Integrity

     It’s been ten years since Mom committed suicide. Ten years since the day I found her, dead, in her room. I don’t use that room anymore, although I still live in the apartment we moved into when I was in kindergarten (maybe it was first grade, I don’t really remember). I moved all of her stuff into that room, filled up the remainder with useless junk, and started a campaign against the thing I feel is fully responsible for her death and the deaths of so many other women; AI modeling. 

    My Mom was a beauty fanatic. She was also, well, not quite there most of the time. She couldn’t just be pretty, she needed to be stunning, and every time she thought she had it down, she’d find someone prettier online. I know, beauty isn’t important, and if you’re obsessed with being the prettiest woman in an age where AI can make anything real, there’s something deeply wrong with you. For some reason, she didn’t stop, no matter how many times I told her she was crazy. She kept getting depressed, sometimes screaming at me, sometimes complaining about everything, sometimes shutting herself up for days, never speaking to anyone except to tell them to got to hell. It got so bad that some nights I’d pray for her to die in her sleep, just so I wouldn’t have to hear her scream. Then, when I was fourteen, old enough to receive state income, she killed herself. 

     I looked everywhere for a reason. I’d wanted her dead, but I didn’t want her death to anyone’s fault other than that of the ones who run our world. I couldn’t find anything. All I found were books about how AI modeling works, books that told me that everything you see in beauty magazines is a lie and always has been. I’d known this, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. They mentioned the case of Cameron Walker, a model composited out of several existing models, most of whom were people who had disowned them after seeing the damage that had been done. So long as Cameron made money, though, the AI creators didn’t see any reason to change things. They just adapted her model as times changed and beauty standards evolved, meaning there would never be a moment when a woman like my mother would ever feel beautiful again. 

***

      I look out the window at the city skyline, a cup of warm apple cider in my hands. Weird, I think, that our cities still look like something someone from the twenty-first century would recognize. With a few more green spaces and a lot more kinds of disposal, at least. The main thing that’s changed, as far as I know, is that the city is mostly deserted. There are people, but they don’t all come and go during the same times, as I’m told they did in the days when income meant work. Nowadays, nobody who isn’t a citizen leaves their home during daylight hours. Times when people are awake are times when people are online. Endless distraction may be the only thing keeping most of the population from meeting Mom’s fate. 

     My friend Rhonda and I are sharing a couch. On a chair across from us is Goldie, hacker and black right’s activist. I know both of them from high school, which I’d started a year before Mom died. I was looking for a place to eat at lunch, then saw Rhonda and Goldie sitting at a table not talking to each other. Wanting to look more popular than I was ever going to be, I asked what their plans were for life after school. To my surprise they, and I, were on the track to become citizens, a rare thing in this day and age. We talked about our scores on the tests, our views on the job market, and our classes at school. I was grateful to find people to talk to. We met at lunch every day at school, and that was it at first. Over time, we grew closer, and even after we all left for college, we still kept in touch. Now, all three of us are citizens. I’m a journalist, Rhonda’s a social worker, and Goldie works as a White-Hat, keeping what’s left of the United States safe from external threats, what few there are who weren’t consumed by the loss of society. 

      We’re not just friends, we’re also Infinitelists. Rhonda was raised in it by her brother, and she introduced me and Goldie to it in High School. We’re not one of the crazy sectarian Infinitelists who are fixing reality by forcing their followers to live inside a much more broken version of it, we’re just of the opinion that the government needs to be doing something about society, a thing which arguably died a hundred years ago today. Some blame the pandemic, some blame the rise of AI, all agree that it was the 2020s that saw the end of a once prosperous world. 

     “So, Melissa,” Rhonda says, piercing me with her green eyes, “How’s your latest story going?”

    “Fine,” I answer, “Well, as fine as a puff piece about a celebrity goes.”

       I look down at my drink, trying not to show just how ashamed I am that this is the only work I can land. I keep pushing for stronger leads, but the boss doesn’t trust me. Or maybe he just thinks that someone who is obviously just a creation of some AI firm is the only thing the public wants to hear about. I don’t blame him. Everyone knows our world is awful, that doesn’t mean they want to see it.

    “I wish I could write a piece about the modeling industry.” I say, more to myself than anybody else.

    “Then why don’t you do it?” Goldie says.

    “I need money to pay rent.” I reply.

    “Could you afford it if you moved out of here?” Rhonda says.

    “Maybe, if I moved to a worse building in the bad part of town.” I say.

    “You could room with someone else, you know?” Goldie says. She looks annoyed with me. 

     I don’t have a reply to her. We’ve talked about this enough that I know what she and Rhonda aren’t saying anymore; I need to move out of this apartment. I only managed to stay here this long because Rhonda moved in with me after Mom died and paid half the rent and utilities, and the only reason she did that was because her brother, the one who raised her after their mom died of an overdose, was in love with someone and she didn’t want to have to deal with an evil stepmother. We’re both citizens, without state income but with jobs that don’t pay any more than we would have made if we hadn’t gone to college. Goldie has a job that once would have had her set for life, but now makes about as much as Rhonda makes in a year. Only people from old money who run the AI firms have the ability to live in the lap of luxury. 

     “Melissa?” Rhonda asks.

     “Sorry,” I say, “I just got lost in thought.”

     “Well, are you going to write a piece about the modeling industry?” Goldie Asks.

      “Someday,” I say. I hesitate, but then decide that it’s time to tell them the truth. “I’ve actually been chasing a few leads, when I have the time.”

     They both look confused. “Since when?” They both ask. 

     “Since about a year. I’ve been studying the industry on and off since Mom died. Apparently, there’s a lot of literature out there about the effects that unrealistic beauty standards have on people’s mental health, especially women’s. I’ve also found out that not only do the people making the AI models we use know about this, but they’ve been banking on it so that women will feel they have no choice but to use a model rather than their own face. I’ve even heard rumors that they’ve made archival of old films without the help of AI all but impossible, so that women have no reference point of what real beauty looks like.”

     “And nobody talks about this?” Goldie says.

     “Well, Simon is famous for talking about the power of money.” I say. 

      “I don’t think it’s fair to compare my brother to the rich. He doesn’t hurt people.” Rhonda says. She’s partially right, since all he does is sell people “Magic” items that don’t actually hurt them, but I don’t think that makes him a good person. 

      “Rhonda, the thing that your brother and these people have in common is that they’re both capable of hurting people. Your brother just chooses not to hurt people, and if somebody comes along asking to be hurt he turns them away. These are people who don’t just let people hurt themselves, they say you’re only a good person if you let yourself be hurt by them, and only them.” 

     “And you want to stop them from doing this?” Goldie says.

      I take a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can. They’re powerful, and everyone uses their technology. We wouldn’t be the age of a million realities without them, and as awful as these people are, there are people out there willing to tear apart reality to the very atom if it’ll get them what they want.”

      “What could possibly be worth the damage that would do?” Rhonda screams. 

      “Rhonda, as someone who’s lived among non-believers, let me assure you that to most people, the answer to that question is, ‘everything’” Goldie says. 

       We have to sit in silence after that. Goldie’s the one raised by atheists who, to this day, don’t want to admit that reality isn’t just potentially in danger, but outright destroyed. Both of her parents have government jobs, doing what I don’t know, and she works at a big firm where she hides the ring Rhonda gave her for her eighteenth birthday. She’s the one who knows the people who hate Infinitelism most the best, and constantly worrying about being caught has made her somewhat bitter about the world. 

       “I don’t think the AI elite wanted to destroy reality. They knew it would happen, and they didn’t care, but they didn’t want people to suffer. They just don’t think of people other than themselves as people. At least, that’s what’ I’ve heard.” I say, then after pausing for breath I continue, “I don’t think they had a vision of a future other than the one where people worshiped them. They still live in that world, and they’re forcing that to be our future no matter how often we say we don’t want it. I think the attitude that our leaders should hold themselves to different, better standards than ourselves is what destroyed the world of the twenty-first century.”

     “I don’t think that’s true.” Goldie says, “Leaders have to be responsible for the lives of thousands, potentially millions, of people, they can’t just hold themselves to our standards. If they let themselves slip, all of us will suffer.” 

      “I’m not sure they hold themselves to any standards at all.” Rhonda says, “I think they just want to be able to do what they want without anyone holding them back or telling them what to do. Yes, we all want to do bad things without consequence, but that doesn’t mean we should live in a world like that. How would we be safe?”

    I sit and think about that for a second. “I don’t think most of us want to break the rules. I once got a chance to interview a man who’d built a small church to a new religion, and he said that he thinks that the people who benefit most from the rules are those who want to follow them and just need to know what they are. He didn’t tell me who, if anyone should make them. I think he just kind of thought that anyone who says that they’re in charge ought to be allowed to make the rules.”

     “Didn’t we used to have elections for this sort of thing?” Rhonda asks.

     “We still do,” Goldie replies, “It’s just hard to get people to show up when they don’t think the government actually does anything for them. It’s much easier to get people to hear you on Fantasy Instagram or the KARMoS forums.”

     I look back out the window, thinking about an all but mythical world where, it’s said, not only did we have a reality, but people had the ability to change things. “Do you think we could bring back a world where elections matter?” I ask.

     “We could, and we probably will someday.” Goldie says. 

      “Do you think we should?” Rhonda says, “If we gave up on them in the first place, how do we know they’ll work for us now?”

      “They did work for us in the past. People just stopped participating when they didn’t get everything they wanted. If they’d accepted their losses, we’d still have a world to live in.” Goldie says.

     “Do you think maybe the CEOs of the twenty-first century were anything like the one’s we have today? Do you think that the reason people stopped participating was because the government depended on corporate money then just like it does now?” I ask

      Goldie looks stunned. Rhonda says, “That might be the truth. I don’t know, but it would explain a lot. Shouldn’t you investigate it?” 

      I smile, “I should, and like they always say in Infinitelism, at some point you have to move on from your past.”