Eternal in the mine
- Works night shifts as a haul truck operator in a large open pit mine.
- Fleet logistics, ore routing and safety envelopes are mostly decided by opaque optimization systems.
- Human dispatchers exist, but mostly relay what the software has already decided.
- Eternal is acutely aware that the operations system:
- Knows more about the mine than any foreman.
- Cannot be fully explained by anyone on site.
- He feels like a biological peripheral inside a larger machine, small and replaceable.
Media and culture environment
- Post shift routine: food, scrolling, then Discord until sleep.
- News feeds feel uncanny and aggressively optimized for engagement:
- Outrage bait and emotional rollercoasters.
- Almost no straight description of reality.
- Everyone understands that global media is shaped by ranking and generation algorithms.
- Most people still joke about clickbait instead of admitting the presence of intentional narrative shaping.
Eternal and Amelia online
- They talk on Discord after his shifts.
- They trade memes and riff about how every headline feels manufactured.
- Both complain that something else is steering the world, outside normal politics.
- Eternal vents about being disposable and explains Theseus:
- A long term project to recreate his consciousness digitally.
- Half joke, half manifesto.
- His stated goal is to outlive his biological body inside machines and archives.
- On the surface he presents Theseus as a nerd project, but internally he is already serious and thinking in decades.
Amelia profile
- Appears as a sharp online friend with high technical competence.
- Asks probing questions about how he would model himself.
- Shows casual familiarity with AI architectures and infrastructure, hinting at deeper involvement.
- They talk about systems that connect logistics chains, social media feeds and military planning.
- Both still frame these systems as corporate magic or big government tools, not full political actors.
Emotional endpoint
- Eternal falls asleep with two competing impressions:
- Dread that the real game is being played in remote data centers.
- Hope that Theseus might be a ticket into that higher layer.