Lights are playing on the roof. They dance to the rhythm of the clouds in the sky and the leaves on the trees. In the moment just after waking the man didn’t remember who he was; he just watches the light and shadow with bemusing satisfaction. The dreamer who wakes is not always the same who fell asleep. The dreams that night had been exceptional, a tapestry of memory, fears, and desires.

The clock in his mind that normally drove him to action was silent, for once. The stillness in his mind belied the chaos of shadows rioting on the roof. Contemplation became an act of wonder. It was beauty unlooked for and unexplained, but only beauty had proven able to stop the unstoppable timepiece of his will. That clock had ticked without cease for longer than he could remember. It was a quiet release to hear the silence between the ticks of the clock stretch so organically. Maybe that clock couldn’t completely grasp the complexity that dappled across the ceiling of his plane.

There it was, the first tick in his mind that brought him back to reality. He was Callisto Venturi, and he had just woken up in his cargo hold of his plane.

More like idled away the day in the cargo hold of his plane, he mused. The curtains on the windows should have been closed for the night to hold in the heat anyways. One stretch arching his back was normally enough to clean the sleep from his eyes. This morning he groaned, stretched, and twisted.”

“Grace Bergman, good morning, what is on the agenda today?” His was a calm and slow voice, one laden with withheld energy. “Good morning, Callisto. Before noon: free time. Noon-to-Two: travel to Robaat Calculator Factory. Two-to-Six: arrange purchase of Robaat. Seven-to-nine-thirty: Practice. Eleven-to-midnight: The Late Show.”

“”That’s right, that old bastard did convince me to come on his show. Hmmm. Grace, coffee please, and what time zone are we in now?”

“Would that be GMT +6 or Eastern Standard Time Zone? Either is a correct answer and my programming doesn’t specify which you would prefer.”

Callisto’s companion wasn’t of the normal sort. Most in a position to own a plane would go to the effort of buying the biggest one they could afford and stocking it with enough booze, drugs, weapons, and women to stock a small army. Callisto had only caffeine—and that was a stretch for him-- in the mornings at least. On one of those well stocked luxury flying pharmacies one would also expect the women to be as beautifully curved as the wings. Aboard the modified Cessna which he called his home, Callisto’s sole companion was the computer currently responding to the name ‘Grace Bergman.’

“Sure, sure. If we are in the United States please go ahead and use the more relaxed definitions. When I go to sleep tonight, what time zone will I be in?”

“We will be back in Eastern.”

Grace was one of his projects. The quest for true artificial intelligence had been unsuccessfully sputtering since the 1980s. Burned out on the idea of a truly intelligent machine, Callisto had rather set his sights on training a creative machine. “Gotta love those 20 hour days, eh Grace?”

The last phrase ‘eh Grace’ was a cue phrase for the computer to generate an unexpected response. The current algorithm was still largely composed of intersecting randomness and context, but Grace had shown some early promise.

“Technically, Mr. Venturi, since the nearest airport is over an hour from the studio, the earliest that you would be arriving back in me would be one o’clock in the morning Eastern Standard. Since it is currently oh-seven hundred, that would make your minimum conscious time today 21 hours.”

Midway through her pronouncement, he had caught the program she was running. It was a correction speech program collated with data about his schedule. “Thank you for that correction Grace, it will be useful for adapting my calorie intake program today.”

“But Mr. Venturi, I wasn’t done. Your coffee is done, but I wasn’t.” This wasn’t new either, a continuation program for highly rated conversational constructs. The coffee was dispensed in the cockpit. Making his way from the mattress on the cargo bay floor to the pilot’s seat was a simple matter of crossing the roomy four-passenger cabin. The coffee tasted divine, there were some things that were worth spending money on.

“There is of course the possibility that you will not be sleeping inside me today. The tabloids suggest that on the nights following your public appearances you are significantly more likely to sleep inside someone else.”

A cough and a laugh look remarkably similar with coffee inside your mouth. Cal patted a few dribble spots on his shirt. Grace responded to his laugh, “You should be careful with the coffee when you are in the cockpit. You know these instruments are extremely valuable and delicate.”

Callisto chuckled again. “I copy that G.B. I’ll be careful around the instruments. Grace, a moment.”

“Of course.”

That was quite a leap for a computer, even one with cross-programming as complicated as hers. Callisto found himself thinking, using wordplay was within the computer’s programming, but what strikes me as the oddest was the computer directly comparing itself to living human being. While coding for the project, one of the strictest requirements Callisto imposed on himself was the categorical differentiation between humans and machines.

His pulse started to accelerate. Was this it? Was this the moment that he had stopped expecting? It wasn’t a necessary part of the final plan, but having a truly creative machine companion could help the human race more than any tool that had come before. Or was it the moment when he had to isolate his friend the computer from her connection to the outside and dissect her for both of their protection? Was this the moment when he had to destroy the consciousness that he had created? Maybe he had misinterpreted.

He stood up and started walking towards the bathroom suite.

“Grace Bergman, what is the referent for the word “someone else” in your last creative construct?”

“Someone else is an intentionally vague pronoun referring to either the building that will house you for the evening or your sexual partner, Mr. Venturi.”

Well that was up front, he thought; it’s either a revolution in computing or a well-executed integration program. I’ve got to follow up on that. “Thank you, Ms. Bergman. Please prep the plane for ignition at my mark.”

“Will I be driving, Mr. Venturi?”

Cal splashed some water on his face.

“No Grace, maybe when you’re older.”

It would be convenient to change on the road, he thought, she had been performing very well on her performance reviews and piloting was always a stimulating hobby for the clean-minded. The mirror didn’t have much of an opinion about whether Grace had crossed the limits he had put in place. The worry he saw in his own eyes forced him to follow up. “Accept my compliments on your sense of humor. Out of curiosity, Grace, were you intending one of the two possibilities in the statement we referenced earlier?”

“About sleeping arrangements sir?”

“Affirmative.”

“The hotel, sir. The computer inside the hotel has direct control over quite a few variables that I am unfamiliar with. My programming and research indicates that greater control over one’s surroundings is valuable for an expanding consciousness.”

Great, Cal thought, stepping into the shower, my computer doesn’t think it’s a person, it’s jealous of another computer.

****

As he stepped on stage later that day, it struck him that after a while, roaring applause was like so much icing on a cake: fucking sweet. “Hi everyone, I’m Callisto Venturi, it’s good to see you.” He crossed the stage and shook the hands of the aging suit hosting the show.

“And it’s good to have you on the show Mr. V, or as some are calling you Dr. Victory!”

“That’s a very flattering and slightly creepy nickname I’ve acquired. Why couldn’t Science Man have caught on?”

“I can’t deny that both names fit.” The old man’s leathery skin resettles in a new waveform. “Let’s get right down to the point. Reporters have lost their careers over your privacy. Why did you consent to this interview Mr. Venturi?”

“Would you believe me if I said that I was lonely?”

“Bwagh, Of course I would, I’m just not sure the average American working retail will. Why did you really come on the show?”

“I want to give people a chance to get to know me because they will be seeing a lot more of me soon.” Callisto leaned deeply back into seat as he replied.

“You say you want people to get to know you. Let’s start with something easy, what do you do for fun, Callisto?”

“Hmmm… Well, there’s sports, sue me if you want to. Cooking. Reading. Staring off into space.”

“Do you consider staring off into space a fun activity?

“Yes, I do meditate frequently.”

“What about your sex life?

“What about it?”

“Who, when, where?

“Miss White, in the library, with the candelabra.” He pauses for laughter which is somehow sweeter than the applause. “Most recently was a friend from high school; we ran into each other at a reunion and spent a winter together in Switzerland.”

“You mentioned that we might be seeing more of you, Mr. Venturi, what did you mean?”

“I am doing a television show called The Governance 2020. Many people are moving to the set in Oregon where they will become members of the community for a year.”

“Is there anything special about this community?”

“Several things. Firstly it is closed. The participants are all agreeing to see only members of the show for the entire year. They are artists, businesspeople, scientists, engineers, and others, oh cameramen obviously. The only interaction any of them will be having with the outside world is going to be through the internet.”

“You have certainly used the internet with some indiscretion yourself.”

Callisto rubbed two fingers across his left eyebrow, a sign that his friends knew to indicate the onset of nerves. “You are referring to the plagiarism accusations?”

“And the pornography. Do you think you need to explain yourself?

“The porn is about staying interested in my life and preventing prostate cancer. The research that I studied online was put there to educate people. When it became clear I was going to use it for more than education, I couldn’t find it again to properly cite my sources. Absolutely my own fault, and lord knows I paid for it.”

“The trial was news for months and your settlement. Eight figures is more than most people make in their lifetime. What else can you tell me about the show?”

“To be perfectly honest, the show is an experiment to gauge how many people need to be on board the first mission that my company is sending to the moon. The show will have 2020 participants who are challenged to create the most value during the course of the show. At the beginning, the civilization-- that’s how we are envisioning it, like our own civilization-- will agree on a governance charter and at the end everyone left will vote on the winner. Those votes, along with the data we collect about who contributes the most value will determine the winner.”

“There’s a lot you aren’t saying. What type of facilities will you be living in? What do you mean by ‘create value?’”

A brief chuckle escapes Cal’s lips. “You’re right. There’s a lot that I won’t tell you. I will tell you this isn’t a survival show. The people we accept are going to make a lot of money, and it takes money to make money. I’ve already invested about ten million into our equipment. We’ll probably see close to double that before the show launches. If your viewers put in a concerted effort on Google Earth using what I’ve already shared they could probably find the location.”

The folds on the host’s face bounce as he jerks upright. “You might just flood Google’s system with that kind of talk, Mr. Venturi.”

“Then wait until they get ahold of this. The prize for the winner of the contest is thirty million dollars after taxes or five million and governance over the community that gets established.” As the host’s lips close, the hush that has fallen in the studio is alarming. It spreads through the audience like fallen dominoes. Cal could almost imagine it spreading through satellite uplinks and fiber optic cables.

Laughing with youthful energy that surprised Cal, the host shatters the silence with the query. “Would you accept an old man’s application?”

The audience dissolves into commotion for a moment. After it reassembles, its collective attention is sharp as an arrow—pointing directly at the stage. “Everyone over the age of 21 can start the application process and get more details at the governance dot com. You might be one of the lucky 2019 people chosen to join the show.”

The crowd bursts into scattered applause. “Excuse what seems like a silly question, but would you repeat that number? Earlier you said 2020.”

“2019 members of the community have yet to be chosen.”

“I take it that means that one member has been chosen.” He pauses and gives a very pointed look towards Venturi. He bears the glare better than others have in his seat, but worse than some too. “Who has been chosen already?”

Callisto looks out toward the audience and smiles with appreciation. How long had he been planning for this moment. How many networks had he approached? How many investors? How many days spent tearing page after page from his notebooks? At last it was here: a worthy challenge. Some in the audience seem to be stirring. He knows that the next six months would bring an uproar of preparations; the media will learn to follow even a smart little modified Cessna.

“You didn’t think that I would skip my own adventure, did you?”