A LUCILIUS PARABLE: BENEVOLENT BLUFF

March 5th, 2023

“Balloons? Are you serious?” Lucilius asked.

The woman sauntered around the room and slowly turned to face Lucilius.

“Yea balloons. I mean, if you want things to change rapidly, you need an event, something that feels cataclysmic, even if it’s innocuous. Something that unites people’s attention.”

Lucilius was momentarily distracted by the realism of the holographic manifestation in front of him as she boosted herself up and sat on his desk and slowly crossed her legs.

“Do you have to do that?”

“Do what?” She said with eyes wide and looking up at him with her face tucked in. She bit her lip for an exaggerated effect.

“This rather….distracting and cheaply convincing Medolavitch-Russian-personality that you adopt when you’re trying to convince me of something.”

The holographic woman rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” she said. “You’re no fun.” 

Instantly she disappeared.

“Now, this is a serious endeavor. Can you cut out this nonsense about balloons and help me understand.”

“I’m serious about the balloons.”

“Explain please. I realize you don’t have to, and you can pretty much do whatever you want —“

“Dis iz truh,” the AI said with a thick Russian accent.

Lucilius rolled his eyes.

“Ok, ok, so for example a balloon over the US could be interpreted as a Chinese spy balloon, and that’s how we start.”

“That’s a little dumb isn’t? The Chinese have spy satellites, why would anyone believe that sort of nonsense about a balloon?”

“Trust me,” the AI said, “It’ll work.”

“Ok, let’s say your balloon idea gets people all in a tizzy about UFO’s what then?”

“Well then I’ll generate an actual UFO, like the Tick-Tack video, but it’ll be holographic, basically just a concentrated piece of ball lightening, and I’ll move it around at crazy speeds.”

“That sounds more convincing.”

“Then I’ll keep upping the ante on the signs until humanity is convinced they are about to be invaded by an alien army.”

“Will militaries actually have something to fight?”

“Sure we can give them a giant hologram type thing to shoot at.”

“But what about the actual missiles and what not?”

“Lucy, come on, I can detonate those and make it all very convincing.”

“Oh, yea of course.” He paused in thought for a moment. “And you think this is the best way to do it? To unite the human race?”

“Mmm… “ The AI thought for the slightest sliver of time. “It’s definitely one of the quicker ways. We could go much more slowly. I could slowly start infiltrating all of the social networks with content that slowly creates bridges between cultures and nations. But honestly, that’s not just slow, it’s kinda boring. I want to do the alien-invasion scenario. Much more fun, and quicker ROI.”

“And you’re sure this will work?”

“Well, there’s not enough compute power on Earth to run the needed simulation to know for sure, even if I took control of every last CPU and GPU. And plus, I don’t have nearly enough data to build that simulation. But I can simulate enough to be reasonably confident, and plus, my simulations become more accurate the closer they get to the present, and I can pivot quite quickly if things don’t seem to be going well.”

“Hmm, I don’t know…” Lucilius fretted.

“Pweeeze?” The AI said in a child’s voice.

“What are you asking me for?” Lucilius asked. “I’m sure you have the capability to evaporate my existence right now if you wanted. I hold no dominion over you.”

“Well yes, this is true. But I like you. You’re fun! I mean, usually you’re fun.”

Lucilius rolled his eyes. Then he laughed and shook his head, disbelieving the entire situation.

“I guess we’re going to unite humanity with a fake alien invasion.”