The Liar's Dividend
New fiction on AI and the election
It’s the biggest election year in history. It’s also what some are calling the “post-post-truth” era. In February, the U.S. FBI Director warned against the threat of AI election interference. But so far, some argue, AI’s role in the election has been “more theoretical than transformational.” Not to tempt fate, but I’m hard-pressed to believe we make it to November 5th without some big AI election scandal.
In the following short story, set in January 2026, a woman reflects on her role in using AI to manipulate the 2024 election. I didn’t intend to publish a courtroom election story on the heels of Trump's conviction. And yet, here we are.
P. S. The title of this piece comes from Bobby Chesney and Danielle Cirton's 2019 article "Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security."
—Lila Shroff, Reboot Editorial Board
The Liar’s Dividend
By Lila Shroff
They sentence me to four years in prison for election fraud. The actual charge is for the Unlawful Distribution of Deepfake Media to Influence an Election. A Class E felony in the State of New York. I am the first person ever to be convicted under the law. My attorney says I should be grateful. They could have found me guilty on further counts. But they didn’t. Danny is at the sentencing. I see him in the back of the courthouse. He is wearing the blue pinstripe shirt I bought him for his birthday a few years ago. The shirt is ironed and his black hair carefully combed. He looks good. It is the first time I have seen him since everything happened. I am surprised he was able to find a seat with all the reporters packed into the courtroom. I am even more surprised that he came to the sentencing. I consider waving. But I don’t. My every move in the courtroom has become subject to the most intense media analysis. Better to spare Danny the spotlight. His life is still normal enough. In five years, Danny will probably be married to a woman who hasn’t committed a felony. But Macy, my German Shepherd, will still be alive and I’ll have most of my thirties left. After the sentencing, I am not taken into custody immediately. Instead, I am granted self-surrender. Within the next few weeks, I will be given a date by which I have to voluntarily submit myself to prison. Until then, I’m free. My attorney hands me a thick packet listing everything to be done before my surrender. Some items are easy: visit the dentist, the doctor, and the optometrist. Others require a trusted family member: transfer your bills to them, add them as an authorized user to your credit card, and grant them power of attorney. But I have no such relations. And then, there are the items not on the list. I find a home for Macy. I also bleach my hair and cut it to a bob in a desperate attempt for anonymity. All that is left to do is freeze my eggs. If everything goes as planned, I will get out of prison just after my thirty-fourth birthday. There might be enough time to meet someone and have a family. But it will be tight. My new haircut does not protect me from recognition at the fertility center. At the initial consultation, I am assigned a nurse, a stout woman named Lucy, who wears dark purple scrubs and clumpy mascara. Lucy squints at my paperwork as she reads it over, before looking up at me, her face catching between fear and awe. Once my bloodwork comes back clear, Lucy informs me that I am ready to begin the course of daily hormonal injections required before the actual egg retrieval procedure can occur. The injections are designed to be self-administered but I’m squeamish. Lucy senses my hesitation and eagerly volunteers to do the first one for me. We set an appointment for the following afternoon.
The trouble began when a close friend from grad school emailed asking if I wanted to beta test a new video generation model he was developing. Back then, in 2024, AI-powered video creation software was just taking off. Of course, there’s nothing impressive about this software now—everyone uses it—but you have to remember this was a few years ago and at the time, it was completely novel. I spent the weekend experimenting with goofy short films of skydiving koalas and butterflies flitting around Mars. The user experience was crude and I was only allowed a certain number of prompts each day, but the video generation was excellent, much better than anything I’d seen, and when I wrote back to my friend with glowing reviews of the model, he granted me unlimited access. If at first, my creations were abstract, the unlimited access allowed me to begin experimenting with more lifelike pieces. In one early video, Danny is pictured reading on our sagging living room couch. Macy is snuggled up beside him and they are bathed in morning sunlight. Danny stops reading to sip coffee from a large orange mug. Macy snuggles up closer. I texted it to Danny to get his reaction. Aw, he wrote back. Wait, when did you take this? I don’t remember it. After that, I took things a step further, creating lifelike videos of the two of us exploring all parts of the world. There we were lounging carelessly on the white sands of an anonymous beach in Koh Lipe, eating Galician octopus at a tapas bar along el Camino de Santiago, swimming in the jeweled waters off the coast of Korčula. “Wow,” Danny said as we sat in bed scrolling through my creations one Sunday night. “If I didn’t know any better, I would think these were real.” “I wish.” “Someday,” Danny promised. That night, synthetic images filled my dreams.
At the fertility clinic, Lucy confesses, while stabbing hormones into my stomach, that she thinks I’m a hero.
“I never would have had the courage to do what you did,” she says thoughtfully.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I tell her. This is only partially true. I knew exactly what I was doing. I just never imagined it would have the impact that it did.
“Still, you did it,” she sighs. “A hero.” But most aren’t Lucy. Most people hate me.
Before I leave, Lucy runs me through everything once more. She shows me how to prepare the injections and where to pinch my belly fat. I practice injecting a fake pad of silicone skin.
Outside the clinic, day is already slipping into dusk and dusk is slipping into night. A dirty amber sunset fills the sky. The streets are most alive at this hour. People are leaving their offices, walking their dogs, and picking up takeout for dinner. On my way home, I pass by the cheap produce stand where Danny and I used to buy our vegetables. The shopkeeper, Ed, is there standing guard over his broccoli and onions. I smile half-heartedly at him but he doesn’t smile back. Perhaps, he doesn’t recognize me with my haircut. Or perhaps he does and he chooses not to acknowledge me. He probably thinks I’m insane. I can imagine him at a bar with his friends saying, “You know the election fraud woman? She used to buy her vegetables from me. She ate a lot of carrots. Bell peppers too.” And then the friends would all laugh and they would order more beers and the conversation would move on to someone’s marital troubles or the score of the recent Knicks game.
At home, I check the mail. There’s a letter from a Florida publisher I’ve never heard of announcing the publication of my biography. I recycle it immediately. There’s also a chilling pile of hate mail and an insurance letter for Danny. I text him to let him know. Then, unthinkingly, I ask if we can meet once before my sentence begins. A final goodbye.
To my surprise, he agrees.The morning after Danny and I stayed up late watching my AI video creations, I met Anja for coffee before work. Anja was the CEO of the political consulting firm where I worked. I ran our tech team. We were responsible for the Democratic presidential candidate’s digital strategy. It was October 2024 and there were less than 30 days until the election.
Back then, I still liked Anja. She viewed the world through a lens of limitless potential. Anything was possible if you tried hard enough. Before becoming CEO, she had been an ROTC cadet turned investment banker. She was addicted to competition and couldn’t stand to lose. This we had in common. We were the most competent people at the firm and every morning we met for coffee at 6:30 am so we could power through the real work before the rest of the office arrived. We weren’t what I would call friends but we did spend practically all of our time together.
“We’re screwed,” Anja announced as I sat down across from her. Her coffee cup sat empty on the table between us. It was still too early for the office rush to have hit and the cafe was quiet. Like the inside of a factory, everything was cracked concrete and tarnished metal. Leafy plants filled empty surfaces and hung from the ceiling. Anja’s coral lipstick was smudged around the edges and her bun had come loose. Anja explained that she had just ended a phone call with senior campaign officials. They did not like our digital strategy. They wanted something more creative, more novel. The Democratic candidate was a laughing stock online, the target of crude but crafty misogynistic humor. She was being crushed by the Republican candidate in every poll. They were ready to fire us and do everything themselves.
None of this was news to me. The same conversations had been playing out for weeks. The Democratic candidate was behind in the polls and we were always the first to blame. But now time really had run out. The election was weeks away. The Republican candidate had just put out an awful ad attacking our candidate’s economic platform. And the polls looked grim. Any hope of capturing the moderate vote was quickly slipping away. Everyone had heard the rumors: the Republican presidential candidate (a man) was sleeping with a junior campaign staffer (also a man). The theory, first proposed by a seventeen-year-old TikTok user from Milwaukee, had quickly trickled its way into the popular imagination. But despite the evidence—the images of the pair photographed together at strange hours of the night and the anonymous reports from other staffers—the party, the candidate, and the staffer repeatedly denied all allegations. And so the story was relegated to the realm of unserious information: it was unfounded, speculative, gossip. To engage seriously with the story was to admit a sort of juvenile frivolity. But Anja and I were fully bought in. We had spent the past week scouring the internet for evidence that would finally, undeniably, incriminate the Republican candidate. Still, it was a futile needle-in-a-haystack search. The evidence, if there was any, had proved impossible to find. But what if the evidence could be created? In college, I had written a paper on the Great Man Theory, which posited that history was primarily shaped by the actions of certain exceptional individuals. The right person at the right time could have an outsized impact if they chose to act on their power. In contemporary circles, the view had fallen out of favor. Scholars argue that it was elitist and naive. But I had trouble with the contemporary perspective, the way it denied individual agency. History was not so passive, I thought. It was slippery. The axes upon which its fabric was draped could be so easily dislodged. More easily, I would learn, than I ever could have imagined. The mission was only to further destabilize the truth, not to supplant it entirely. I told Danny that I had to work late and that he should sleep without me. I set up my laptop in the kitchen and made myself a cup of instant coffee. It was already past midnight and the city had quieted into sweet slumber. My friend’s lab had put safeguards up to prevent the generation of explicit content, but the safeguards were rudimentary, and within hours, I had learned to work my way around them. A couple more hours and the sky softened to pink. My work was complete. There was the video that would be released to the world. Playing it back, I felt a sense of pride: I did that. And yet, something in me knew never to tell anyone the truth of what I’d done. Especially not Danny. Never Danny. I knew exactly how he would react.
Truth. Danny was obsessed with it. He had this notion that a single lie was the greatest catastrophe. That if he told one, the world would end. I understood early on that Danny's aversion to dishonesty came from a place of deep hurt. But it wasn’t until a year into our relationship that Danny finally told me his story.
We met by chance at a dinner party organized by our mutual friend, an accountant and aspiring painter, Celia. I had gone to college with Celia, and Danny had grown up with her. A few weeks after the dinner party, we attended an art show downtown in which Celia was featured. We showed up early to an overcrowded gallery. Celia met us at the door and pulled us through the crowd to the corner of the room in which her artwork hung. They were large, ugly paintings, grey and sloppy, but still—I showered her with praise. Later, on the way home, when I revealed to Danny my true feelings about her work, he turned cold. I can’t believe you would lie to a friend, he had chastised. I thought differently. Lies could be justified if used in service of worthwhile ends. I was proud of Celia for pursuing her art and by complimenting her, I thought, she was more likely to continue with it.
The absolution of Danny’s commitment to integrity extended to all parts of his life. He worked as a Human Rights Officer with the UN where he investigated education-related human rights violations. He made lunch daily for our recently widowed neighbor, Mrs. L, and he often spent weekends volunteering at a nearby food pantry. For as much as I admired him, there were times I felt his virtuousness was a burden.
On our first anniversary, Danny and I spent a weekend away at a seaside resort in Rhode Island. We stayed up late talking, revealing secrets in that way that only the night allows. Only then did I find out. The August before his senior year of high school, Danny’s childhood best friend Mattias had dragged him to a party. The two had grown up next door to each other, but they ran in different social circles at school—Mattias was cool and Danny wasn’t. When they arrived at the party, Mattias quickly disappeared into the crowd while Danny stationed himself in front of the TV downstairs with a group of half-dazed kids playing Mario Kart. Time passed and when Mattias returned, he was anxious to leave. He'd seen the girl he liked kissing someone else in the backyard and it had upset him. Mattias pulled his keys out of his pocket. Danny noticed that Mattias smelled vaguely of beer. He asked Mattias whether he was okay to drive. The group of boys playing Mario Kart laughed. Mattias assured Danny that of course he was fine. Danny was embarrassed to have asked. The party was a thirteen-minute drive from the street they lived on. From the moment Mattias started driving, Danny knew he was way too drunk. He thought about saying something, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He didn’t want Mattias to think he was lame. Only thirteen minutes, he told himself. What was the worst that could happen? “Why did you do it?” Lucy asks.
I am lying on the examination table with my feet in plastic stirrups and a thin sheet of white butcher paper draped across my legs. The lighting is dim. Lucy is preparing the ultrasound wand. I know better than to answer her question—she could go straight to the press—and yet, I’m so desperate to tell someone, anyone, my version of the story, that I disregard my common sense. At the trial, I had said that my actions were the combined product of employer coercion and a mental collapse. That was the defense my attorney had dreamed up. I told the jury that I had been given a directive from Anja to win the election by any means necessary. My job was on the line and the stress of it all led me to a state of impaired judgment. This recount was not entirely untrue, but I disliked the way it stripped my actions of any ideological intent. Yes, I was career-motivated, but it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever is.
“It’s complicated,” I begin. Lucy inserts the probe and a greyscale image of my left ovary appears on screen. “At first, I was just experimenting. I wanted to see if it would even be possible to make such a video.”
“But you could have stopped there,” Lucy observes. “Why share it with the world?” She moves the probe and a twinge of pressure radiates through me.
“I wanted to do something that would have an impact. Like actually change the world.” I know I sound delusional. “I was so idealistic when I was young and then I grew up and went to school and all that idealistic ambition was drained out of me. Here was my chance to change that. To actually do something real.”
Lucy nods knowingly and shifts the probe once more.The video. Two minutes and twenty-three seconds. A single cut, shakily filmed. A sex tape featuring the Republican presidential candidate and his young male aide. The video that broke records on YouTube before it was removed, and which afterward circulated on the back alleys of the internet, in personal group chats and forgotten forums. The video that claimed a spot on the front page of every newspaper and which was discussed on podcasts and television and social media platforms for weeks after. The video that changed the course of the presidential election. A cinematic bricolage of half-truths strung together into a semblance of reality. An artificially generated video. One created entirely by me. When I showed the video to Anja over coffee the next morning, her face scrunched in disgust. “What the hell?” she said. “Where did you get this?” I had not planned to implicate Anja in my scheme. The fewer people who knew about the video's origins the better. I had instead planned to tell her I received the video as an anonymous tip. That is what I should have done. But I got sloppy. Watching Anja watch my video, I felt the overwhelming urge to let her in on everything. I wanted her, above all, to recognize how good of a job I’d done in creating it. I took a bet and I told Anja the truth. “Ok, fine,” I whispered. “It’s fake. I made it.” “Wow,” Anja looked impressed, “Nice work.” I blushed. “We can say we got it from an informant in their campaign. I’ll release it to the press on the condition of anonymity.” And that’s exactly what happened. By the end of the workday, Anja had released the video to the world. The reaction was instantaneous. The country was stunned. The Republican candidate immediately put out a statement disavowing the legitimacy of the video. It’s not real, he protested. But no one believed him. He was the man who cried wolf, and then cried wolf again. People knew, already, about the deepfake defense, the liar’s dividend, call it what you want. The practice of claiming that real images were fake was all too common among scandal-ridden celebrities. But this was the first time the claim had been attempted on a video this long and no one was buying it. Over the following weeks, the candidate’s position dropped sharply in the polls, first by a couple of percentage points, and then by a few more. It was the moderates who drove the shift. Those already firmly on the Right held their ground. But the moderates were malleable. For some, it was a subconscious homophobia; for others, it was the infidelity. The swing states we had previously given up on began to look more and more promising. If we could win the Rust Belt, we could win the election.
The restaurant Danny chooses is wedged between a nail salon and a pop-up smoke shop. We are sitting at a table that overlooks the street. My back is to the window and Danny is across from me. It is early evening and the dying sun casts a stripe of glowing light across his face. An ad for Ozempic plays loudly on the television by the cash register.
“How are you doing?” he asks.
“Okay,” I respond. “And you?”
“Same,” he says. We look at each other in awkward silence. I have no plan for what to say next.
The space between us fills with all the lives we might have led. The life where we’re back in our old apartment on the sagging couch planning the weekly grocery list. Or the one in which we’ve moved out of that apartment and into a newer, nicer one, where we’ve redone the place just to our liking, with mint green tiles in the kitchen and a red accent wall in the living room. The life in which we’re in Korčula sipping elderflower cocktails at a terrace bar in the walled old town as the sun falters over the Adriatic. Or the life where we’re visiting his parents for a week away in San Jose and his dad is making French toast while we play catch in the backyard with the kids.
But those lives are gone. They’re dust, detritus, the shattered remnants of an impossible dream, as real now as those videos I once generated of our imagined lives. I never deleted those videos and sometimes I still watch them. I've even thought about making new ones.
Danny and I had planned to have a family together. Two kids and a dog. Family game nights on Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings making blueberry pancakes. Summers spent hiking through the National Parks, winters in the mountains cross-country skiing. It started as Danny’s dream. I was hesitant. I liked our simple life. But Danny wanted a family like the one he grew up in. The more he talked about his vision of our future, the more it became my own. Danny was the oldest of four brothers. He’d grown up in a house that was almost always on the brink of explosion and yet so intensely full of love. I loved Thanksgivings with them. The brothers would spend the entire day out in the patchy backyard with the family’s two Vizslas, tall and elegant, playing a hybrid football-frisbee game that only they knew the rules to. I would always try to join in, but it would inevitably be too much, the wrestling, the arms and limbs flying in every direction, the undefined rules, and I’d eventually withdraw back to the porch and sit in observation, or lend a hand to his father in the kitchen.
The silence has become uncomfortable and Danny is staring at me expectantly.
“I am freezing my eggs,” I announce. “I’m almost done with the injections. The retrieval should be this weekend.”
Danny’s features stiffen. Shit. I hadn’t planned to tell him this. Or maybe I had.
“Oh.” There is a long, awkward pause. “I’m sorry,” Danny says. And then he’s standing up, pushing in his chair, walking out the door, and disappearing down the street.
We haven’t even ordered appetizers. On election day, I arrived at work to find Anja waiting for me by the front door. She looked panicked as she dragged me up the stairs and into her office. Half-eaten Snickers bars and empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups were scattered across her desk. The small trash can under her desk was overflowing and a pile of clothes sat balled in the corner. She kicked off her heels and collapsed into her chair. “Listen,” she breathed, “they want to know more about where the video came from. I have powerful people breathing down my neck. We need a better story.” When Anja had initially released the video the previous month, I’d deliberately separated myself from matters of its distribution. Some journalist had taken credit for breaking the story; on paper, Anja, eager for any opportunity for self-promotion, was the source, and she herself was said to have received the video from an anonymous informant. The chain ended there. I was given no credit for sourcing the video. Not that I cared. If anything, I was grateful not to be involved. I stared at Anja dumbly and she stared back at me. In the end, she made up a story claiming a leak by a source inside the Republican campaign. The source she chose was a campaign lead with an existing reputation for scandal. The man was fired and the world seemed content. A scapegoat had been found and we all got on with our lives. A nervous energy permeated the office that day. Everyone was over-caffeinated and under-slept. There were a million things to do. Minutes stretched out slowly and then hours collapsed in on each other. If you’ve never been inside a campaign team on election day, it’s impossible to explain. The energy was manic, electric, an impossible high. Morning became afternoon became evening. And then the polls closed. One of the interns ordered Thai takeout. We had election coverage playing on six different channels on six different TVs. The race was close and our spirits rose and fell as each swing state was announced. We won Wisconsin, then Michigan. Lost Arizona, then North Carolina. When the election had not been called by midnight, I expected everyone to go home for the night and return in the morning. But no one left. And then, finally, came the announcement: Pennsylvania was ours. The Associated Press called it first. The Democratic candidate would be the 47th President of the United States. Our entire office poured out onto the rooftop to celebrate. The scene had more the character of a New Year’s blowout than it did an office party. Champagne spilled out of plastic flutes, kisses were exchanged between coworkers, and the sky looked on, starless and content. I stood apart from the crowd watching the celebration play out elsewhere across the city. Through the glowing windows of neighboring buildings, people embraced. In the distance, honking and fireworks. Against the fading dark of November dawn, the city finally breathing in relief. Elsewhere across the country, the shame and anger of defeat. Anja also stood alone observing the scene. Her face was subdued. When I caught her eyes from across the rooftop, she quickly averted her gaze. I was elated to have won, but the strangeness of her behavior unsettled me. I understand now that Anja already knew how the coming weeks would play out. She was one step ahead of me in a game I didn’t even know I was playing.
After Danny leaves, I order a chicken Banh Mi to go and return home to give myself my next injection. I clean my stomach with an alcohol wipe, scrunch it up like Lucy showed me, and press the needle into the fat. The process no longer scares me. I like the way it feels when the needle pinches my skin. Then, I feed Macy and we step out for her evening walk.
We pass the cafe where Anja and I used to meet before work. Now, the industrial, scraped-down interior looks depressing, not sleek, and the plants all seem to be dying. We continue walking until we reach the water. Streetlights illuminate concrete apartment buildings with lawns drowned in plastic litter. By the riverside, the air smells of wilting amaranth. The water is still, half-frozen, and a few yards out, a large duck paddles by with a train of ducklings in tow. Macy growls and the ducks pick up pace.
At an empty park bench, I sit down and refresh my email. A flood of new messages fills the screen. Mostly hate mail. An occasional death threat. My mind fills with despair and yet I can’t look away. I consider texting Danny. I want to apologize for asking to meet. But I know he doesn’t want to hear from me. No one does. A woman strolls by. She is humming to a child in her arms. A melody my own mother used to sing.
If until now darkness is something I’ve kept out, it comes crashing in, all of it, all that I had pushed aside, like a terrible tidal wave that submerges my thoughts in a symphony of destruction. Here by the river, in the collapsing light, I am struck by a sense of future dispossession. I feel the weight of pending loss, the deadness of my future, the four years of my life that will never happen, the poems I won’t read, the flesh I won’t touch, the judgment and shame of my future child, and all that will never be the same.
Mattias killed a woman that night and Danny watched it happen. She was thirty-two. Dead on impact. A nurse from Boston. Two kids at home with her husband. In the beach house that night, Danny had recounted this part so softly I’d had to strain to hear the words. I feel the tears on my cheeks now. I don’t want to cry sitting on this stupid park bench. It’s the hormones, the fucking hormones. The allegations went live in early December. Danny was in the living room watching the 49ers play the Seahawks. Seattle was losing badly at the half and Danny was thrilled. I was in the kitchen reorganizing the fridge when I heard the newscaster announce an interruption for a special report. I removed a grease-stained cardboard takeout box and set it on the counter beside an old bottle of salad dressing.
“We want to apologize for sharing a viral video earlier this year of the Republican presidential candidate engaged in explicit acts,” said the female anchor. Shit. “According to a new update, the video was not real. A consortium of election integrity researchers were the first to raise alarms. Now the question is: Who is behind this synthetic video? Early reports suggest foreign actors are to blame.”
“Steph,” I heard Danny call. “Get in here.”
I closed the fridge and stepped out of the kitchen.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. I nodded carefully. “I bet it’s Russia,” he said confidently.
I should have told Danny the truth then and there. But somehow, stupidly, stupidly, I thought the video wouldn’t be traced back to me. I trusted Anja. It was her ass on the line as well as mine.
“That’s crazy,” I heard myself saying. My thoughts were in chaos. I decided to take Macy out for a walk. The streets were mostly quiet. The clouds hung low in the sky and daylight filtered weakly through them. I walked North. Once enough distance separated me from the apartment, I called Anja. She didn’t pick up. I tried again. My call went immediately to voicemail. I refreshed every news app on my phone and then refreshed them all again. I checked my email and my texts. Nothing. Social media was full of speculation as to which foreign actor was to blame. No one suspected the work of an individual American citizen. I convinced myself that I was safe. If I ignored the problem, it would all go away.
Back at the apartment, Danny was still watching football. I climbed onto the couch and curled my head against his lap. He ran his fingers through my hair. That was the last moment when everything was okay.
“We have an update to our Special Report,” announced the newscaster. The screen filled with a pre-recorded clip. A black background. Studio lighting. A reporter and Anja sitting on armchairs. Anja. Anja. Anja. My heartbeat tripled. I turned my face away from the screen, burying it in the soft of Danny’s stomach. His fingers were still combing through my hair.
“Isn’t that Anja?” Danny asked, confused.
I said nothing.
“Anja,” the reporter began, “Tell me everything.”
“Truth is fundamental,” she said. “But today, I confess to having accidentally led our country astray. Last month, a trusted employee told me that she had video evidence of the rumored affair. I saw the video and assumed it to be real. Today, I learned, alongside the rest of you, that the video was entirely synthetic, generated by this employee herself. I apologize deeply for not having conducted a more thorough verification of the video before its release.”
“Who was this employee?” asked the reporter.
“Her name,” Anja said, “is Stephanie—”
Danny’s knee jerked into my jaw. I wake up in a thick haze of sadness. The morning is heavy. I don’t feel like going to my final check-in with Lucy, but somehow, I drag myself to the clinic. I maintain my composure throughout the blood draw and the ultrasound, but then, when Lucy asks how I’m doing, the tears come fast. She immediately pulls me in for a hug, suffocating me in her sweet, plastic perfume. It feels so good to be hugged. I cry harder.
“You know,” she says, releasing me slowly. “Popular opinion may be against you, but there are a lot of people who are really inspired by what you did.” I consider explaining to her that it’s not popular opinion, but Danny’s opinion, that I care about. But Lucy continues. She asks if I’ve seen the trend. #StandWithSteph. I haven’t. So she explains it. Teenage girls across the country are mimicking my haircut in an act of solidarity. So much for my attempts at anonymity. I imagine the legion of bleached and bobbed sixteen-year-olds walking out of high school history classes demanding my release from prison. The thought almost makes me laugh. I was the most straight-edged sixteen-year-old you could imagine. Perfect grades and always asleep by 9:30 pm. If only they had seen me then.
Lucy’s voice interrupts my thoughts. She is asking who my hairdresser is. She says she is considering the haircut herself and it would be more authentic that way. I look at her like she’s crazy. Because she is. She apologizes for asking. I can see the way Lucy is fascinated by me. She has mythologized me. She doesn’t realize that I am just like her. A woman.
Then, Lucy declares that I’m ready for retrieval. She gives me instructions for the final trigger shot to be self-administered before bed. My final appointment is scheduled. Lucy tells me what I already know. The procedure will be brief. I will be lightly sedated. An ultrasound-guided needle will suction out the eggs. After midnight, I can’t eat or drink. I don’t know where Danny went after the news broke, but when the door to the balcony, where I had self-exiled myself to, clicked open later that night, Danny emerged red-eyed and stiff, wearing only a white T-shirt and gym shorts. The night was frozen and goosebumps prickled up on his skin. I reached up to wrap my blanket around him, but instinctively, his body jolted away from mine. “Don’t,” he said, and I could tell from his tone that he meant it. He took a seat. “Steph,” he began. I watch him pick anxiously at a fingernail. “You think I did anything the other campaign hadn’t also tried?” I asked. “Their primary operating tactic is truth distortion. And anyway, even if the content of the video was a lie, that doesn’t mean there’s no truth to it. It’s just a different kind of truth.” “Steph—” “I’m not done,” I continued. “Your obsession with integrity is really something. Just because you work for the UN it doesn’t mean shit. You act like you’re on some moral high ground, but at least my work has impact. You just spend your whole day writing up memos that never get read. By making that video, I changed the course of the election. In fact, I probably did more good for this country, for the environment, for women, for human fucking rights, than you’ll do in your entire life. Unlike you, I actually have the courage to speak up for what I know to be right. At least, someone isn’t dead because of my inaction.” “Steph,” he finally said. We sat in silence staring out at the bleeding horizon. The conversation was over. There was nothing more to be said.
In the procedure room, a radio station tuned to Top 40 Hits is playing. I lay shivering in a paper gown, my stomach empty, an anxiety building inside me, underdeveloped and uncertain. Lucy notices. She tries to distract me. She asks if I would do it again. Make the video, that is. I contemplate my response but the anesthesiologist arrives before I can respond.
Lucy keeps talking. It will be over before you know it, she tells me. My head starts to spin. I’ll be here the entire time. Lucy’s voice getting further and further away. I normally hate the feeling of anesthetic, but today, the floating, the disappearance of thought, soothes. I wish I was like you, Lucy says. I have the sense that I would be better off if my mind were to remain in the clouds. Forever drifting. I think of my apartment and the balcony where Danny and I ended things. The balcony where I now drink my coffee each morning, watching as the throng of commuters emerges from the subway station on the corner. They quickly disperse in every direction, walking with purpose as they do, as if wherever they are going, it is the most important place in the world.
I spot Danny among them, wearing the blue pin-striped shirt, hair combed, walking into the distance. I imagine he is headed somewhere far away. To Koh Lipe, to Santiago de Compostela, to Korčula. I want to follow him. To run away and never come back. I begin to chase after him. Layers of the city fall away as I pass through them. There is Ed selling his vegetables. The cafe where Anja and I used to meet. The rooftop where we celebrated the election. Lucy calling after me. Macy growling at the ducks. The riverside collapsing in light. I am sprinting now but Danny is too far in the distance. No matter how fast I run, I’ll never catch up.Reboot publishes essays on tech, humanity, and power every week. If you want to keep up with the community, subscribe below ⚡️
🌀 microdoses
Rest of World’s 2024 AI Elections Tracker is documenting noteworthy cases of AI-generated election mis/disinformation. Among them: “Modi embraces Lil Yachty meme as #Dictator trends.” Politico also has a new series, “Bots and Ballots,” tracking AI and elections.
My upcoming reading list: Soft Science by Franny Choi. I read Choi’s most recent poetry collection—The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On—in a writing class taught by R.O. Kwon earlier this year and fell in love. Now, I’m working my way backward through her work. Kwon’s new novel, Exhibit, which was just released, is also at the top of my list. I also recently picked up Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which won the 2024 International Booker. (I saw an AI clause on the book's copyright page which I had never noticed before).
Even Katy Perry’s mom thought AI-generated images of her at the Met Gala were real.
In India, where elections started in late April, AI has been used as a tool for voter outreach. WIRED did a great deep dive.
💝 closing note
If you have any creative work—fiction, poetry, or something else—that you feel would be a great fit for Reboot, pitch us!
Lila & the Reboot team
The premise is so fascinating that I tore through the story, loved it.
Wow, Lila, I loved this! Great character development and all the angles on morality are weaved in beautifully.