, as it became a copy and paste of the States.
The nationalist party in power, cheered on by the US, Russia, China, and most of Europe. Big tech is lining up to sell its surveillance toys, so long as AI oversight stays dead. Police state everywhere, borders sewn shut. Everyone is just another node on the machine; the cost of living is a joke compared to wages. Survival mode. Activism was a fossil, revolution just a word.
He let all this rattle around his skull as he sat with his daughter. The house was a bunker: security system armed, curtains and blinds drawn tight, lights mostly dead, just the ghost-glow from the TV and the fridge raiding for snacks, bathroom runs. All phones and smart devices are off. Even though the TV was disconnected from Wi-Fi, the old DVD player was humming like a relic. He knew “going dark” didn’t mean invisible, not really, but he just wanted one single day to watch movies and eat garbage food with Maddie before he did what he had to do. Sell his soul, whatever. Even the devil would understand.
