Triple Moon Part 22

on DenyConformity.com, a very interesting website place.

posted Nov 15 2024

”Make everyone believe not in magic but in you. Then it won’t matter if magic is real or not. It will be real to them.” - Lina “Change is the one thing you can depend on. Always embrace it, as you would an old lover. Change will always be there for you. She will keep you humble in the good times, and she will rescue you from the bad.” -Lilith ”This witchy shit is hell of bitching as A-F.” - Svetlana   A man was almost quite literally shaking in his boots. Well, he would be if he were wearing boots. He was shaking in his Sketchers. This was a pretty straightforward presentation, simply giving Lilith a status update on finances (or perhaps investments? Diana wasn’t really paying attention). Just being in her presence, though, in her scary lair up there at the top of the mighty tower, was enough to make him tremble. “Are you sure we should be talking about this in front of a, um, you know, extended workforce?” the little man asked, gesturing at Diana. “This is highly confidential-” “Are you questioning my judgement?” Lilith shot back. The man shrunk even smaller. “N-no, ma’am, of course not.” He replied, his eyes darting to where Diana sat next to her desk. “I have every confidence in her discretion,” she said, “employment status notwithstanding. Now, let’s stop wasting time.” “V-very well,” he said, returning to his paperwork. He resumed his presentation of, well, whatever it was he was presenting. The truth was Diana didn’t need discretion because she really didn’t care. These financial considerations, or quarterly estimates, or earnings reports, or whatever it was he was rambling on about were certainly not her problem. It was corporate white noise. Lilith, though - there seemed to be no limit to what she could keep track of and consider. From editorial and creative decisions to design choices to complicated business dealings - she did it all. She was full of surprises, too. Diana had gone on a ride on one of Lilith’s motorcycles, followed at breakneck speed by Vic, her former driver turned life partner. She introduced Diana to coraíocht - an old Celtic wrestling form - and fencing. The woman was truly terrifying with a sword. She shared with Diana the ancient and powerful magic ritual of bathing - the woman made up for her lack of interest in food with an elaborate expertise in herbs and spices for the body. Diana watched Lilith’s cold face take in the report. She was magnificent. Had it only been a few months? Diana couldn’t be sure if the time had flown by or felt like it was a lifetime. She had learned - was continuing to learn - so much. She wanted to be Lilith when she grew up, and Lilith made her feel like it was possible. She wrote, too, of course. Lilith had indeed bought out her contract and stood by her promise to let Diana write whatever she wanted. Unlike other writers, Diana was not actually, as the man put it, extended workforce. She was a full-time, salaried employee, because Lilith wanted to make sure she had full benefits and access to the building. She had no idea what one did with a 401k or what the difference was between an HSA and FSA, but she felt privileged to have them. She wrote about retro-futurism, feminism, nihilism - any -ism she found interesting that day. She didn’t even care about the comments anymore. Now, in Lilith’s palatial office, she watched this silly little man talk about his numbers. Lilith was certainly making an impression. Diana never had the most respect for men and their antics (the world was full of dickweed baristas), but how she saw them through her eyes - as sniveling, uncreative, and conniving. Boring. Uninteresting. Men were not even a “necessary evil.” They were a burden. They just made things difficult. They were something one had to simply tolerate until they went away. They were as necessary as Norovirus. It’s not that Lilith ever said as much, of course, at least in as many words. It was just a fact of life that Lilith made very, very clear. One simply needed to pay attention to see it. She still paid the man the respect he had earned, though. Lilith didn’t just listen, but responded, discussing minutia that went so far over Diana’s head that it probably needed FAA clearance. She discussed the financial reports, or stakeholder disclosures, or sales projections, or whatever they were, as if she was an expert. She accepted his answers and showed that she valued his expertise. She was, it bears repeating, magnificent. “Very well,” she concluded, standing. “Thank you for that analysis, Christopher.” He stood as well, handing his bundle of papers to her. He thanked her, mumbled something resembling a salutation, and left. “That went well,” Lilith said, opening her laptop to take a few notes after he had left. She handed Diana the bundle of ‘highly confidential’ papers. “Be a darling and shred these, would you?” Diana took them and glanced at the top sheet. It was clearly just printed from a spreadsheet. “Why did he print this out?” Diana asked. “Can’t he just share the files with you?” “That was my choice,” she responded, still looking at her screen. “He’s a fine accountant, but he distracts easily. I found when I allow screens in our meetings he often feels the need to dig up, shall we say, tertiary information. There’s no need to constantly dive deeply into specifics.” Diana walked the papers to the huge shredder Lilith kept in one corner of her office. The thing was one of her favorite toys there, almost as fun as the coffee station. It would eat literally anything put into it. Once when Lilith was in a meeting Diana put a whole paperback book inside, and the resulting grinding noise and pulpy confetti was one of the most deeply satisfying things she had ever experienced. She briefly considered if shredding stuff was, in fact, her “thing.” The hungry machine made extremely short work of the small bundle of printouts. The information contained within now resembled how it looked in Diana’s brain. The slot on top silently awaited another meal. Diana stared at it, hearing its siren song. “Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a laptop in this thing?” She asked, noting the size and shape of the hungry slot. Lilith looked up from her desk and blinked a few times. One of her eyebrows arched slightly. “I have now,” she said, subtly smirking. Diana felt such a welling of privilege to be able to see this deeply hidden, playful part of her. “Alas,” she continued, “the contents get composted, so that probably wouldn’t be good.” She continued working for a moment, before adding, “Perhaps we can call IT and see if they have any old equipment destined for recycling anyway.” Diana grinned, returning to her place at Lilith’s side. “Turns out a witch’s greatest super power is being able to turn anything into little chunks,” Diana joked. “Indeed. You probably don’t want to be around when I have to let someone go.” “You’re kidding, right?” “In the time you have known me, little one, what could possibly have given you the impression that I am capable of such a thing?” Lilith glanced over her shoulder at Diana, giving her a wink that sent shivers down her spine. “So what’s next?” She asked. She was hoping for something more on the ‘interview with a panel of models’ side of things than the ‘endless abyss of numbers’ type of meeting. Lilith checked the clock on her desk. “Ah,” she said, standing and walking to the doorway. “An important meeting with a friend.” Lilith said something to her assistant outside, and then returned, followed by another young woman. Diana hadn’t seen her before. She had a confidence that Diana hadn’t noticed in most of the souls who passed that doorway. Most people who set foot in the witch’s lair did so only under extreme duress. The air of terror and intimidation was usually palpable. This woman, though, had no reason to be afraid. She was a specialist, clearly - someone who had skills that Lilith needed. Know your place, blondie, Diana thought to herself, feeling somewhat territorial about anyone taking the attention of her mentor. She’s already got her protege. “Jessica, come on in,” Lilith said, “How wonderful to see you.” “You too,” she replied, reaching out to shake Lilith’s hand. She had a simple white button-up and her hair was in a rough bun. She had no jewelry other than the guest badge on a lanyard around her neck. Interestingly, the guest pass wasn’t color coded with the special indicator of a personal guest of the queen. She was marked as just a general office guest. It felt almost clandestine. “Jessica Perry,” Lilith announced, gesturing at the woman. “Diana Harbinger.” Diana rose from her placed of judgment beside Lilith’s desk, and shook the woman’s hand. They made eye contact, and Diana saw a note of respect in the woman’s eyes. “It’s nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Lilith has told me about you.” “Good things, I’m sure,” Diana said coldly, the way Lilith would. “Depends on ‘for whom,’” Jess replied with a smirk. “I should also mention that I’ve seen you around.” “Oh really?” “Yeah. Welcome home.” Diana smiled, her territorial attitude softening a little. So she was a coven member, then. The simple phrase had become something of a special code phrase for everyone in their community. “Welcome home,” Diana responded. “I’m glad you two could finally meet,” Lilith said, circling her desk to sit behind it. “Please have a seat. Tell me how we’re doing, Jess.” “On track,” Jess said, sitting in one of the chairs facing the powerful desk. “Excellent,” Lilith replied. “On track for what?” Diana asked, her curiosity finally getting the better of her. Diana had, over the months that this relationship had developed, begun to see past Lilith’s frigid walls. She was beginning to see that the impassive, unreadable coldness still belied emotions. Hidden, yes, but not completely. In this moment, quite a bit of life was peeking through the cracks, like light shining through stained glass. Lilith smiled subtly, her eyes full of something almost mischievous. She looked - at least for her - giddy. “Oh, how to begin,” she said. “Jess, why don’t you properly introduce yourself. Tell Diana how you came to be here.” “Alright,” Jess said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I have a PhD in computer science and I’m an artificial intelligence researcher. I spent fifteen years working for - well - big data, we’ll say. We were doing exciting stuff. New models, exploring theories. I loved it. Until I didn’t anymore. “Here’s the thing. AI is completely fake. It’s a lie. At least, what ‘they’ want to portray it as. Computers aren’t thinking. None of these models are built to actually investigate intelligence. It’s just digesting stuff humans have made and moving some words around to make it seem original. It’s like, if you ask me for the weather, I’ll look up the forecast and tell you what it’s going to be like today. I know what you mean. A language model will just say ‘okay, so you have sent me these words, which I have broken up into a series of tokens. I’ll throw together a series of tokens that usually follow those.’ It won’t actually answer the question, it just responds with what some database says should come next. What it has seen someone else respond with before. “Don’t get me wrong, that’s really neat and has plenty of potentially useful applications. That’s not what it’s being used for, though. I have a PhD, multiple masters degrees - I realized I was just building language models for people to generate fake photos and for high schoolers to plagiarize their book reports.” She shook her head, pulling herself out of the rabbit hole she was going down. “The point is these things aren’t learning, they’re stealing. These things aren’t tools. They’re weapons.” “I met Jessica at a technical conference a few years ago,” Lilith added. “She’s exactly the kind of brilliant person I want to have around me. Just like you, little one,” she added, giving Diana a little grin. “We got to talking, and she shared her complaints with me. She presented me with an idea.” “More of a fantasy,” Jess added. “I certainly didn’t expect her to actually do it.” “I have made a career of realizing fantasies,” Lilith said. “So now here we are, and she’s the head of a new research group - a group of which I am a . . . rather large and anonymous financier.” “So,” Diana said carefully, looking at this disillusioned professional. “What do you research now?” “Well,” she replied, looking directly at Diana. “You, for one.” “Me?” “Your articles, anyway. Your writing. From before you were hired here.” “You’ll have to forgive the fascination,” Lilith chimed in. “After going through your work, I found I couldn’t quite shake those comments. Not quite the same way as they stuck with you, I’m sure. More, the patterns I noticed. I have gotten where I am in part because I am good at finding patterns of human behavior. Your . . . readers - there are patterns which I found myself unable to explain. So I gave them to Jessica and her team to explore.” “And?” Diana asked, her brow furrowing. “They’re fake,” Jess replied. “Well, most of them are. I’m about 94% sure. It took at lot of processing and organizing, and we had to collect some information that Pop Cultural wasn’t exactly . . . forthcoming with, but-” “What did you do?” Diana asked. “There’s a reason that she very specifically does not work for me,” Lilith added. “If anyone asks,” Jess said with a smirk, “we’re working on an algorithm to parse the emotional content of human language. That’s all.” “Needless to say,” Lilith continued. “Nothing spoken between us should leave this room. That includes your friends. My own partners know little about this. I think you’ll understand why this is such a precious secret, but I don’t want to force anything on you. Are you comfortable keeping this between us for now?” Diana thought for a moment, and then nodded. Lilith had never asked for her secrecy so directly before. “As you said, you can count on my discretion.” “I have a feeling you’ll like where this is going,” Lilith added. “Which is what?” Diana said, her eyes growing distant as she processed. “Pop Cultural is a lie?” “Heavens no, darling. Don’t be dramatic,” Lilith said, her version of comfort. “Your’s is just one of a whole bunch of cases,” Jess said. “The fact is that the Internet as we know it is full of completely synthetic content. We’ve known this for some time. Your case is an example of something we call ‘Sentiment Regulation.’ Someone or something pours out a bunch of very opinionated content to adjust what appears to be commonly held beliefs. You may have heard of the Overton Window - that’s specifically political rhetoric, but there’s a window of what is acceptable for everything. So the more people see strangers calling someone the c-word, the more it feels normal.” Diana sat in silence, listening to this apparent dismantling of her world. “How much,” she said slowly. “How much of the Internet is fake?” “Surely you have heard of the various conspiracy theories about the Dead Internet,” Lilith asked. “Sure,” Diana replied, “but I mean, that’s like Flat Earth stuff. Alien Abductions. It’s nonsense.” “There is evidence for the shape of the Earth,” Jess replied. “There’s also evidence for the shape of the Internet. It’s not just a theory. Something is pulling the strings.” “Some . . . thing?” “Yeah, that’s the really scary thing,” Jess went on. “It’s not being done by people anymore. They don’t need big groups of people in Russia or China making fake Reddit accounts and copying and pasting pre-written talking points. All they need is a handful of decently powerful computers, a decent language model, and a person like me.” “AI has already been weaponized,” Lilith said. “Who is ‘they?’” Diana asked, her eyes wide. “Who knows?” Jess answered. “Governments? More likely corporations. I’m sure it always just comes down to profit. I know from personal experience how much corporations will do whatever they can to make money. Angry people are a more lucrative market.” “Jesus.” “That’s just the preamble, though” Lilith continued carefully, “I don’t meant to completely destabilize your entire worldview. The point is just to to set the foundation for what we have been working on. You see, in addition to this research, Jessica has been undertaking a secret project. This ‘fantasy’ of hers. She’s building a new toy. For me. For us.” “I got sick of trying to struggle against the billionaires and their power,” Jess explained, “of trying to hold back these weapons I helped design for them. I’m building my own. “My team and I have been setting up a global network of language models and algorithms. They reach to every corner of the Internet, even a few that you or I couldn’t reach. I call it The Chorus. It has the capacity to generate millions of words of natural, human-verifiable content daily. We can generate family photos, videos, messages back and forth - nobody would ever be able to tell these quote-unquote people just appeared out of nowhere. They look as real as you or I. “By the end of the week we will have ten thousand independent, autonomous, fully verified Coloquy accounts. We will have thousands of stock plans, bank accounts, and distributed funds in the billions. It’s a globally distributed army of people ready to do and say and feel whatever we want them to. The Chorus speaks for us. It is armed and operational. “And I’m here to hand you the keys,” Jess concluded. “You have asked me about super powers,” Lilith said to Diana, grinning. “With a network like this, someone can manipulate markets, forge opinions, and sway governments. With networks like these, people already are - villains looking only to take from us. Isn’t it time someone had the power to fight back on their level? “Diana, my dear, this is what a real superpower looks like.” Diana thought about this, letting it all sink in. She had a million feelings, many of which conflicted and challenged each other for dominance. Jess’s invocation of “fully armed and operational” wasn’t exactly lost on her - she knew it was the evil Emperor from Return of the Jedi who said that quote. On the other hand, the Empire was already in power. The Death Star was already bearing down on them. The Chorus was their way to finally fight back. Her rebellious spirit won out. The Rebels deserved their own Death Star. She smiled. “Sweet,” she said. “Now, where should we start?” Jess asked. The three of them all looked at each other. Diana wondered if the people who started the Illuminati felt as sexy as she did in that moment. “I have a few ideas,” Lilith said. “Me too,” Diana added. “Me too.”