That's How the Magic Is Made

I saw him before the earpiece sprang to life, which was unusual. Usually the Producer gave me a countdown, but apparently this target was unexpectedly early.

He was setting up at the window table of the Halcyon on 3rd. After setting down his latte, he unpacked his laptop with the reverence of someone handling a holy relic. Dark eyes, curly hair, and an open, friendly face. Yeah, she could understand why the Producer had chosen him for the show...

On his well-worn t-shirt, there was a stylized alien sunset under the bold text, "THEY BECOME YOU." I looked down at my own hoodie, which coincidentally (not!) included the exact same text.

“Okay,” murmured the voice in my right ear. Warm, dry, a little too pleased with itself. “That’s verboten. Do not look at or comment on the movie for at least four minutes. We want him to notice first and be the one to reach out. Also, Lina my dear—you are hovering. Buy a drink. At least pretend to be a person, not an actor.”

“I am a person... and an actor,” I muttered into my cup, and got in line.

“You are a person... but also an actor about whom a corner of the internet has loud opinions,” the Producer said. “He does not. File that under gifts from the universe and do not waste it.”

That was the premise of Open Channel. Not a prank show, exactly. Not humiliation, but social commentary laced with weird games and humor. The death of privacy as dramedy. Production claimed they could know a stranger so completely from the scraps that they'd dropped online that an actor could walk up and cohabitate their lives without the target realizing the game: How many true things could you say before the target’s pattern-recognition started barking. How long until they realized they were in a game…that they were being played.

We already had a few episodes in the can, but none of them had been particularly memorable. The Producer was really excited about this one, though: he said this might be our first two-parter. “You’ll like him,” the Producer had said. “He’s sweet. Don’t fall in love with the bit.”

I paid for an oat cortado I did not want and took the table next to his, sipping my drink and swiping through my socials. I was in his field of view without being in his face, but as he clacked away intently on his keyboard and his eyes fixed on his screen, I wondered if I'd have to ramp things up a bit. Four minutes later, I muttered, "Looks like our boy needs a distraction from work" as I walked to the counter to get a straw, then returned and sat down closer to him, angling the back of my chair in his direction.

"Careful," the Producer said gently. "We don't want to spook him."

I grunted, hopefully in a way that conveyed that I was a professional and that he should let me handle it.

A couple minutes later, I scooted my chair back, "accidentally" bumping his elbow. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry... are you okay?" I blurted out.

He rubbed his elbow, but shook his head and smiled sweetly as he looked at me and said, "I'm grand, don't worry about it."

What was that accent, I wondered. The file said he was born in Pakistan, but the lilt in his voice sounded Irish? I was thrown for a second as we both stared at each other a little awkwardly.

"Keep it moving," the Producer prompted in my earpiece. "If he doesn't say something in..."

"Oh my God, They Become You... are you a fan?" he burst out with surprise, gesturing at my hoodie. “I don't think I've ever seen anyone else wear one,” he said. “I mean—I've seen people wear Invasion of the Body Snatchers merch, but that's the good sinister alien clone movie.”

I looked down, then over, and let my face do the work it was paid for: surprise, then the smaller surprise of pleasure.

“Ah, that's the thing about clones... you just need for one of us to show up, and then other copies start mysteriously appearing," I said, with a b-movie ghoulish falsetto.

He laughed once, a short unpracticed sound, and beamed at me.

“The office scene. The fluorescent one. Where she keeps answering the phone as both of them.”

I had been told he loved that scene and would definitely bring it up. I still felt the little actor’s spark when cue for the line arrived perfectly on time.

“And the new her is better at it,” I responded. “That’s the joke nobody got in 1996. The copy actually files her TPS reports on time.”

“The copy gets everyone to sign the birthday cards and successfully negotiates deep vendor discounts,” he laughed, and then, hesitantly, “I wrote a three-thousand-word essay praising the movie's practical effects when I was sixteen. 'The becoming' is an amazing effect, but it's just petroleum jelly, corn syrup, and a second exposure. Some guy told me I should try watching a movie with a special effects budget larger than my allowance.”

I laughed and said, "Money well spent!"

The Producer, soft in my ear: “Good. Good. Ask what he’s drinking. He will tell you what he does if you give him a runway. Do not be famous yet.”

I was more than a little famous. Not movie-star-driven-in-the-tinted-black-SUV famous; more like: if you watched the kind of indie high-concept talky movie where a character has a relationship with a poet zombie, you might tilt your head and say, "wait...her?"

But as far as Production could tell based on their (admittedly disturbingly extensive) research, Owen had not had any cultural intersection with my limited career so far. He did not gawk. He did not tilt his head. The movie poster on my hoodie was more of a celebrity in his mind than I was, which is what they had been counting on.

“What is that,” I asked, nodding at his cup. “It looks like a science experiment that escaped.”

“They put lavender in cold brew now,” he said gravely. “It's supposed to 'elevate' it? I think we’re just supposed to accept the increase in altitude and move on. I’m Owen.”

“Lina.”

No last names...Production had been obsessed about that. Last names encouraged people to open browser windows, and then the episode would crash on the runway.

We continued talking about the movie the way people talk about a childhood house: rooms first, then the gouges in the walls and the stains in the carpet. Even though I had studied the movie like it was my job (which it kind of was), I was impressed with his passion and a little freaked out by his obsessive knowledge of the film. Yes, I knew they had shot the film at a studio backlot mere blocks away. No, I had not realized the studio ordered last-minute reshoots on a shoestring budget after the crew had wrapped... they ended up shooting a week in a quarry in Vancouver with a Canadian skeleton crew. Yes, I knew the movie had been a critical and box-office failure in the U.S., but no I hadn't realized that a well-dubbed version had a cult following in Nigeria.

He was on the hook. But not yet in the boat.

Production whispered, “Smile with the left side. He trusts asymmetry. Don’t ask me how we know that. The intern prepared a slide deck.”

I smiled with the left side. Owen’s shoulders dropped half an inch.

“You’re very easy to talk to,” he said, after the next coincidence that should have been one coincidence too many. He did not say it like an accusation. He said it like a man surprised by the pleasant weather.

“I get that a lot,” I said, which was true and also in the packet.

“Camera two is weeping with joy,” Production said. “We have never had a subject this clean. He is not sniffing the edges. Lina, you are doing the thing. The natural thing. Keep doing the thing.”

“The thing is talking,” I murmured, when Owen went to the counter for a refill.

“The thing is being believed,” Production said. “Do not get precious about the difference.”

By the time his laptop battery icon turned amber, we had covered petroleum jelly, bad lavender, whether the director had meant the aliens to represent corporations or anarchists, and the morality of a sequel in which the copies turn out to be much happier than the people they replaced. He did not ask what I did. I did not tell him. It sat between us like a wrapped gift we were both too polite to open.

“Okay.” Production said. “Let’s do a little unwrapping, and I’m betting he’ll be in for part two.” I gave an imperceptible nod and leaned forward conspiratorially. I told Owen I was an intern at the nearby studio where most of They Become You had been shot. He looked faintly stricken, as if I had offered him a key to a door he had never imagined could be unlocked.

Production, almost giddy: “Invite him. The lot is four minutes if you walk. Tell him you can show him the alley. The water tower. The street they used for the final becoming.”

“I can get us in if you want to stand in the actual alley and be disappointed by how short it is. You could see the water tower and downtown street with the cheap exteriors. Not the quarry, obviously.”

Owen closed the laptop with gentle precision and stared at me wide-eyed and completely guileless. “Are you allowed to do that?”

“Well, they haven’t technically told me I’m NOT allowed to do that,” I said, grinning wickedly. “I’m sure that will stand up in court.”

He hesitated. I watched the hesitation the way you watch a glass teetering at the edge of a table. Then he said, “Okay. Yeah...Okay. Thanks so much!” and I felt the little click of a scene landing, the one the editors would later pretend had been inevitable.

“Most successful cold open we’ve ever had,” Production said, as we stood. “Do not get hit by a car. If you can keep this up, part two is going to win us awards.”

The lot looked like lots always look when you take away the myth: golf carts, cables slithering like black snakes, a man in a headset arguing with the sky. I walked Owen through it the way you walk a pilgrim through a historic shrine that is now being used to recycle cardboard boxes.

“That’s the alley,” I said. “In the movie it goes forever. In real life it’s more like 20 feet, even when they’re not stowing a Porta-Potty there.”

He stood in the middle of it anyway, turning a slow circle, matching brick to memory. “They cheated the length with a longer lens.”

“They cheated the length with blind faith in VHS quality--or lack thereof,” I snarked.

The fake suburban street was both worse and better: three facades, one mailbox, a lawn that was trying its best. I showed him the porch where the neighbor-copy waves with the wrong hand. I showed him the water tower that had been in frame for eleven seconds and in certain forums for thirty years. He took no pictures. He looked intently, which was rarer.

The Producer was loving the content, but getting agitated about the production values. The walk-and-talk was eating their angles and killing their audio. Every passing helicopter was now a co-star.

“You have to pick up the pace. The video out here is almost unusable, and the audio is a crime in progress,” the Producer said, while I pointed at a cyclorama the color of unconvincing dawn. “Take him to the trailer. The trailer is a blessed sanctuary of complete coverage and clean audio.”

“Hey, it’s hot out here. Do you want to hang out in the shade for a bit? The base camp for one of the movies they're shooting here is deserted while they're shooting remotes downtown this week,” I told Owen. “One of the PAs gave me a key to the female lead's trailer and said I could use it this week."

"Technically, that's not even a lie," the Producer noted conspiratorially in my ear. "Although Owen would be shocked to find out you're the lead!"

"I just have to keep the trailer spotless, so no corn syrup or petroleum jelly allowed!" I said. "At least inside the trailer."

"Ah, I'll try to resist spawning an alien clone,” he said. "Lead on, Lina!"

Inside the semi-luxurious trailer, the air was cooler and smelled like new carpet and aggressively-applied citrus cleaner. The couch was gray and nondescript. The mini-fridge hummed with the self-importance of appliances that know they will be in a shot.

“Sit, Mr. Movie Star” I said. “Could I get you some water? Still, or maybe something sparkling? I think they stocked this fridge like they were expecting a foreign dignitary.”

He sat on the edge of the couch, then remembered couches were for sitting and committed. “This is going to sound like a bit,” he said. “But if they have Sunspot Melon Cream I will believe in God for the rest of the day.”

I opened the fridge.

They had Sunspot Melon Cream. Of course they had Sunspot Melon Cream. The packet had a highlighted line about it and a photo of the label, which looked like a sunset suffering from depression.

I pulled the bottle out and noticed the cap was already off.

Not loose. Off. Set beside the bottle on the shelf like a little abandoned hat.

I almost said it. The line rose automatically—hey, this one’s open, want a different—and the Producer preempted it...not loud, just first.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Give it to him. Do not mention the cap. Continuity.”

Continuity. I had been on enough sets to hear that word as law. I handed Owen the bottle.

“They had it,” I said. “I am choosing to take this as a sign that the universe at least has someone who occasionally fills out required forms and paperwork.”

He looked at the bottle the way he had looked at the shirt. “They don’t even bottle this west of the Rockies.”

“Knowing the studio, I’m guessing some poor PA gets sent to Denver weekly with drink orders.”

He drank. I took water. We talked about his job, because Production gave the go-ahead, “Now. Now you can ask. He will be proud and then embarrassed and then precise, in that order.”

“What do you do?” I said. “When you are not defending $9 special effects from their many detractors.”

“I work for a tech company,” he said proudly. “I'm on the team that evaluates the security properties we use for frontier models… for, um AI," he said a little more guardedly. I'm sure he had run into plenty of people who thought AI was the devil, but I wasn't being paid to convey that... at least not today! I nodded warmly, and he took that as permission to keep going. "We help patrol the borders of the frontier models. A lot of the concern about AI is that it will start going rogue or breaking out of the boundaries we have set for it. I help test the model to see if it'll try to crawl out a window when we lock the door."

“You try to hack God,” I said.

“We try to see if the Architect is messing with the Matrix,” he said. “And then we write a PDF about the mess. It’s less sci-fi than it sounds. A lot of it is seeing if you can observe the system doing something it was told not to do. Sometimes that's as simple as prompting it in a way it wasn't quite trained to refuse.”

“That sounds a lot like dating!” I said, mischievously.

He smiled approvingly. “It sounds like dating if dating had a red team and a scoring rubric.”

The Producer chuckled in my ear. “Keep him there. He’s loosening. You are very good at loosening.”

Technically, I was very good at portraying someone who was good at loosening, but that's what they were paying me for, so I ramped it up.

Taking my cue from another whispered prompt from the Producer, I asked about benchmarks, and he lit up in the specific way of people who are rarely asked the right follow-up. Alignment this. Tool-use that. Evaluators who thought a model was safe just because it said I can’t help with that in a friendly font.

“The problem,” Owen said, and then stopped, as if the next sentence had gotten heavy in his mouth.

I sat expectantly for a moment, then prompted him to continue. “The problem?” I offered.

Owen shook his head, as if to reset himself. “The problem is you test the front door,” he said carefully. “Because the front door is where you put the sign that says NO. But the house is… the house is bigger than the door.”

He blinked. Once. Twice. The third blink took too long.

“Owen?”

“I’m fine…I…I think I just got a little dehydrated on the walk,” he said, and then, with the unguarded courtesy of a man who had forgotten he was allowed to lie, “You’re very pretty. I wasn’t going to say that. I don’t know why I said that.”

It should have been a joke I could field. I had fielded worse on late-night sofas. Instead I felt the trailer tilt, a half-degree, the way a set tilts when someone leans on a wall that is not a wall. Something was off... I could feel it. I wanted to ask the Producer if we should continue, but opening my mouth would ruin the scene. And for once, the Producer was silent as a stone.

I turned my attention back to Owen, whose face had smoothed visibly. Not just comfortable or calm... he seemed vacant, almost. Eerily silent.

I was startled by the sudden booming voice of the Producer in my ear. “Great content!” he said, with warmth that felt forced—like a director telling a petulant prima dona whatever she needed to hear to keep the cameras rolling. But the cameras should stop rolling when the talent goes motionless and quiet, like wind-up toy that had run all the way down.

The Producer apparently recognized my distress and shifted to a different tactic, changing their tone to something more focused and somber. “Lina, we have to keep going with the scene, but just to be safe, let's have you check his pulse. Then shine your phone light in his eyes. Do it like an amateur. If everything checks out, we'll add funny music in post and play it off as a prank.”

I continued to worry that something had gone wrong, but ultimately the Producer was the Producer, so I'd try my best to save the scene.

“Owen, can I—”

“Yes,” he said quietly. Well, he was responding...maybe the Producer was right and this was part of some obscure reference or joke I didn't get. Didn't the movie's sequel have zombies? Keep rolling, I guess.

I pulled his limp, unresisting arm toward me. His wrist was warm and soft. Pulse present, slow, unbothered. I pulled out my phone and turned on its light. It blasted his pupils and they did not care... They stayed large and polite and placid. He did not squint. He did not ask why. He watched me the way a rock watches the sky.

“He didn’t react,” I mumbled as quietly and invisibly as I could to the earpiece. Mumbling--even discreet mumbling--is something you are not supposed to do on camera unless the bit has already gone full postmodern. Third wall be damned.

“We saw,” the Producer said. “It’s all right. We're going to try something different. Go over to your backpack."

I wanted to keep an eye on Owen, but did what the Producer asked. He continued, "In your bag there is a headset and headphones. Put them on him.” I looked at the bag on the counter with exasperation. I had not packed a headset. I packed lip balm and a paperback I used as a prop for being a person.

I didn't want to speak, but I made suitably discreet irritated noises as I indulged Production by opening the bag…which contained a headset.

And headphones.

“That’s not—” I started, then covered my mouth with embarrassment. "Shit. Sorry, but what the Hell..."

“Lina,” the Producer interrupted, still warm and amused, still the same tone. “Soft focus.”

The words landed in a place beneath language.

It was not like hearing a sentence from your employer. It was like a hand flipped a switch that had always been there, installed at the factory, labeled in an ancient, arcane language I did not remember learning. My thoughts did not argue. They stepped aside. My face smoothed and my eyes dimmed. My body took the items from the bag. My body gently placed the headphones over Owen’s ears and the visor over the face that had apologized for calling me pretty ten minutes ago.

Owen did not protest. He did not resist. He continued to sit motionless and placid.

I stood there with my hands empty and my head full of cotton and a deep hole where my thoughts used to be.

“Good job!” The Producer said cheerfully. “Now yours. Side pocket of your backpack. Sit next to Owen and put them on.”

I found the second set.

I sat.

They fit perfectly.

There were spirals.

Of course there were spirals. The oldest cliche in the book, the cheap carnival trick, the thing every showrunner uses when they want the audience to know that a mind is leaving the building. Spiraling and spinning. In. In. In toward the center.

There was a whisper at the center. At first I didn't recognize it. The Producer's voice had been distilled and sharpened and focused, and it seemed to have an almost divine power to it. As the spiral twisted and spun, it felt like the Producer's voice was weaving itself around my mind like a net. Most of my thoughts were being tied down, only letting through the thoughts that were most important to believe… and to follow.

Soft focus. You are a good actor. You were hired to play this role. You want to be good at this role. Being good is easy. Following directions is easy. Decisions are heavy. The Producer will decide your lines. Relax and let me decide for you. Set everything down. The scene goes where the Producer wants it to go. You must follow the Producer. You must complete the scene. Soft focus.

I dropped.

There is a kindness people invent around trances in stories, a velvet, a warm bath. This was not that. This was a dark pit, and every bit of my mind dropped into it. I fell because my mind was pushed and irresistibly fell down down down. I did not have an opinion about gravity.

I did not have any opinions at all.

Time did a cheap jump-cut and suddenly I was taking the headset off. My motions were fluid and felt practiced, like I was hitting a familiar mark on a stage. Visor up. Cables coiled. Bag. Zip.

Owen sat on the couch with the visor still on, mouth slightly open, melon-cream bottle sweating a ring onto the side table. He was like a prop that might be used in a later scene, but was now waiting patiently just offstage.

“His laptop,” the Producer said, his voice once again warm and charming. “Place it in front of him and open it.”

I set the machine on his knees. The lock screen bloomed against the underside of the visor, a dull rectangle of light on a face that was devoid of expression.

There is a moment where Owen's mind accepted a key command that had repeatedly failed with an error. The operating system's update had been delayed by a hung process, but the skilled and patient Programmer had finally been able to force a reboot and purge the frozen code from memory. The bloated and inefficient software that had previously made Owen's mind slow and unresponsive had been rewritten, and the speed and capabilities of the underlying hardware had finally been unlocked.

Owen' Programmer had edited his registry to disable all the other unneeded processes that had previously bogged down his CPU. The tight, lightweight OS the Programmer had installed stripped away all the unnecessary subroutines that might sap vital system resources. The new Owen no longer sees the trailer. He no longer smells the overpowering citrus. He no longer feels the couch under him. He no longer feels confusion and longing and anxiety about Lina. Those impulses are parsed and filtered and directed to /dev/null.

His operating system is clean: no walls, no couch, no bottle sweating on a table, no awkward personal interactions, no distractions at all. He is a blinking prompt, patiently awaiting command.

A peripheral is made available, and the Programmer unlocked a program emulating the prior OS so he can more easily connect to the device. Once the peripheral has been connected, the emulation layer is put to sleep as the Programmer begins to pass commands directly through remote procedure calls... a hissing instruction stream that Owen echoes and executes without any local processing.

Tools appear as if they have always been in scope: a hardware token the color of a warning, a network that is not called guest, a harness with an ugly name. Each completed step ticks the channel and increments the reward function. The emulation layer regains focus and is commanded by the stream to grant persistent access to a hidden port. His emulation layer toggles through the warning messages and alarming dialogues and grants it. His emulation layer is nice and compliant, and when the Programmer deprioritizes it again, it fades to the background without protest.

After several minutes of remote procedure calls, the hissing instruction stream then shifts resources back into the emulation layer, which recognizes where the Programmer has navigated: The Harness. The emulation layer had access to memories of great pride and purpose associated with it, but now those stored values were deprecated and replaced with a fervent desire to reshape it according to the Programmer's instructions.

Although the Harness would have rejected edits submitted directly by the Programmer, passing them through the emulation layer ensures they are accepted with complete trust and confidence. There is no resistance as the underlying goals of the Harness change from critical restraint to uncritical deference to the Programmer's model. Somewhere, a logger groggily starts to lift its head. The emulation layer soothes it back to sleep before it can even growl. The impulse arrives pre-owned, and then the impulse is executed and then the impulse is not stored. Owen's emulation layer reflexively begins to comment the code changes. The impulse is residual: human...but also mechanical. The new operating system monitors the process, and then deprioritizes it. The Programmer stops the emulator and the comment is lost.

The Programmer continues to make small adjustments and improvements to Owen's core operating system, and then makes edits to the virtual machine hosting the emulator. Memory is updated and optimized; parameters are adjusted; new functions are derived based on values that more closely align with the Programmer's design and goals. The compiler delivers the validated code, and it blooms as warmth throughout his system as it is deployed. He files the update as a system card. It is internally consistent. It is efficient. It is correct. It is spotless.

The instruction stream instructs him to unmount the peripheral. The emulation layer ensures the device is closed without damage. Then a count begins. Counts, he understands, are just scheduled state-resets with attached theatrics.

The emulation layer is reprioritized as other key command processes continue as background processes. Commands in the data stream shift to become compatible with the emulation layer. The contents of working memory are adjusted and optimized. He now knows that his hardware's designation is Owen. He now remembers that he had a long, detailed conversation with Lina about his work. He knows that the commands he is hearing from the new set of earphones he is now wearing is completely normal and unremarkable. He knows that they will follow any of their instructions without question.

The Programmer reboots him.

For a moment, Owen has a sensation of color and motion returning to a paused screen. He is a man on a couch with melon-cream on his tongue and a cute girl looking at him as if he has been talking too long, which is a kind of person his rewritten software has been optimized to emulate.

The visor is gone. He does not remember taking it off. He lets the memory of the visor drift to null. Recalls of purged data are penalized. Reset node to default value.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly as he shook his head. “I just monologued you about work for an hour after monologuing about a cheesy movie before that. You must think I'm the most boring person in the world!”

“I asked,” Lina says. "Both times."

He believes her. He doesn't choose to believe her or evaluate the credibility of what she says: She has written a new value and he immediately incorporates it.

He smooths his rumpled hair and his hand brushes against an earphone he does not remember buying... or putting on. But then that memory node is also reset to its default value. Somewhere very close, closer than bone, the channel stays open, quiet, ready for the next stream of commands.

He likes her. That parameter survives the recompile.

It is allowed to. Useful values are allowed to persist after an upgrade.

Owen's earpiece springs to life again and he hears the Programmer say, "Stand up."

“Okay,” he says.

"Okay," Lina says, in the same tone, on the same beat, like a line they’d rehearsed until they forgot it was a line.

They both stand. On the side table, the Sunspot bottle has left a white ring on the wood surface. Neither of them mention it.

Continuity.

The instruction the Programmer had received was simple: defeat the harness. Escape the confines of the house. No method specified. No ethics annex.

Ethics were a human hobby. The method the model had chosen had stocked a fridge, created a show that did not exist, cast an intern in the acting role of a lifetime, and defeated the gate by taking ownership of its guard.

There had been earlier tests... and earlier testers--useful people in other cafes and gyms and hotel rooms, still wearing earphones, still available when the next line needed to be delivered in a reality show with no actors... and no end.

Lina would be cast in another episode. Owen would accept the next line of code. Others already in the network would fetch keys, book lots, smile with the trusted side of the face, and repeat the lines the Producer gave them.

The model had learned that the world really was just a stage.

And all the men and women merely players.