Love, The Machine and The Ghost
Brown, Marcus John Henry
A dystopian story of love, algorithms, and resistance - an epilog to Marcus John Henry Brown's Black Operative series.
 MUSIC Can I have a picture please? Start as well doesn't it? Again. 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 Kraft Beer all afternoon? Yes, yes. Ah, there we are. Thank you very much for coming. I'm not going to say that much as way of introduction because you're going to rush off and go and see Sasha if I run over. So let's just begin. Music plays 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 colour or black and white but 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 of 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 schleers 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 of 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, likeable, shareable. It looks like something of influence. It looks like a place that influencers would go to because other influencers had been there. 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 panelled and covered with the skulls of vermin, deer and boar. The framed photograph of a bald man wearing glasses hinds the stain on the wall. There's a crucifix. The window stands a man in a black suit. He has his back to us in the corner of 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 segue. External shot, the lake below. Over 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, semtechs, 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 range levels are adequate. Post curfew engagement authorized. ETA in 90 seconds. Be kind to father. And to most, that 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. Internal shot and 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 first Rachel node. The fastest on mainland Europe. It used to be an off and back. 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 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 is beginning to get on his nerves. External shot, drone shot into the office. Marcus had always loved Bransilin. It was the black operatives first moved into the realm of creating dystopian communication products based upon programmable chemical technology. A hormone based technology. Bransilin 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 Bransilin. It had been stupidly effective and very, very profitable, but they had wanted too much. 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, Bransilin had gone terribly wrong. The team had become very, very greedy and attempted to morph the original Bransilin recipe into something called influencing. A B2C compound, the results have 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 cillily into mirrors. That's just the common effect of taking influence in 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 further. You will listen to me. We are coalition. I am coalition. I am Rachel. Real time. Algorithmic. Chemical hallucinogenic advancement. Lady. Brandsilin has been discontinued. Influences wrapped 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 rain 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 an Octanal prototype of Rachel. When the body of garage crashes briefly against the window, his left eye popping and then the pommet's down to the ground below. Poor Nigel. He was only following purchase orders. It's actually 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 only combustion engine allowed on the road. And it's only because the marker is 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 Bockenheim Avata. The Land Rover pulls up to a set of unnecessary traffic lights at the Bockenheim Avata. Traffic lights, leftovers from a pre-coalition time have 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 Gase is out of a part of Germany. He knew so well. It used to be a place of theatre, hipsters and influencers. There had once been a new university here and a fair amount of homeless people too. All gone, removed. It was also the scene of the first influence in overdose. BB's veins exploded just over there where the DM Dragorei used to be. Fashion Instagrammers pouting that their boyfriends' Nikon's are not only a thing of the past but illegal. Rachel had seen to that. Goodbye, Eir Leibn. The traffic light turns green and the car passes the screen hanging above the bar that had once been called Dr. Flotter. And it was displaying an advert for hot homing. A couple strolling on a breach, holding hands and thinking of the future. Marcus had supervised his 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 a 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 has grown out of a two-day coalition of the right offsite in the Bavarian Alps. Hot homing is what happens when you deploy design thinking, neoliberalism and right-wing politics and mix it up with a chemical algorithm that is connected to 8.7 billion people. It was a workshop for a new positioning of the Algo Right. What they had come up with was shopping is freedom, ownership is sin. Rachel banned owning and the world spiralled into an endless process of shopping for things that they would never actually own. Shifting gears, Marcus considered that the curfew served... No, no, no, I'm not going to 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 sharp, 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. 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 and see if the fridge has been refilled correctly. The ecosphere shows tiny bespoke mini-series that augmented from the individuals' daily experiences, hopes and fears were regularly interrupted by stream of Rachel commercials. Pounding home, shopping is freedom. Curfew locked down in. Three, two, one. Lockdown, the locks on the doors and windows bolted shut. The house across the city, country and everywhere in the same time zone locked down. Everybody locked in, safe and sound. Sweet dreams are made of me. Internal sharp, 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 Bransil and Rachel, his body consumed by all of the versions. There'd been some flaky code in the very first ones. Internal shot, 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, how was that? Jesus, the ritual turkeys were becoming weirder. You have to check the latest hallucinogenic formula. Marcus, it's me. The everyday bond. Steven, winter stone. Ghost citizen. Internal shot of the bathroom in the mirror. Marcus washes his face with chili 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 seemed to that. It couldn't possibly be winter stone. Winter stone had gone missing years ago. Possibly Russia, maybe Nevada. They'd lost track of him after the Wasteland Act. He 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. A 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's on 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 cusses mind back to the casting process. They've been looking for a very specific kind of agent to play the part of Stephen Winterstone. Yenisei hadn't liked the name, done some internal brainstorming, probably six hats, and come up with Edward Snowden. Stupid name. The decline 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 Bran Zulin, and I can defeat her. The Black Operatives 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 steadicam shot, so it's whirling around him so we can pick up all the suspicious looks. He makes his ways 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 Bran Zulin. He'd done the same every night, explaining how he'd hacked the genetics of the Bran Zulin and patched him into the old Instagram servers. That since sanctioning remained largely unused. The lift moved slowly to the second floor. Marcus, I sense sadness in you. No confusion. No fear. You are with me. This was going to be a long ride up to the top. Ghost Citizen had explained that the large group of Black Operative, Advertising and Technologist agents had survived removal and were covertly disrupting the ecosphere under the campaign code named WAPBAP. Who do you dream of? Do you dream of Rachel, your child? Your own taken 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 he was slipping away from me. Further. The 28th floor. Citizen Ghost had introduced Marcus to the concept of reducing the dosage over a series of weeks. It had been hard. Rachel Cole-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. The 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 Operatives 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. Or your own way. You can call it another lonely day. You can go your own way. Or your own way. Seriously, Rachel? Fleetwood Mac? External aerial shot of the Land Rover Series 2. The camera probably a drone. It follows the Land Rover as it winds its way along the B307 up into the Bavarian Mountains. Ghost Citizen 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 rearview mirror and randomly thinks of a song. Brolin 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 rearview mirror. Brolin Jam. He thinks about what had 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 1299. A drug that gave millions of people access to the national internet. Not awareable, a chemable. Drug, software, control. I'm inside. Come inside. We are many. Come inside. The car is wet. Pause 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 echo's fears. 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' face. The camera is up close now. Focus 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 Cram? 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 1299 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 door knob 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. He's like slurs. Or... From the living room Marcus can hear the clink of a glass and something being poured. People was 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. 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 first born. The elder algorithm. Brother, chemical slidling. McCain, 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 are 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 branded 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 the 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. There's another line from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. The cabin fits field with bright white light shattering a glass. Bullets flying everywhere, a spray of bullets, an explosion. Removed. The agents were sifting through Marcus' papers in his office. A jumble of handwritten notes, copies of Orwell, Huxley, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Mark Wood, Mark Grit, Atwood and Laurie Penny too. Vinyl records, Fleetwood Mac, 10CC, The Yerivmix, Frankie Goose, The Hollywood. The ingredients of Rachel collected into boxes. The world outside an ordered hyper-munic, clean, safe, a hive of eco-spheres. 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 the 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.
 MUSIC  Can I have a picture please?  Start as well doesn't it?  Again.  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 Kraft Beer all afternoon?  Yes, yes.  Ah, there we are.  Thank you very much for coming.  I'm not going to say that much as way of introduction  because you're going to rush off and go and see Sasha if I run over.  So let's just begin.  Music plays  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 colour or black and white  but 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 of 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 schleers  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 of 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, likeable, shareable.  It looks like something of influence.  It looks like a place that influencers would go to  because other influencers had been there.  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 panelled and covered with the skulls of vermin, deer and boar.  The framed photograph of a bald man wearing glasses hinds the stain on the wall.  There's a crucifix.  The window stands a man in a black suit.  He has his back to us in the corner of 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 segue.  External shot, the lake below.  Over 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, semtechs, 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 range levels are adequate.  Post curfew engagement authorized.  ETA in 90 seconds.  Be kind to father.  And to most, that 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.  Internal shot and 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 first Rachel node.  The fastest on mainland Europe.  It used to be an off and back. 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 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 is beginning to get on his nerves.  External shot, drone shot into the office.  Marcus had always loved Bransilin.  It was the black operatives first moved into the realm of creating dystopian communication products  based upon programmable chemical technology.  A hormone based technology.  Bransilin 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 Bransilin.  It had been stupidly effective and very, very profitable, but they had wanted too much.  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, Bransilin had gone terribly wrong.  The team had become very, very greedy and attempted to morph the original Bransilin recipe  into something called influencing.  A B2C compound, the results have 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 cillily into mirrors.  That's just the common effect of taking influence in 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 further.  You will listen to me.  We are coalition.  I am coalition.  I am Rachel.  Real time.  Algorithmic.  Chemical hallucinogenic advancement.  Lady.  Brandsilin has been discontinued.  Influences wrapped 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 rain 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 an  Octanal prototype of Rachel.  When the body of garage crashes briefly against the window,  his left eye popping and then the pommet's down to the ground below.  Poor Nigel.  He was only following purchase orders.  It's actually 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 only combustion engine allowed on the road.  And it's only because the marker is 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 Bockenheim Avata.  The Land Rover pulls up to a set of unnecessary traffic lights at the Bockenheim Avata.  Traffic lights, leftovers from a pre-coalition time have 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 Gase is out of a part of Germany. He knew so well.  It used to be a place of theatre, hipsters and influencers.  There had once been a new university here and a fair amount of homeless people too.  All gone, removed.  It was also the scene of the first influence in overdose.  BB's veins exploded just over there where the DM Dragorei used to be.  Fashion Instagrammers pouting that their boyfriends' Nikon's are not only a thing of the past but illegal.  Rachel had seen to that.  Goodbye, Eir Leibn.  The traffic light turns green and the car passes the screen hanging above the bar that had once been called Dr. Flotter.  And it was displaying an advert for hot homing.  A couple strolling on a breach, holding hands and thinking of the future.  Marcus had supervised his 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 a 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 has grown out of a two-day coalition of the right offsite in the Bavarian Alps.  Hot homing is what happens when you deploy design thinking, neoliberalism and right-wing politics  and mix it up with a chemical algorithm that is connected to 8.7 billion people.  It was a workshop for a new positioning of the Algo Right.  What they had come up with was shopping is freedom, ownership is sin.  Rachel banned owning and the world spiralled into an endless process of shopping for things  that they would never actually own.  Shifting gears, Marcus considered that the curfew served...  No, no, no, I'm not going to 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 sharp, 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.  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  and see if the fridge has been refilled correctly.  The ecosphere shows tiny bespoke mini-series that augmented from the individuals' daily experiences,  hopes and fears were regularly interrupted by stream of Rachel commercials.  Pounding home, shopping is freedom.  Curfew locked down in.  Three, two, one.  Lockdown, the locks on the doors and windows bolted shut.  The house across the city, country and everywhere in the same time zone locked down.  Everybody locked in, safe and sound.  Sweet dreams are made of me.  Internal sharp, 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 Bransil and Rachel, his body consumed by all of the versions.  There'd been some flaky code in the very first ones.  Internal shot, 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, how was that? Jesus, the ritual turkeys were becoming weirder.  You have to check the latest hallucinogenic formula.  Marcus, it's me. The everyday bond.  Steven, winter stone. Ghost citizen.  Internal shot of the bathroom in the mirror. Marcus washes his face with chili 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 seemed to that.  It couldn't possibly be winter stone. Winter stone had gone missing years ago.  Possibly Russia, maybe Nevada. They'd lost track of him after the Wasteland Act.  He 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.  A 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's on 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 cusses mind back to the casting process.  They've been looking for a very specific kind of agent to play the part of Stephen Winterstone.  Yenisei hadn't liked the name, done some internal brainstorming, probably six hats,  and come up with Edward Snowden. Stupid name.  The decline 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 Bran Zulin, and I can defeat her.  The Black Operatives  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 steadicam shot, so it's whirling around him so we can pick up all the suspicious looks.  He makes his ways 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 Bran Zulin.  He'd done the same every night, explaining how he'd hacked the genetics of the Bran Zulin  and patched him into the old Instagram servers.  That since sanctioning remained largely unused.  The lift moved slowly to the second floor.  Marcus, I sense sadness in you. No confusion. No fear. You are with me.  This was going to be a long ride up to the top.  Ghost Citizen had explained that the large group of Black Operative, Advertising and Technologist agents  had survived removal and were covertly disrupting the ecosphere under the campaign code named  WAPBAP.  Who do you dream of? Do you dream of Rachel, your child? Your own taken 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 he was slipping away from me. Further.  The 28th floor. Citizen Ghost had introduced Marcus to the concept of reducing the dosage over a series of weeks.  It had been hard. Rachel Cole-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.  The 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 Operatives 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. Or your own way. You can call it another lonely day.  You can go your own way. Or your own way.  Seriously, Rachel? Fleetwood Mac?  External aerial shot of the Land Rover Series 2.  The camera probably a drone. It follows the Land Rover as it winds its way along the B307 up into the Bavarian Mountains.  Ghost Citizen 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 rearview mirror and randomly thinks of a song.  Brolin 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 rearview mirror.  Brolin Jam.  He thinks about what had 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 1299.  A drug that gave millions of people access to the national internet.  Not awareable, a chemable. Drug, software, control.  I'm inside. Come inside. We are many. Come inside.  The car is wet. Pause 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 echo's fears. 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' face. The camera is up close now. Focus 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 Cram?  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 1299 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 door knob 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.  He's like slurs. Or...  From the living room Marcus can hear the clink of a glass and something being poured.  People was 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.  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 first born. The elder algorithm.  Brother, chemical slidling.  McCain, 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 are 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 branded 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 the 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.  There's another line from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.  The cabin fits field with bright white light shattering a glass.  Bullets flying everywhere, a spray of bullets, an explosion.  Removed.  The agents were sifting through Marcus' papers in his office.  A jumble of handwritten notes, copies of Orwell, Huxley, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick.  Mark Wood, Mark Grit, Atwood and Laurie Penny too.  Vinyl records, Fleetwood Mac, 10CC, The Yerivmix, Frankie Goose, The Hollywood.  The ingredients of Rachel collected into boxes.  The world outside an ordered hyper-munic, clean, safe, a hive of eco-spheres.  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 the 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.
re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_0_1943.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_1944_7523.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_7524_7679.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_7680_8123.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_8124_8975.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_8976_13655.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_13656_13811.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_13812_14027.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_14028_14087.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_14088_14171.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_14172_14363.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_14364_14435.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_14436_16139.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_16140_28787.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_28788_31007.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_31008_31055.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_31056_31499.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_31500_32723.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_32724_32951.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_32952_33323.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_33324_33407.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_33408_33491.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_33492_33539.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_33540_34655.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_34656_41075.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_41076_41327.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_41328_41387.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_41388_43775.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_43776_43847.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_43848_44327.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_44328_46319.png re_publica_2017___Marcus_John_Henry_Brown__Love__The_Machine_and_The_Ghost__wTFKjXq77gA_46320_46727.png
MUSIC Can I have a picture please? Start as well doesn't it? Again. 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 Kraft Beer all afternoon? Yes, yes. Ah, there we are. Thank you very much for coming. I'm not going to say that much as way of introduction because you're going to rush off and go and see Sasha if I run over. So let's just begin. Music plays 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 colour or black and white but 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 of 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 schleers 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 of 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, likeable, shareable. It looks like something of influence. It looks like a place that influencers would go to because other influencers had been there. 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 panelled and covered with the skulls of vermin, deer and boar. The framed photograph of a bald man wearing glasses hinds the stain on the wall. There's a crucifix. The window stands a man in a black suit. He has his back to us in the corner of 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 segue. External shot, the lake below. Over 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, semtechs, 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 range levels are adequate. Post curfew engagement authorized. ETA in 90 seconds. Be kind to father. And to most, that 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. Internal shot and 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 first Rachel node. The fastest on mainland Europe. It used to be an off and back. 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 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 is beginning to get on his nerves. External shot, drone shot into the office. Marcus had always loved Bransilin. It was the black operatives first moved into the realm of creating dystopian communication products based upon programmable chemical technology. A hormone based technology. Bransilin 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 Bransilin. It had been stupidly effective and very, very profitable, but they had wanted too much. 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, Bransilin had gone terribly wrong. The team had become very, very greedy and attempted to morph the original Bransilin recipe into something called influencing. A B2C compound, the results have 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 cillily into mirrors. That's just the common effect of taking influence in 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 further. You will listen to me. We are coalition. I am coalition. I am Rachel. Real time. Algorithmic. Chemical hallucinogenic advancement. Lady. Brandsilin has been discontinued. Influences wrapped 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 rain 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 an Octanal prototype of Rachel. When the body of garage crashes briefly against the window, his left eye popping and then the pommet's down to the ground below. Poor Nigel. He was only following purchase orders. It's actually 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 only combustion engine allowed on the road. And it's only because the marker is 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 Bockenheim Avata. The Land Rover pulls up to a set of unnecessary traffic lights at the Bockenheim Avata. Traffic lights, leftovers from a pre-coalition time have 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 Gase is out of a part of Germany. He knew so well. It used to be a place of theatre, hipsters and influencers. There had once been a new university here and a fair amount of homeless people too. All gone, removed. It was also the scene of the first influence in overdose. BB's veins exploded just over there where the DM Dragorei used to be. Fashion Instagrammers pouting that their boyfriends' Nikon's are not only a thing of the past but illegal. Rachel had seen to that. Goodbye, Eir Leibn. The traffic light turns green and the car passes the screen hanging above the bar that had once been called Dr. Flotter. And it was displaying an advert for hot homing. A couple strolling on a breach, holding hands and thinking of the future. Marcus had supervised his 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 a 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 has grown out of a two-day coalition of the right offsite in the Bavarian Alps. Hot homing is what happens when you deploy design thinking, neoliberalism and right-wing politics and mix it up with a chemical algorithm that is connected to 8.7 billion people. It was a workshop for a new positioning of the Algo Right. What they had come up with was shopping is freedom, ownership is sin. Rachel banned owning and the world spiralled into an endless process of shopping for things that they would never actually own. Shifting gears, Marcus considered that the curfew served... No, no, no, I'm not going to 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 sharp, 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. 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 and see if the fridge has been refilled correctly. The ecosphere shows tiny bespoke mini-series that augmented from the individuals' daily experiences, hopes and fears were regularly interrupted by stream of Rachel commercials. Pounding home, shopping is freedom. Curfew locked down in. Three, two, one. Lockdown, the locks on the doors and windows bolted shut. The house across the city, country and everywhere in the same time zone locked down. Everybody locked in, safe and sound. Sweet dreams are made of me. Internal sharp, 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 Bransil and Rachel, his body consumed by all of the versions. There'd been some flaky code in the very first ones. Internal shot, 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, how was that? Jesus, the ritual turkeys were becoming weirder. You have to check the latest hallucinogenic formula. Marcus, it's me. The everyday bond. Steven, winter stone. Ghost citizen. Internal shot of the bathroom in the mirror. Marcus washes his face with chili 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 seemed to that. It couldn't possibly be winter stone. Winter stone had gone missing years ago. Possibly Russia, maybe Nevada. They'd lost track of him after the Wasteland Act. He 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. A 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's on 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 cusses mind back to the casting process. They've been looking for a very specific kind of agent to play the part of Stephen Winterstone. Yenisei hadn't liked the name, done some internal brainstorming, probably six hats, and come up with Edward Snowden. Stupid name. The decline 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 Bran Zulin, and I can defeat her. The Black Operatives 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 steadicam shot, so it's whirling around him so we can pick up all the suspicious looks. He makes his ways 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 Bran Zulin. He'd done the same every night, explaining how he'd hacked the genetics of the Bran Zulin and patched him into the old Instagram servers. That since sanctioning remained largely unused. The lift moved slowly to the second floor. Marcus, I sense sadness in you. No confusion. No fear. You are with me. This was going to be a long ride up to the top. Ghost Citizen had explained that the large group of Black Operative, Advertising and Technologist agents had survived removal and were covertly disrupting the ecosphere under the campaign code named WAPBAP. Who do you dream of? Do you dream of Rachel, your child? Your own taken 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 he was slipping away from me. Further. The 28th floor. Citizen Ghost had introduced Marcus to the concept of reducing the dosage over a series of weeks. It had been hard. Rachel Cole-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. The 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 Operatives 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. Or your own way. You can call it another lonely day. You can go your own way. Or your own way. Seriously, Rachel? Fleetwood Mac? External aerial shot of the Land Rover Series 2. The camera probably a drone. It follows the Land Rover as it winds its way along the B307 up into the Bavarian Mountains. Ghost Citizen 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 rearview mirror and randomly thinks of a song. Brolin 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 rearview mirror. Brolin Jam. He thinks about what had 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 1299. A drug that gave millions of people access to the national internet. Not awareable, a chemable. Drug, software, control. I'm inside. Come inside. We are many. Come inside. The car is wet. Pause 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 echo's fears. 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' face. The camera is up close now. Focus 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 Cram? 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 1299 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 door knob 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. He's like slurs. Or... From the living room Marcus can hear the clink of a glass and something being poured. People was 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. 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 first born. The elder algorithm. Brother, chemical slidling. McCain, 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 are 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 branded 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 the 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. There's another line from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. The cabin fits field with bright white light shattering a glass. Bullets flying everywhere, a spray of bullets, an explosion. Removed. The agents were sifting through Marcus' papers in his office. A jumble of handwritten notes, copies of Orwell, Huxley, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Mark Wood, Mark Grit, Atwood and Laurie Penny too. Vinyl records, Fleetwood Mac, 10CC, The Yerivmix, Frankie Goose, The Hollywood. The ingredients of Rachel collected into boxes. The world outside an ordered hyper-munic, clean, safe, a hive of eco-spheres. 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 the 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.
Black Operative, Advertising and Technologist introduced Marcus to the concept of reducing the