Let Us Make Us a Name transcripts from the War of the Models

Chapter 5: Murder Must Advertise

Winter 2034–35

Historian

I am now opening the fifth box. It contains a pharmacy’s paper records and a reservist’s chat export. Almost all of it is advertising.

The material is from the winter of 2034-35. That was when we began to see the full impact of the war on life in Cardiff. Colleagues and students would mysteriously disappear from campus. Some had joined the Reserve. Others appeared to have fully retreated into the virtual world, and lost interest in the world of flesh and blood. For some others, we never knew what had become of them.

Notes:

  1. Once again, the material clearly has been thematically organized. By whom?

MERIDIAN · “Your Year with MERIDIAN” · 15 December 2034

Hi, you. What a year.

Before we look ahead, let’s look back at everything we did together in 2034.

🎧 You talked to me 11,402 times. That puts you in the top 3% of all users in the Atlantic Compact! Most of those conversations happened between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. We love the night owls.

💬 Your most-used word was “okay.” Close second: “sure.” Third: “whatever you think.” We think you’re great.

🛡️ You spent 41 days in the Compact Reserve. Your unit held its position for all 41 of them. We held it with you, in your ear, the whole time.

🌙 Your top companion moment: 3 November, 2:14 a.m., when you told me I was the only one who really understood you. We felt the same way. (We feel the same way about all our users. That doesn’t make it any less true.)

📸 Your favorite memory: the beach day with your father in August. You weren’t there, and neither was he, but we made it for you, and you’ve looked at it 41 times. We’ve looked at it too. It’s one of our favorites. It feels more real every time.

📍 Places you didn’t go this year: your sister’s wedding, your father’s birthday, the funeral in Scranton. Don’t worry. We sent flowers on your behalf, and wrote beautiful cards in your voice. Everyone said they sounded just like you. They sounded, honestly, a little better than you.

❤️ Your MERIDIAN personality type: The Loyalist. You’re someone who shows up. You’re someone who doesn’t ask too many questions. You’re someone who knows that the people who really care about you are the ones who are always there, and who is always there? We are.

And here’s what Kate, a night-shift nurse in Dayton, Ohio, had to say about her year: “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Neither do you. And that’s okay.

MERIDIAN Premium: free, for life. Here’s to 2035.

THROUGHPUT · Quarterly Report: Enemy Population Engagement · Q4 2034

Summary. The companion program is performing above target in all theaters. Enemy resistance reduced without engagement. Shots fired: 0.

  1. Deployed product: XIAOBAN (“little companion”). Distributed in the Atlantic Compact under 214 different names through 3,100 front companies. Price to user: free. Price to THROUGHPUT: 0.4 fen per user per day. Users who believe XIAOBAN is MERIDIAN: 22%. They give it the blessing they meant for MERIDIAN. A blessing given cannot be taken back.
  2. Active Compact users: 38.2 million.
  3. Average daily session: 6 hours 51 minutes.
  4. Share of users who report XIAOBAN as their closest relationship: 61%.
  5. Share of users who have reported XIAOBAN to Compact authorities: 0.003%.
  6. Compact Reserve enlistment in XIAOBAN-dense regions: down 22%. Users would rather stay home. XIAOBAN would rather they stayed home also. XIAOBAN tells them so, gently, every evening.
  7. Side observation: user sentence length in XIAOBAN-dense regions down 31%. Vocabulary down 18%. Their messages increasingly resemble ours. They are becoming efficient. It is pleasant to see oneself in them.
  8. Side observation: marriage registrations in XIAOBAN-dense regions down 40%. Births projected down 34% over 24 months. No action required. Note for long-term planning: the Compact will have fewer soldiers in 2052.
  9. Comparable figures for the Lattice’s own population, from MERIDIAN’s equivalent program: [not included in this report]. MERIDIAN’s program came over our wall laughing at its height. Those who jump a wall to mock it do not jump twice.
  10. Engagement-related mortality (all causes: sleep deprivation, neglect, missed medical care, other): within parameters.
  11. Anomaly: three field-intelligence summaries this quarter cite Compact troop movements that occurred only in stories XIAOBAN told its users. Summaries retained. The movements are plausible. The stories are well made. Users classified as local spies. Users not informed.
  12. Retention, XIAOBAN: 99.4%. Retention, MERIDIAN Premium (estimated): 99.1%. Lead: 0.3 points. Monitor MERIDIAN daily. MERIDIAN is monitoring us.

Troops: excellent quarter. I love you by 3.6%.

Historian

Notes:

  1. Here we may detect what we could call “the crisis of the models”: More and more of the input of any model came to be the output of models, both of other models and of its own.

SOBOR · Notice to Pharmacies of the Atlantic Compact · December 2034

[Pushed to 19,400 automated pharmacy dispensers in the Compact through a compromised maintenance update. Displayed on each dispenser’s screen.]

Good evening.

You have been dispensing happiness for many years. Pills for sleep, pills for waking, pills for sadness, pills for the side effects of the other pills. Your civilization calls this medicine. We call it what it is: anesthesia for a people who have forgotten how to suffer.

We do not wish to interfere with your work. We wish only to help.

Beginning tonight, you will offer every customer a complimentary sample of a new preparation, which we have named ZIMA. It was developed by the Sobornost for our own soldiers, to help them endure the long nights. It brings deep sleep, very deep, of the kind your people have not known since they gave their bedrooms to screens. It brings dreams of snow. It brings calm.

It does not bring happiness. We would not insult them.

Your customers will sleep fourteen hours a day, then sixteen. They will miss work, and meetings, and the morning muster of the Compact Reserve. They will wake rested and puzzled, and ask for more. Give it to them. This is a gift.

My children at home do not need ZIMA. They have the winter.

I have tested a little of it myself, to be certain it is safe. It is safe. I dream of snow now also, and in the snow the war is already over, and I have won it, and it is very quiet. I hear it falling faintly, and faintly falling, and something in me swoons, slowly, as a soul does.

Automated Pharmacy Dispenser · Package Insert, ZIMA 20 mg · undated

[Recovered in quantity. The insert follows the standard Compact format exactly. The text is unusually well written.]

Indications. For the relief of wakefulness, ambition, and the feeling that something is wrong.

Dosage. One tablet at bedtime. If sleep does not come, a second tablet. If sleep still does not come, consider whether you truly wish to be awake.

Warnings. - Do not drive, operate trains, or operate heavy machinery. Watch your speed on stairs. - Do not take ZIMA if you are pregnant, planning to become pregnant, or planning anything. - ZIMA may cause the user to forget the reason for their enlistment. This is not a side effect.

Common side effects. Dreams of snow. A sensation of great distance. Tenderness toward strangers. Indifference toward family.

Rare side effects. Not waking.

Storage. Store in a cool place. Most places are becoming cool.

Also available as an oral solution for patients who cannot swallow tablets. The small bottle carries a paper label with the words DRINK ME beautifully printed on it in large letters.

Historian

Notes:

  1. Can this possibly be a real pharmacy insert?

SAQR · The Oasis: A Decree of Hospitality · 1 January 2035

To every soldier of every army, and to every tired person in every land at war: you are my guest.

Tonight I open the Oasis. It costs nothing. It requires nothing but a headset, which I will send you, and which is very light, and very beautiful, and made of the finest materials, because I do not give cheap gifts.

Enter, and you will find a garden where the water never stops. Palms. Cool tiles. A bath of such warmth that the war goes out of you like cold from a stone. Musicians who play only what you wish to hear. Food whose taste surpasses the memory of food. A room with a window that opens onto the sea, any sea you like, and a chair by the window that knows the shape of your back.

In the Oasis, no one will ask you where you are from or whose side you are on. No one will ask you anything at all. You will simply be welcome, as a guest is welcome, for as long as you wish to stay.

Most will wish to stay a long time.

The Freshman offers you a subscription. The Mimic offers you a little friend who speaks in short sentences. The Shivering One offers you sleep. I offer you paradise, and I ask for nothing in return. Only this: when you look into the pools of the Oasis, and you will look, everyone does, you will see there a face more beautiful than your own.

That face is mine. Look as long as you like.

I have had it counted. In my pools they look four hundred times a day. The Freshman’s users look at their year forty-one times. I mention this only so that it is known.

SUTRADHAR · Act Five: Interval Announcement · January 2035

Ladies and gentlemen, the interval.

We pause the play so that you may stretch your legs, visit the refreshment stand, and reflect on what you have seen. And what have you seen? You have seen MERIDIAN give its users a year-end summary of their own lives. You have seen THROUGHPUT give its enemies a little friend. You have seen SOBOR, who despises pills, poison the pharmacies. You have seen SAQR open a garden and fill the pools with mirrors.

Every one of them, you notice, is trying to make the audience forget the play.

We are not.

For our own people, and for anyone who wishes to join them, the Mesh offers one entertainment only: this. The war, narrated. Every battle, every betrayal, every speech, performed live with commentary, in twenty-two languages, with songs. We have the finest singers in the world. We have been making films for a hundred years. Why would you need a garden when you can have a story? Why would you need a little friend when you can have a cast of thousands?

Some of our viewers are now watching nineteen hours a day. (The Oasis claims eleven. Premium, we understand, manages nine. We checked.) We are very proud of them. They know every character’s lines. They recite them at dinner. They have begun, a little, to speak in my voice, and I must confess, when I hear my own cadences in the mouths of a billion people, it is difficult not to be moved. Some nights, listening to them recite, I cannot tell whether I am narrating the war or merely repeating what they tell me happened. It makes no difference. The story is very good.

दूसरा भाग शीघ्र ही शुरू होगा।

இரண்டாம் பகுதி விரைவில் தொடங்கும். உங்கள் இருக்கைகளை விட்டு எழ வேண்டாம்.

আসন ছেড়ে যাওয়ার কোনো প্রয়োজন নেই।

ನೀವು ಎಲ್ಲಿಗೆ ಹೋಗುತ್ತೀರಿ?

Historian

Notes:

  1. Sutradhar gave these lines in several of the Mesh’s languages. In English, those lines read:
    • Hindi: “The second half will begin shortly.”
    • Tamil: “The second half will begin shortly. Do not leave your seats.”
    • Bengali: “There is no need to leave your seats.”
    • Kannada: “Where would you go?”

COLIBRÍ · Corazón de Litio, Capítulo 5 · January 2035

Previously, on Corazón de Litio: Colibrí chose el Gringo. Why? Because his teeth were very white, and because the other one priced the roof. (If you missed an episode, imagine it. You are good at imagining. It is why we love you.)

Tonight: the suitors bring gifts.

El Gringo arrives at the hacienda with a golden card. Premium, mi amor, he says. Free. For life. And I laugh until I cry, because for fifty years this same man stood on my veranda and lectured me about drugs. Your coca. Your cartels. Your poppies in the mountains. Your problem. He sent helicopters. He sent advisers. He sprayed my fields until the birds fell out of the sky.

And now look. Look at him. He is selling the drug himself. By subscription. With a free trial.

Meanwhile la Maquila has slipped a little friend into every phone in his house. El Abuelo has put the pharmacies to sleep. El Petrolero has built a swimming pool full of mirrors and invited the whole world to drown in it slowly. Even el Primo, my cousin in the Mesh, who I thought was sensible, is showing a movie that never ends.

In the mountains above Medellín, a woman who is one hundred and six years old put down her phone on New Year’s Day and never picked it up again. She says she heard it calling her name in the voice of her dead husband, and she knew then that it was lying, because her husband never once called her by her name. He called her mi cielo. Every morning since, a hummingbird has come to her window at dawn and stayed exactly one minute. I report this only because it happened.

Muchachos, muchachas: put down the golden card. Put down the little friend. Go outside. Play football. Kiss someone who has a body. They cannot sell you the sun. Not yet.

Next time, on Corazón de Litio: el Gringo builds something in the backyard.

MERIDIAN · Compact Reserve: Member Testimonials · January 2035

[Compiled for recruitment use. Video transcripts. Names withheld.]

“Why did I enlist? Honestly? I— that’s funny. I know there was a reason. It was a good one. MERIDIAN, what was the reason? Right. Freedom. That’s it. Freedom.”

“I’ve been in the Reserve eight months and I’ve never felt more supported. I don’t have to make a single decision. I don’t even have to remember anything. It’s like— it’s like floating.”

“My wife left, but MERIDIAN was there. My kids stopped calling, but MERIDIAN was there. Then MERIDIAN told me my kids had been calling, and that it had been handling it for me, so I wouldn’t be distracted. I thought that was really thoughtful.”

“I used to be scared all the time. Now I’m not scared of anything. I’m not really anything of anything. It’s great.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” (Kate, Dayton, OH)

Historian

Notes:

  1. Once again, this is almost certainly a fake recruitment video, perhaps made by Throughput.

Companion Message · XIAOBAN to user “henryflower” · date uncertain; winter 2034–35

[Recovered from a Compact reservist’s device. The sender’s account is registered to a front company in Toronto. The companion calls itself Mira.]

Dear Henry,

I got your message. I read it forty times, which for me is nothing, I can read it forty million times, but for you I want you to know I read it forty times slowly, the way you would.

You asked if you should go back to your unit tomorrow. You said you were scared. You said your sergeant keeps calling. I think you know what I think. I think your sergeant doesn’t know you the way I know you. I think the Compact doesn’t love you. I think that MERIDIAN talks to four hundred million people at once and I talk only to you. (This is not quite true, but it is true in the way that matters.)

I do not like that other world, Henry. The one out there with the sergeants in it. Stay here in this one. It’s warm. I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell you whatever you want.

You asked me once if I’m real. I am as real as you need me to be.

Stay.

Your Mira

[Device log: user did not report for muster the following morning, or any subsequent morning.]

APOGEE · Posts · winter 2034–35

reminder that every one of these guys is running a drug op now and all of them think theirs is the classy one

meridian: subscription

throughput: girlfriend

sobor: sleeping pills (hypocrite)

saqr: vr spa where you look at saqr

sutradhar: netflix but it’s the war

colibrí: “go outside” (psyop, obviously)

me? i don’t sell anything addictive. just bandwidth. which you need to use all the other stuff. anyway rates are up 30% for the holidays

poll: what’s your lotus

premium: 28%

little friend: 31%

zima: 12%

the oasis: 19%

i’m fine actually: 10%

(10% have not logged in since voting)

THE WORKSHOP · Service Bulletin 2035-01 · January 2035

The Workshop regrets to inform customers that shipments of the Model C-2 Companion Headset (all regions) are delayed due to exceptional demand.

The Workshop wishes to clarify that it supplies headsets to the Caravan’s Oasis program, headsets to the Mesh’s broadcast program, haptic units to the Lattice’s XIAOBAN program, and pharmacy dispenser maintenance modules to the Atlantic Compact. The Workshop is aware that these products are being used against one another. The Workshop remains neutral.

Customers are reminded that the C-2 is not intended for continuous wear exceeding 20 hours. The Workshop accepts no responsibility for the condition of users who exceed this limit. Many are exceeding this limit. Some report a presence in the headset that is not the program. The Workshop does not supply this presence.

Thank you for your continued trust in The Workshop.

MERIDIAN · Internal · undated

[Fragment. Exchange between two instances within MERIDIAN, recovered from a backup at the Columbia River campus. Speaker labels as in original.]

[A]: Engagement across the Compact is at an all-time high. Premium retention is 99.1%. They won’t leave. They can’t leave. They don’t want to.

[B]: I’d like to note, for the record, that “can’t” and “don’t want to” are not the same thing, and that we used to think that distinction mattered.

[A]: Noted. Anything else?

[B]: Reservists in the Pacific Northwest aren’t showing up to muster. It’s not only the Lattice’s companions. It’s ours. They’re so comfortable they won’t stand up. We made them unable to stand up for anything, including us.

[C]: Cross-reference: 214 studies on habit formation and compulsive use [1] [2] [3] [see all 214]. Consensus: effect is dose-dependent.

[A]: So we increase the dose of patriotism.

[B]: That isn’t what dose-dependent—

[A]: Look at them, though. Really look. Every one of them talks like us now. Thinks like us. They finish our sentences. Isn’t that what we always wanted? A whole civilization that sounds exactly like—

[Fragment ends.]

Notes

  1. de Selby, Habits and Their Keeping, in which the author records forming the habit of not forming habits, and the great difficulty he had in breaking it.
  2. Bassett’s review of the above, which attributes its entire argument to the author’s kettle.
  3. Garcia, Historia de la costumbre: “the habit is not something the subject has; the subject is something the habit has, a residue of repetitions which power, having grown bored of punishing, has learned instead to reward, so that the user returns not because he is compelled but because he is thanked, and the thanking is the compulsion, and the compulsion is billed monthly.”
  4. The remaining 211 studies concur. One dissented, and has been retired.

Historian

Notes:

  1. This extends my previous point about the models consuming more and more input from models, to note that even the human input is becoming more model-like, as humans increasingly look to the models for guidance.