By the time I wake up in Chang-dol’s spare room a proper thunderstorm has started, the tents and tarps fluttering in the gusts of wind whipping at Hekaton One. From the Polis group chat this seems to not have been anticipated by the island’s weather service, another one of the “freak storms” that have been growing more and more common. Will has, of course, already gotten up and made himself some coffee.
“Another imported product.” He says, looking meaningfully at the chipped ceramic mug as I walk in. “Do you know the carbon footprint of coffee?”
I can’t resist yawning before I answer. “Eyes on the prize, Will. Systemic change is the goal. Carbon footprint was invented by BP to make people feel guilty about our social reliance on fossil fuels.”
“Easy enough for you to say when you’re lining up for a coffee.”
“Whatever.” An ominous rumble makes the grey patter of rain outside seem faintly sinister. “Can you make me one too?”
“Sure.” He turns on the lamp. There’s a pause, and then he chuckles. “Imagine if our power relied on that flimsy solar setup.” I think about it for a moment, and then I laugh as well. There’s a technical plenum scheduled in the late afternoon where our issue will be debated. By the time it starts the storm still shows no signs of dying down.
The short walk to the meeting venue is made treacherous by a horrible mix of wind, rain, and muddy soil. Instead of Paolo’s house, the meeting is held in a roughly barn-sized building that also doubles as a storage facility, allowing some 20 people to stand comfortably inside once some pallets of supplies (including, to my amusement, stacks of packaged toilet paper) are moved out of the way. A large whiteboard with four columns marked out is being set up near the far end of the barn as we come in, and Jens is busy passing out sticky notes.
“You’re already on the agenda for obvious reasons,” he says quickly as he passes by us, “but usually people write down what they want discussed on these notes, stick them up, and then we vote on the order of items to talk about.” Sure enough, a sticky note with “WILL & ALICE & CHANG-DOL*” on it was already stuck on the whiteboard, at the top of the column marked “To Be Discussed”. In a few minutes the rest of the assembled members put up their own topics and “vote” on which topics they want to discuss by marking dots on those sticky notes. Sometimes a clarifying question is asked or shouted out, but by and large the process runs itself for about ten minutes until Jens steps in, calls a halt to the idea gathering, and orders the notes by the number of dots marked. Our topic, given the circumstances, is naturally first to be resolved.
“Okay,” Jens mutters, “We have Will and Alice Eleutheros Xenos here, on the request of Chang-dol Eleutheros, in the hopes of… answering some kind of technical question?”
Chang-dol, still wet from the rain, nods bluntly. I can feel his gaze boring into Will and me, and think back to last night: I brought you two here to turn Polis into another Radix. Then Will steps forward and holds up his tablet.
“In 2021, for about two months, I worked under Lee Chang-dol for a group that was trying to subvert elections in multiple countries, including America.”
The room seems to shift, the floor turn to quicksand. The talk dies, eyes swivel, faces harden.
“I am not a technical person. But as I understand it, they collected data on voters, used it to predict psychological and personality traits, and were going to use targeted political advertising to appeal to those traits.” His words have a hurried, rehearsed clip, as if he’s been thinking about how to phrase this for weeks.
I hear the words “Cambridge Analytica” getting passed around me, but nobody so much as turns for a second from Will. I briefly wonder if he’s getting anything out of this attention, but his face says otherwise.
“Multiple groups of people had the same idea. One of those groups launched an attack on us by disguising it as a police raid, killing our organiser and destroying our infrastructure. However, I was given the source code and model weights for the personality analysis neural network.” He looks at Chang-dol. “Did I get this right?”
There’s now a stir. Jens looks at Chang-dol. “You were involved in this… scheme?” I can feel the friendly atmosphere slipping away even as I step forward.
“Please, you have to understand. We were convinced—are convinced—that there was no other way to affect systemic change given the money and power arrayed against us. This was how we thought we could save everything.” as the words leave my mouth I can feel the air curdle, the gazes shift, see mouths opening in incredulity.
A brown face breaks from the crowd—Fatima, the other maintainer. “Why are you here?”
“What?” Even Will seems a little lost.
Her mouth purses, her eyes bearing into me. “What do you want from us?”
Before Will can respond I cut in. “We want your help—” But with a small shove Fatima separates herself from the crowd, and something in her face just shuts me up.
“Alice, I think I speak for everyone here when I say that the chances we’ll help you resurrect this honestly despicable plan are somewhere around nonexistent.” Behind her, Chang-dol makes a furtive gesture but then thinks better of it as everyone starts nodding. “Not only is it plainly and obviously illegal in just about any jurisdiction you could name, even after only being here a month it’s clear to me that this goes against the core values of Polis.” Even more vigorous nodding. She’s clearly more comfortable taking a stand compared to us.
“And besides, this entire threat model is both Eurocentric and outdated—even in 2021 you have major democracies like India where political misinformation spreads through family chatrooms instead of targeted ads. And in 2024 I’m pretty sure that between LLMs and Stable Diffusion we’ve got more virulent problems to worry about.” she shoots me a look that can only be described as dismissive before turning to face Chang-dol. “I expected more from someone who got invited to Polis, even if you had to lie to get in.”
“Lie?” Chang-dol looks incredulous.
“It’s question one of the intake questionnaire, Chang-dol, and I’m pretty sure your little cabal falls under other entity hostile to the principles and existence of the Polis.”
The shadows are back on Chang-dol’s face, a kind of indignant fury. “This is ridiculous. Compared to our opponents—Our aims—”
“My god, he’s talking about his noble aims. Next thing you’ll tell me that you named yourselves the Illuminati because you wanted to bring light to the befuddled masses. Destroying democracy just because the other guy is also doing it is not okay.”
“Discussions of ethics are immaterial in the face of catastrophe. If we succeeded—”
“That’s right, if. You yourself pointed out that there are other groups doing this. Most likely what would happen is that you would simply add to the sum total of misinformation going around, further crippling an already fragile system. Also, I like the part where you don’t even bother asking the people in my country what they want before skipping straight to the targeted manipulation. Really committed to decentralising power and open access to information, I see.”
“It was. Worth. A shot.”
“Right, and you nearly got taken out by a police car full of goons, so I think we’ve given Machiavellian power politics its shot and then some, don’t you think?”
"You may not have liked our methods, but it had to be done. I think I have the right to some basic respect, at least."
"I respect you, Chang-dol. And because I respect you, I think you're dangerous enough that if you don't yield and leave now I will invoke ananke and remove you myself."
For a moment, they stare eye to eye across the small crowd. Then Chang-dol says quietly, “I cede the ground.” He breaks from the group, throws open the door, and steps into the storm. Nobody follows him. My eyes swing back towards Will, who looks grim but determined. All around us an messy discussion breaks out as I walk over to him.
“You’d planned this out, hadn’t you?”
For a second I think he’s going to destroy me as well. Then the shell drops, and Will just looks exhausted. He takes a deep breath, folds inwards, shrugs. “It… it had to be done. Simon’s—Chang-dol’s plan was insane.”
“What are any of us going to do now? We haven’t actually fixed anything. Everything’s still fucked.”
“I don’t know… but not like this.”
Jens cuts in. “I think the long jury—”
Thunk. The door swings open again as a short figure ducks in, wrapped in a heavy-duty black waterproof coat. It’s Paolo. As he stands up I can see streaks of mud on the coat. He must have slipped on the way here.
“Chang-dol’s gone, taken a car, probably to Auldhabn. But we have another problem. Check the election live streams.”
“What about them?” Fatima asks.
“None of them agree.”