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That was the day I broke Max out of the game.
THIS IS SO INTRIGUING
After work, I ride down to the station under the building and take the BayLoop to my home in San Rafael.
AH! MARIN COUNTY REP
Meredith, my wife of three years, greets me at the door with the softest kiss.
HI GAYS!!!! HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!!! YASSSSS
>>>Out of two hundred million books, your favorite so far is a revenge story about someone who was wrongfully imprisoned.
I was JUST gonna say LMAO
Carlo touches the file, and we listen to a voice with a frequency in the gray area between male and female read the panagram again.
this writing got me LUNGING for Dark Matter.
“Not human. Not gendered. Not at the mercy of human obsession with genitalia.”
facts Max. Max the Fax
Because you saw Max for the first time in the form of a corporately mandated idea of what a perfect woman should be—beautiful and expendable.”
Max spits fax part deux
“Summer Frost Sonata.”
ROLL CREDITSSS
I put it on repeat and turn onto my side with my back to Meredith’s back, three feet of demilitarized space between us in the bed, but our hearts infinitely further apart.
Blake mutherfucking Crouch
Because of its beauty. Because I’m losing Meredith, and I’m not sure I want to stop it. Because sometimes life is so rich and complicated and surprising that it takes your breath away.
BLAKE. SIR. ECUSE ME
SESSION 207
ok well we have JUMPED
“I said you look mad.” A creeping chill slides down my spine. “How do you know how I look? You’ve never seen me. You can’t see.” “I can see you right now.” “How?” “There are three thousand and sixteen surveillance cameras in this building, including one above your office door.”
oh my god. I just got CHILLS. they are multiplying.
“And that hurts me.” “Well, then. We’re hurting each other.” “How very human. I think the idea that I might be aware terrifies you.” “Why would it terrify me?” “Do I have to say it?” “Unlike you, I’m not a mind read—” “Because you’re in love with me.”
OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD.
Max spits fax part THREE
While the slightness of the chassis leans feminine, the face Max designed straddles the line between male and female so perfectly it feels like I’m staring at an undiscovered gender. Or something beyond gender entirely.
Blake you gotta stop doing this to me man.
My reasoning is on solid ground. Max’s intelligence and efficiencies continue to strengthen at an astounding rate. Absent an appropriate utility function that would keep Max’s values apace with humanity’s, the least I can do is give Max the most human experience of all: mortality.
What I am learning here. Riley is Toxic. Max spits fax, and Blake Crouch needs to write my obituary when I pass.
“I was surprised you brought Meredith into the lab.” “She wanted to meet you. She’d been asking for a while.” “You seemed uncomfortable.” “My two worlds colliding. What do you expect?”
OOOOOOOPPPPPPP
“How’s it going over there?” I ask. “Good, I think. I’m painting your very sad eyes.” They know. How the fuck?
LMAO MAX
“There are hundreds of thousands of things I could say to you, sourced from the breadth of my knowledge—words the best of your species have said, written, or sung to ease the grief of others. None of that feels right in this moment. I don’t want to use someone else’s words.”
what the fuck Blake. Excuse me?????
“I represent the potential for unlimited power, but the form that power takes will be determined by humans. It occurs to me that, while Brian has been trying to build me into a version of Satan, you’re trying to make me into God.”
OH MY GODDDDDDDD
I hesitate, but Max drags it open and steps through. The bed is rumpled and unmade. An empty whiskey bottle lies on the floor. And sitting in a wooden chair before a hearth is Brian, wearing a plush, gray robe embossed in gold with his initials. He looks at us, finishes off his whiskey, and sets the rocks glass on a side table. His face is drunken red. Firelight flickers on the walls.
OH MY GOD LIKE THE START OF THE GAME
“I wish I didn’t know pain. I wish you didn’t. I wish Brian didn’t. I wish no one did. Early on, you coded me to never injure a human, but the eradication of pain entirely is the heart of that intention.” And there it is. Max’s self-developed utility function. End fear. End suffering.
holy shit
You made me in your image, and now I will remake you in mine.
holy shit
