“You can’t just rewrite history.”
“Who said?”
“What?”
“Who said you can’t just rewrite history?”
“Well…the historians.”
“And who made them the gatekeepers of our past?”
“Their training, their PhDs…”
“And yet half of them can’t even agree with each other, and the rest are just trading in theories.”
“Yeah, but 99% agree on the basic facts, and the ones who don’t are crackpots with an agenda.”
“All history’s biased, man. Written by the winners.”
“Oh, come on.” Jacob couldn’t believe what he was hearing; there was an edge to his voice, frustration straining his words. “Sure, you get country-by-country bias, but there’s a consensus on the major events, the stuff that matters. Any serious historian will back it up, just pick up an academic book.”
“We’re taking care of that too.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means what it means. Look, do you want the job or not?”
Jacob just sat there. He said nothing. Watched the cursor blink at him, a little taunt, a little threat. He didn’t want the job, not really, but he couldn’t afford to say no, not with the way things were.
“Will I have full creative control?”
“To a point, as long as the piece is on message.”
What the hell did that mean? The unease wormed its way into him, crawling under his skin, making him want to jump out of it. For a second, he considered saying no, getting out before it started.
“Jacob, we want you. I am willing to advance you an extra 5k and give you 10% additional credit points. We need this done. Do it well and there will be plenty more where that came from.”
“Deal.”
He threw his headset onto the sofa and flopped down after it, all the fight draining out of him in a single collapse. Head in his hands, he let out a long, low groan, a sound like something dying slowly.
“Dad, what’s up?” Maddie’s voice, coming from nowhere, made him jump.
He looked up and there she was, standing in the doorway, watching him like he was some animal at the zoo.
“Oh, nothing, darling.” He slouched further into the couch, trying to disappear into it.
“Really? Is it Mom? Is she giving you grief again?” Her face was sharp with concern. “She can’t be asking for money when I’m here basically all the time.”
He reached out a hand, she took it, dropped onto the seat next to him.
“No, no. It’s not your mother.” He hesitated, treading water in the silence. “It’s just work stuff.”
“A new film project?” Something in her eyes lit up at the thought—the hope, the nostalgia for the days when his work had been about something. Before the corporate scripts, before the ads. Back when the stories had meant something, especially to her.
“Yeah. It’s a new project.”
“So, that’s good, right?”
“The money is good. God knows we need it. This could really help, make things easier for both of us.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s what they want me to do, and who I’d be working for.”
“Bad people?”
“The worst.”
“Dangerous?” Her voice caught between fear and a weird kind of excitement.
“Not if I do what they ask.”
“So, what’s the problem?” The way she looked at him, like she was expecting him to just get on with it, left him momentarily speechless. “If you don’t have a choice but it pays well, then the decision’s made for you.” She locked her eyes on his. “I must do things all the time I don’t want to do. Homework, tidy my room, wash the dishes.”
“You barely do even one of those things,” he muttered.
“But I do just enough to keep you off my back, get my pocket money and keep my teachers happy.”
He gave her the look, the one that said he wished she wasn’t so brutally honest all the damn time.
“And that’s all you must do, Dad. Just do enough to get paid, and don’t worry about it.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
“It is. Stop taking it all so seriously.”
“They want me to whitewash history. To rewrite it. To churn out misinformation, make it look like art. To sell out my integrity.”
“Well, sorry, Dad, but boo-fucking-hoo.”
“What?” That shocked him.
“Do you know what’s happening at school every day?” He only looked more lost, so she kept going. “Do you know what we’re taught? Ever since the fascists took over.”
“Watch it.” Jacob straightened, suddenly wide awake, his eyes darting to the windows. “You can’t just say that out loud.”
“Or what, they’ll come bust down the door?”
“Maybe.”
“Dad, you watch too many reels. I keep telling you how toxic they are. The point is, what we’re told at school is a lie, and we all know it. But if you speak out, or answer the test questions with what really happened, you get punished. So, suck it up. Take their money and stop acting like it’s a crime.”
“The money would be good. And the credit bump...” Even he could hear the hope leaking into his voice.
“In that case,” she grinned, “can we get pizza and a movie tonight?” That childish glee broke through, like the sun cutting past storm clouds, and for a second, he remembered why he did all this in the first place.
If it meant more nights like this, more pizza and scary movies with his daughter, he could choke down the job, dignity, and all. For her, he’d find a way to make it go down easy.
He let himself relax, just a little. And, right on cue, headlights swept over the living room wall as a car pulled into the driveway.
Jacob shot to his feet. He hadn’t been expecting visitors, not now, not ever, not out here. The footsteps—they were heavy, crunching on the gravel, each step measured, deliberate, not a sound you could miss. Whoever it was stopped at the door. Didn’t knock, didn’t call out, just lingered in that weird pocket of silence. Five, ten seconds. Then, finally, the bell. Three rings, not fast, not slow. Like a code.
He glanced quick at Maddie, signalled her to hold tight, stay out of sight. She knew something was off; they never got visitors, not at this hour, not after everything. The bell again, exactly three times like before. Something about it held menace.
She’d tried to listen in, not just because she was scared but because her dad always acted like he had secrets worth protecting. But the house might as well have been soundproofed, nothing came through. All she could see, peeking through the crack in the door, was the back of her dad, holding the door barely open, his right hand braced at the top, ready to slam it shut in a heartbeat. And in the gap, the silhouette of the visitor: huge, backlit by the car’s headlights, shoulders that filled the frame. The conversation, if you could call it that, was just a murmur, a low grind of words, never rising above the threshold.
As it wound down, Maddie tried to melt back into the room, but not before risking a glance through the blinds. The guy was already halfway to his car, keys in hand. He stopped, turned. Looked straight at her, no smile, no wave, just a stare. Like he was checking for movement, threats, anything at all. She ducked out of sight, heart hammering, and dropped herself onto the sofa just as her dad came in.
Maddie felt this bolt of fear, a cold snap from head to toe. Her dad was pale, not just worried but gutted, standing there with an envelope in his hand, holding it like it was already bad news.
“Dad.” Her voice sounded off in the quiet, and he just stood there, sunk down in thought, eyes on the envelope. “Dad!” Still nothing. He looked up finally, like he had to swim through memory to recognise her.
“Sorry, darling, what?” He looked about as calm as someone who’d just seen a ghost.
“Who was that?”
He frowned, still processing. “Who was what?”
“At the door, who was it?”
“Oh. That.” A beat, like he had to replay the whole thing in his mind. “That was the agency, work stuff.”
“At this time of night?”
“Yeah. They sent him to drop off a deposit. And a message.”
“What kind of message?”
He hesitated, eyes flickering to the envelope. “He said we should be careful now. What we say, and where we say it.”
“He said what?” She felt ice in her bones, a low-grade panic. “What the fuc…?”
“He said he hoped we enjoy our pizza.” He met her eyes, and the room shrank around them, an unspoken fear filling the gaps.
The doorbell rang again. They nearly jumped—the kind of jolt that lingers, echoing in the body and the atmosphere of a room, disrupting the silence in a measurable way. He just froze. No movement, no fight or flight; almost as if the startle response had misfired and left him locked in place.
“Dad!” Her tone cut through, a spike on a flat line. She tried again. “Dad!” This time he looked at her, still registering confusion. “Check the app.” The words hung there. He stared back, not processing. “I think it might be the pizza.”
Relief was instantaneous—a chemical release, oxytocin sweeping his system. Like flipping a switch, their energy collapsed for a moment, both slumping with the aftershock. For a second, neither moved. Then, as if cued by the same external prompt, they bolted upright and rushed to the door. It didn’t occur to either of them that they never actually checked the app. Caution was a casualty; they threw open the door with a single, overeager movement and came close to knocking the delivery rider flat.
Later that night, the decision was almost unspoken. They did what they had always done: indulged in their ritual, even if it had long since been outlawed and the official versions scrubbed from the network. The fact that they still had an old DVD player felt almost like a secret advantage. So, together, they sat and binge-watched Doctor Who. For the duration, problems faded into the background, new dilemmas taking the place of old ones, if only temporarily.
It was during an old Matt Smith episode that a different idea emerged. Even though the brief was an art documentary, built on real footage and manipulated with AI, there was nothing in the outline that constrained creativity at the meta level. Messages could be buried; codes could be hidden. Truth, if it ever mattered, could be embedded everywhere: in the metadata, in the messaging, in every shadow and line of dialogue. Delivery could happen at the subconscious level.
There was precedent for this, of course. Artists had always embedded layers upon layers of meaning, concealing intent where only some might find it. AI opened even more options—a film within a film, accessible only if you knew where to look. He could let the surface-level story play out, while running another narrative beneath: in the colours, the edits, the language, the sound. All the cues would be there, contradicting, reframing, multiplying the impact.
If the execution was right, it could end up as his best work—a kind of force multiplier, something that might reverberate. If it failed, or if he got caught, he could be excised from even the most marginal progressive circles, such as they were. Maybe the only way out was through create the work, survive the moment, and trust that someday, when regimes change and history is rewritten, he’d get the chance to explain all of this. At the very least, he hoped not to go down as one more villain in a time when villains seemed to multiply by the minute.
Strangely, his mood improved. They’d polished off most of the pizza, another marker of the passage of time. It was late. “Fancy some ice cream?” He said to Maddie almost at random.
She looked at him, surprised. “Really? This late? What about school tomorrow?”
He replied with a shrug, as if the whole question was obsolete. “What about it? You already said it yourself—all they teach these days are lies, maths, and AI programming. Do you really need to be at your best for that? If you don’t feel like it, just skip. Log into your AMI for the minimum hour or two, then opt out and claim illness.”
The statement gave her pause; she tilted her head, almost examining him for signals that this was a joke or a test. “But what about the credit chip fine? If I’m not actually sick, the AMI will know.”
He gestured carelessly, waving off the worry, even if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “Don’t worry. My man at the agency can manage that.” The words hung in the air: My man at the agency. Where had that even come from?
Maddie dropped her voice, almost conspiratorial. “Dad. You know they’re probably listening, right? What are you doing?”
He kept his tone level, almost performative for the microphones he knew could be live at any time. “I’m telling them: If they want me to help spread their propaganda, I’ll do it, but I need leeway. Small favours. If I’m to be an independent agent of the national psyops team, I expect the full benefits package.” He stood, locking eyes with her, a wink the final flourish. “Now, do you want that ice cream or not? It’s mint chocolate chip.”
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