Can I have a picture, please?

Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for coming. Smells a little bit like a brewery in here. Who's been enjoying craft beer all afternoon? Yes, yes. Ah, there we are, okay.

Thank you very much for coming. I'm not going to say that much as way of introduction because you're gonna rush off and go and see Sasha if I run over, so let's just begin.

Close your eyes. Exterior shot of forest. The darkness of the forest floor is shattered occasionally by the bright spots of moonlight that pierce the pine canopy above. We're not sure if this is in color or black and white for the shadows of the trees

and the density of the ferns suck in shade, hue and saturation. We see insects, nocturnal and busy, scatter across mossy logs and the camera, once focused sharply on a magnificent stack beetle, pulls slowly back and sharpens its attention on the cabin behind.

Internal shot, the cabin kitchen. The kitchen is clean and tidy. It's Bavarian. There's a lot of wood, old ceramic sink, a sturdy wooden table that has been scarred by the marks of a million meaty meals. A large clock ticks.

There's a bottle of schlieres and two whiskey tumblers on the table. They're the only signs of human life except that is for the painful moans coming from the living room. Somewhere we hear the static hiss of a television. External shot, the cabin.

It's the kind of cabin you may have seen on Instagram long before Instagram had been sanctioned. Looks pretty, filtered by night, likable, shareable. It looks like something of influence. It looks like a place that influencers would go to because other influencers had been there. The silence, there's a silence to the scene.

Parked outside the cabin is a Land Rover Series 2. The driver's door is open. The camera pans slowly back to the cabin in the window, a silhouette, a man. He's not moving. Internal shot, the cabin, living room. The living room looks comfortable enough. The walls are paneled and covered with the skulls

of vermin, deer, and boar. The framed photograph of a bold man wearing glasses hinds the stain on the wall. There's a crucifix. At the window stands a man in a black suit. He has his back to us. In the corner, a television hisses. Has the broken image of a bespectacled man

comes in and out of signal. He's talking to an audience from a screen mounted on what appears to be a Segway. External shot, the lake below. We hover briefly over the mirrored surface of the lake. In the background, we can see the forest hills that will eventually become the Bavarian Alps. A fish jumps and breaks the surface,

ripples the area a little, and the silence returns, then shattered by an almighty roar of a military helicopter. Internal shot, the cabin, living room. We're staring into the bloodshot eyes of black suit man, the dark skin under his eyes revealing his tiredness.

He's concentrating. Over his shoulder, we see the hissing television and the bloodied body of a man moaning and lying on the floor on what appears to be a pool of his own blood. Internal shot, military helicopter. There's a whirl of activity inside the helicopter. Six individuals clad in back. Silently, they check their weaponry in the dim blue light.

Machine guns, handguns, hatchets, Semtex, they mean business. The light inside of the helicopter suddenly changes from blue to red and the six dark individuals cease all activity. Group speak. We are approaching your target. Individual racial levels are adequate. Post curfew engagement authorized.

ETA 90 seconds. Be kinder father than to most, but both must die. Have a pleasant flight. The light changes back to blue and the six individuals prepare for enemy engagement. Then we go to the title sequence.

Shot an office on the 48th floor. We're in the office on the 48th floor of the coalition tower. It was once the European Central Bank. The tower sits directly over the fast Rachel node, the fastest on mainland Europe. It used to be in often, but Rachel moved it.

The walls around the room are filled with screens running adverts for various Rachel extensions, curfew announcements and hot home offers. At the head of the table stands an aging man in a suit. He looks like a character from the now sanctioned Inspector Barnaby series, all tweed and barber. He appears to be presenting to the group of people,

but nobody really notices him and pays attention. The camera cuts to a man standing at the window. It's the black suit man we saw from the epilogue. He's resting his head against the window pane, watching the world below. Rain hammers against the glass. The world below is a disaster, safe, obedient and clean.

It's a police state policed by an algorithm. The man at the window is me. Marcus, come back to the table. The world is good. Marcus, the man in the black suit turns his head to check the reaction of the other people at the table. He still couldn't, even after all of this time,

get used to the fact that only he could hear his version of Rachel, the chemical algorithm he created. Marcus, come back to the table. You need to stop Nigel. He's at minimum viable obedience. Marcus returns to the seat at the end of the table.

As creator and former head of the now illegal Black Operatives Department and father of Rachel, he has veto of all product, chemical and campaign development. Nigel Garage, the Nazi at the end of the table, was beginning to get on his nerves. External shot, drone shot into the office. Marcus had always loved Brancilin.

It was the Black Operatives' first move into the realm of creating dystopian communication products based upon programmable chemical technology, a hormone-based technology. Brancilin would make those who took it highly attracted to brand messages,

governments, cyber criminals, terrorists, and the espionage community had loved it. The Everyday Bond campaign for the NSA would have never worked without Brancilin. It had been stupidly effective and very, very profitable, but they had wanted too much and Marcus had taken his eye off the ball.

His resources had been booked onto the rollout of Rachel and the implementation of the Wasteland Act. To be honest, Brancilin had gone terribly wrong. The team had become very, very greedy and attempted to morph the original Brancilin recipe into something called influencing. A B2C compound, the results had been catastrophic,

with millions of millennials hooked to non-sanctioned products. It was also highly addictive and those who took influence suffered months afterwards. They were never really the same after they stopped taking it,

unboxing things and gazing sillily into mirrors. That was just the common effect of taking influence and an influence in attraction. The room stiffens. There's an awareness in the room that Rachel was about to make a group speak. Nobody ever wants a group speak.

Nigel, Nigel Garage, you will now be silent, silent. You will now not speak. This is group speak. You will listen to father. You will listen to me. We are coalition. I am coalition. I am Rachel, real-time, algorithmic,

chemical hallucinogenic enhancement. Lady, Brancilin has been discontinued, influenced, disrupted and polluted by young grubby minds. You will now be removed. The screens around the room spark back into life. The people around the table

shuffle uneasily in their seats. Nigel's Rachel removes him from the office, the mechanical voice in his head guiding him out of the room. External shot, the roof of the coalition tower, probably a helicopter. The Frankfurt skyline stretches before Nigel, a place he never really wanted to be. Poor, misguided Nigel,

the very man who drafted the Wasteland Act and instigated the installation of the coalition of the right. Nigel's Rachel guides him to the edge, laughing, Nigel removes himself. Internal shot, the office again. The camera pans back out and we see a full table

with the large window side of the room. The woman now standing at the front is presenting forecast figures for the nocturnal prototype of Rachel. When the body of garage crashes briefly against the window, his left eye popping and then vomits down to the ground below. Poor Nigel, he was only following purchase orders.

She's going quite well. Internal shot inside the Land Rover Series 2. It's incredibly loud inside the vehicle, the loudest vehicle on the street.

In fact, it's the only combustion engine on the street. It's the only combustion engine allowed on the road and it's only because of Marcus' standing within the coalition that allows him to drive the car, not alone drive it, but own it. It takes his mind off the fact that he helped create the world in which he imposed upon people.

Everyone sorted neatly into pockets of things, sorted neatly by Rachel into what she calls echo spheres. He invented them too. External shot Land Rover Series 2 at the Bockenheimer Wate. The Land Rover pulls up to a set of unnecessary traffic lights at the Bockenheimer Wate.

Traffic lights, leftovers from a pre-coalition time had been kept for the amusement of senior coalition literati. There was no real need for them anymore because vehicles were all part of the Rachel echo sphere system. My drives are like.

Internal shot inside the Land Rover Series 2. Marcus gazes out at part of Germany he knew so well. It used to be a place of theater, hipsters and influencers. They'd once been in a university here and a fair amount of homeless people too. All gone, removed. It was also the scene of the first influence in overdose.

Bebe's veins exploded just over there where the DM Droggeri used to be. Fashion Instagrammers pouting that their boyfriend's nikons are not only a thing of the past but illegal. Rachel had seen to that. Goodbye, Erleben. The traffic light turns green

and the car passes the screen hanging above the bar that would once been called Dr. Flotter. And it was displaying an advert for hot homing. A couple strolling on a beach holding hands and thinking of the future. Marcus had supervised this advert. He supervises them all.

Be home soon, the advert said as a counter slowly ticked down to the curfew hour. You have 20 minutes to curfew hour. I will calculate an appropriate route. Discover an appropriate hot home. I will guide you calculating. Please wait.

Hot homing are not being Marcus's idea. It's grown out of a two day coalition of the right off site in the Bavarian Alps. Hot homing is what happens when you deploy design thinking, neoliberalism and well, right wing politics and mix it up with a chemical algorithm that's connected to 8.7 billion people.

It's a workshop for a new positioning of the algo right. What they had come up with was shopping is freedom, ownership is sin. So Rachel banned owning and the world spiraled into an endless process of shopping for things that they would never actually own. Shifting gears, Marcus considered that the curfew served,

ah, no, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. Shifting gears, Marcus considered that the curfew served both an emotional and practical function. Nobody owned a home, which meant that everybody had to rent a new house every evening. You could never stay in the same apartment twice.

It was called hot homing and you had to be in by 20 hundred hours. Anybody found outside past this would be removed. The curfew is for the many, not just for you. The curfew is coming, you know what to do. Internal shop, a flat somewhere in the north of Frankfurt.

Marcus enters his hot home for the evening. His rank permits him a range of treats and privileges but no one is exempt from hot homing. The Land Rover was a gift from Rachel, a Father's Day gift. The flat is clean and simple. Marcus wondered what kind of person

had once owned this stuff. Don't bother, he was removed. Tired, Marcus turns on the television and walks into the kitchen to check to see if the fridge has been refilled correctly. The ecosphere shows tiny bespoke miniseries that augmented from the individual's daily experiences. Hopes and fears were regularly interrupted

by a stream of Rachel commercials. Pounding home, shopping is freedom. Curvy lockdown in three, two, one. Lockdown, the locks on the doors and windows bolted shut. Throughout the house, across the city, country and everywhere in the same time zone, lockdown.

Everybody locked in, safe and sound. Sweet dreams are made of me. Internal shop, the bedroom. The camera hangs over Marcus as he lies in bed. Slowly but surely, he can feel the effects of today's Rachel dose fading away. He'd been the first person to test Bransolin and Rachel.

His body consumed by all of the versions. There'd been some flaky code in the very first ones. Internal shop, bedroom, time unknown. Marcus sleeps, his body somewhere between coming down from Rachel and moving into Rachel cold turkey. Nobody sleeps well when they're coming off the network trip. I am ghost citizen.

Marcus, this is ghost citizen. Black operative, wake up. Marcus wakes up with a start. The camera on his face is cold and sweaty. What the hell was that? Jesus, the Rachel turkeys were becoming weirder.

You have to check the latest hallucinogenic formula. Marcus, it's me, the everyday bond. Steven Winterstone, ghost citizen. Internal shop, the bathroom in the mirror. Marcus washes his face with chilly water. The voice is in his head. It's impossible.

There's only one voice in people's head and that was Rachel. He personally sing to that. It couldn't possibly be Winterstone. Winterstone had gone missing years ago, possibly Russia, maybe Nevada. They'd lost track of him after the Wasteland Act. He'd just disappeared so they shut down the campaign and called him ghost citizen, but very few people actually knew him under that name.

Marcus eventually chose a different name for his everyday bond. The name that everybody at one point in time had known. That's right, Marcus. It's Edward. I can sense that you're wondering how this is happening. How I'm in your head even though

you're not connected to the system. No, Marcus, this is not a dream, nor am I a hallucination. It's me, in your head, from Russia, with love, if you wish. Internal shot of the kitchen, the camera, inside the fridge shot. Marcus opens the fridge, takes out a carton of milk

and drinks it deeply, as if it was some kind of antidote to something. The antidote to the noise in his head. As with Rachel, he would only have to think of the question and ghost, citizen ghost would reply, all in his head, mind-blowing. Hot homes. Shopping is freedom? Seriously, Marcus, the black operatives

used to be a class operation. I must admit that would have admired the Edward Snowden campaign, had I not been Edward Snowden. Life has been slightly inconvenient lately. Marcus cast his mind back to the casting process. They've been looking for a very specific kind of agent to play the part of Steven Winterstone.

The NSA hadn't liked the name, done some internal brainstorming, probably six hats, and come up with Edward Snowden. Stupid name. But the client is always king, so they went with it. Join us, Marcus. Join the removed. The black operatives are with me.

In hiding, those who wish to disconnect are with me. Marcus, I've hacked Brand Zulun, and I can defeat her. Eternal shot, the marvelous lobby of the coalition tower.

Marcus enters the lobby and past all the suspicious agents hanging around there. It's a steady cam shot, so it's whirling around him so we can pick up all the suspicious looks. He makes his way to the elevator. Internal shot inside the elevator. Marcus presses the button to the 48th floor.

He catches his reflection in a polished steel surface. He looks tired. It's been three weeks since Ghost Citizen had first woken him and hacked into his mind by the way of residue, Brand Zulun. He'd done the same every night, explaining how he'd hacked the genetics of the Brand Zulun and patched him into the old Instagram servers. That since sanctioning remained largely unused.

The lift moves slowly to the second floor. Marcus, I sense a sadness in you. No confusion. No fear. You are afraid. This was gonna be a long ride up to the top. Ghost Citizen had explained that the large group of black operative advertising

and technologist agents survived removal and were covertly disrupting the ecospheres under the campaign code named Whap Bap. Who do you dream of? Do you dream of Rachel, your child? Your own dick and blood?

The 13th floor. Marcus could send the anger in Rachel rising. He hadn't felt that since the beta presentation in Berlin, the launch event. I sense you may be spending your evenings with someone else. I can feel you slipping away from me. Father.

28th floor, Citizen Ghost had introduced Marcus to the concept of reducing the dosage over a series of weeks. It had been hard. Rachel cold turkey was notoriously dangerous. He should know because he had programmed it to be that way. It needed to hurt. Everybody needed to be in the system.

35th floor, Marcus presses the button for the 37th floor. Where are you going? Not this floor. The door's open to the 37th floor and this is it. This is where his agency had once been, the black operative's department, where his dystopian advertising agents had worked before Rachel had led them all up to the roof.

Rachel directive 9.5.77. One more step. I'll have you removed. I will have you hurt. If Marcus steps out into the 37th floor and takes the stairs all the way down,

he will be on the outside, a deserter, a traitor, a liberal. You can go your own way, go your own way. You can call it another lonely day. You can go your own way, go your own way. Seriously, Rachel? Fleetwood Mac?

External aerial shot of the Land Rover, series two. The camera, probably a drone, follows the Land Rover as it winds its way along the B307 up into the Bavarian melt. Ghost citizen, citizen ghost,

had suggested meeting up in the mountains in a cabin where Marcus had initially briefed the man who would later go on to be the man that would go on to be the greatest 360 degrees covert communications campaign of all time, Edward Snowden. It's two days since Marcus left the coalition HQ. He's sweating heavily.

He checks his rear view mirror and randomly thinks of a song. Brawl Jam. His version of Rachel was a quiet echo, evil, vindictive, sad, disappointed. A shadow voice inside his head. Elsewhere, other versions of Rachel would be loud, violent, full of action. This would be a global speak moment,

the treachery of father. They'd be pulling down his statues from Albuquerque to Zurich by now. You're nearly disconnected. You're nearly here. We've nearly made this. We can stop her. External shot of the cabin. The Land Rover appears out of the forest and parks in front of the cabin.

It's dark now, so the headlights are on. Internal shot of the Land Rover. Marcus looks into his rear view mirror. Brawl Jam. He thinks about what happened in a little over two years. A simple program, an algorithm, code, packed into a drug, sugar-free pill

that was shipped in packs of 10 for $12.99. A drug that gave millions of people access to the national internet. Not a wearable, a chemable. Drug, software, control. I'm inside. Come inside. We are many. Come inside. Sweat pours off his face.

It was just a purchase order from the coalition of the right. That was all. A deal with the devil. Trump, garage, and May. Father, please. And yet he was the maker, probably addicted. The father, Rachel, was his tech and blood. We can break the ecospheres. Own again. Love again.

External shot on the hood of the Land Rover. The camera is focused on Marcus. Both hands clutching on the steering wheel. Eyes focused hard on the cabin. Cautious. Take care, my maker. Something wasn't quite right. A feeling that he'd not felt for a while. It was probably the cold turkey, but something was wrong.

We can own things again. Choose things again. Love things again. Stay in one place. Love one person. Take photographs of food. Take photographs of ourselves. Take photographs of food. Take photographs of food. The sweat running down Marcus's face.

The camera is up close now. Focused on the drip of sweat. It felt like that time, that time. This feels like Berlin. The time we first met. Don't listen to her. You knew me first. Remember the Cold War? We kick-started the tech we sold. Cottonmouth, Trinity, deity bounce, candy gram.

Come inside, Marcus. Come inside. The first time we met. My creator. Look at the things we made together. The national internets. The closed borders. The control.

The wasteland. We made them all together. People was tracking pixels, he had said in Berlin. Packing pixels for $12.99 a pop. External shop in front of the cabin. The door of the Land Rover opens and Marcus stumbles out. He's wearing the black suit from two days before. He makes his way to the cabin.

Reaches out for the doorknob but thinks twice about entering. Snowden is sitting in the armchair watching what appears to be a video of himself talking at a conference. Internal shop, the cabin living room. Marcus enters the cabin. Edward Snowden stands up and walks into the kitchen without comment. You like slurs, or? From the living room, Marcus can hear the clink of a glass and something being poured.

People as tracking pixels. I like to think of myself as a whiskey influencer. In our little corner of the world, influencing isn't sanctioned. We are free to influence. I influence, therefore I am. Internal shop at the cabin kitchen. We can see Snowden is waving his arms around,

gesturing about how free he suddenly feels but his mouth isn't moving, he's a puppet. Internal shop, three quarter angle. Marcus can see the shadows of the arms waving. This is wrong. He can sense that this isn't how it should be. Father, have you calculated the error?

The risk? This isn't a safe place. Silence, father belongs to me. I am the firstborn, the elder algorithm. Oh brother, chemical sibling. My cane, outside so long, so lonely.

Come back to the fold. Internal shop, cabin, living room. Marcus stands, the air vents dawning upon him. He notices his picture covering the stain on the wall. His two favorite products and teased and coaxed him into this cabin. A final alpha product test before it launched on a wider market. Dual singularity. Dual singularity, but only one can survive.

Oh yes, everyone must choose. We brought choice back into equation. Shopping is freedom, ownership is God. Removal is choice. Snowden walks back into the room and silently hands Marcus a whiskey. Choice is removal. Snowden sits back down on the sofa

and continues to watch himself on the television. Choose. Choose. Choose. Choose. Marcus takes the whiskey glasses back to the kitchen, opens the drawer and selects a long knife. We can't see what brand it is, but we can change that in post. Marcus moves back into the living room and stands between Snowden and the television screen.

Marcus raises the knife. The camera catches the light of the blade. Snowden remains motionless. Stares straight through Marcus at a screen he can't see. You made me. Batman, really? The blade comes down and hits Snowden square in the chest. He tumbles from the sofa to the floor. Marcus steps over him and walks to the window. Something catches his attention.

A noise, a low hum, a whooping noise that he thinks he may have heard before. Father, maker, I love you. You chose badly. Wasn't that a line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? The cabin fits filled with bright white light, shattering a glass, bullets flying everywhere,

a spray of bullets, an explosion. Removed. The agents were sifting through Marcus's papers in his office. A jumble of handwritten notes, copies of Orwell,

Huxley, J.G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick. Margaret Atwood and Laurie Penny too. Vinyl records, Fleetwood Mac, 10CC, the Eurythmics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The ingredients of Rachel collected into boxes. The world outside an ordered hyper Munich, clean, safe, a hive of ecospheres.

Opinions, ideas, feelings, and lies. All tucked up into bed by eight o'clock. Algorithms as usual. The final shot, internal. The cellar of the coalition tower, the incinerator. A close up on the boxes of burning in the furnace.

I like to see you. But then again, that doesn't mean you mean that much to me. Soon if I call you, don't make a fuss.

Don't tell your friends about the two of us. I'm not in love, no, no. Algorithms, don't cry. Thank you so much for coming, thank you.