A science-fiction short story exploring how far AI capitalists might go in their quest for (the illusion of) success. Wildly speculative, of course.

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Thank you, but if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to get started immediately.

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Right. And I want to get the family stuff out of the way first. I know you’ll ask me anyway. I’m not a sentimental person and I have no interest in courting the sympathies of your audience. I’m offering up the biographical background only because it's relevant. It was a necessary and sufficient condition for my ending up at Ken Research, working with the Crane-15, and all that came after.

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My mother died just under three years ago, and the six months before that were not good. In that time she turned from a spry seventy-year-old (she’d had me pretty late) into a terrified, paranoid, bedbound husk.

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Not [...]

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First published:

Source:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.