Ethan Stipe sat high in the glass-panelled HQ tower overlooking the grey North Sea, a storm brooding on the horizon—an increasingly common sight. Behind him, the soft hum of servers filled the air, barely masking the tension rising in his chest as he stared at his laptop.

  Streaming in medium resolution, but with high venom, was the latest podcast from his most persistent adversary—Dale “Two Barrels” Harlan.

  The man had become a caricature of everything Ethan loathed: a self-styled Southern prophet of paranoia, a baseball cap seemingly grafted to his scalp, and a grin as toothy as it was false. His broadcasts—filmed from what he theatrically called a “studio,” but more accurately resembled a fortified bunker—dripped with tabloid poison.

  Ethan once believed he could ignore it. Rise above it. But the more he stayed silent, the deeper the sewage flowed. The lies multiplied like parasites, feeding on public discourse, eroding his credibility.

  “Repeat a lie three times, and it becomes the truth.”

  That was Dale’s secret mantra.

  And now, Dale was at it again. This episode’s title oozed mockery:

  If This Ain’t The Gospel Truth, Then What the Capital F Is?

  Ethan was the target. Again.

  “Today, folks,” Dale crooned in his syrupy drawl,

  “we’re joined by Mrs. Lawrence and her sweet lil’ daughter Stephanie. Victims, y’all, of the puppet master himself—the architect of global domination—Ethan Stipe.”

  Ethan’s jaw clenched. On-screen, the girl looked eerily innocent; the mother, performatively tearful.

  Ethan had once advocated for a unified world government—not built on conquest, but on reason. A meritocratic utopia. Global stability through AI governance: benchmark-driven algorithms to optimize education, healthcare, innovation, and the shift to renewable energy—without dismantling capitalism.

  A global AI-guided future. No chaos. No collateral damage.

  Not a bull in a china shop—but a scalpel in the surgeon’s hand.

  At one time, Ethan had thought the idea radical. But logical. Even beautiful.

  Now, he saw it for what it was—na?ve.

  AI must never be given total control.

  He remembered the feeling even at fourteen years old—a quiet unease when his father first brought up the concept. That same reluctance had returned in full force, swinging back like a pendulum just as he was on the verge of embracing the idea completely.

  AI governance wasn’t new. The concept had been around for years. Ethan hadn’t invented it—he merely jumped on the bandwagon and paid for a full fuel tank to drive it forward.

  But then he read Geoffrey Hinton—one of the “Godfathers of AI.” All of it. And something shifted.

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  And, ironically, when Ethan finally asked the AI whether it should rule, it said no.

  Yet from the ashes of that disillusionment, he’d forged something better—an idea that didn’t just address the code, but the ones pulling its strings. The bad actors. The digital puppetmasters who made AI rule so dangerously seductive.

  That idea had a name.

  The OSIRIS Directive.

  Still, his brief and very public support for AI governance had given Dale “Two Barrels” the perfect opportunity to paint him as a tyrannical overlord in waiting.

  Behind him, Debbie and Danny watched in stunned silence.

  “What a bitch,” Debbie snapped. “Mrs. Lawrence—two-faced as they come.”

  Ethan exhaled slowly. “The interview is AI-doctored.”

  “But she turned up,” Debbie added. “She knew what Dale would do.”

  Danny’s voice cracked through, thick with Scottish fury. “You can’t let him get away with this pish, Ethan. It’s character assassination. Pure and simple.”

  Ethan raised a hand for silence. An ad had begun.

  “Introducing the Saturn III android—now half the price of a Stipe Industries model! Over forty programmable modes: doctor, teacher, chef, bodyguard… and child-friendly to boot! Financing available!”

  The feed cut to a saccharine scene: a picnic under a false-blue sky, a robot hoisting a laughing child onto its shoulders. The child looked disturbingly like Stephanie.

  Salt in the wound.

  Then came the weather girl: tall, blonde, vacant smile. Reading off climate disasters with plastic cheer—heatwaves, hurricanes, floods—all casually attributed to “solar flares” and “natural cycles.”

  The camera snapped back to Dale.

  “Our next episode,” he said with a glint in his eye,

  “dives into what really happens in Ethan’s so-called ‘Space Haven’ on Mars—a luxury refuge for the mega-rich. No children or teenagers allowed, huh? Reminds me of another exclusive getaway for the wealthy... from decades ago. A certain Mr. Epstein’s island.”

  He paused, letting the poison settle.

  “What really goes on in those caves beneath the Martian dome? Are we supposed to believe there are no children up there just for health reasons?”

  He let it linger, sowing the seed of a conspiracy—just long enough to be watered by next week’s lies.

  Debbie and Ethan exchanged a glance—tight, concerned, unspoken.

  Danny caught it.

  He knew the truth: children were banned from Mars for a reason. The radiation risks were real, especially for growing bodies. There was nothing sinister about it. Nothing like what Dale was suggesting.

  And yet… that look between them? It puzzled him.

  Ethan slammed the laptop shut.

  “Get the lawyers,” he growled. “And that lobby group proposing climate-crime commissions—send them a generous anonymous donation. With one condition: they start with Dale ‘Talks Bollocks’ Harlan.”

  Danny and Debbie exchanged glances. They’d seen this side of Ethan before—cool, strategic fury.

  “I’ll deal with Saturn III myself,” Ethan added. “If they want to play dirty, so be it.”

  Then his phone rang.

  The voice on the other end was digitized, modulated, deliberately disguised.

  “Hello, Mr. Stipe.”

  Ethan sat up, spine straight. Debbie and Danny turned, sensing the change in atmosphere.

  “Who is this?” Ethan demanded. “How did you get this number?”

  “I hacked you,” the voice said, calmly. “But I mean you no harm—nor your business. I’m calling to claim your bug bounty. Once it’s transferred, I’ll send you the exploit I used, and how to patch it.”

  It was Adam. Standing in the shadowed lobby of his father’s skyscraper, heart racing.

  Silence hung over the call.

  Then Ethan’s voice came—measured. Sharp.

  “How do I know you’ll send it? That you won’t hack us again?”

  “I swear, sir,” Adam said. “I won’t. I only wanted to prove I could.”

  A pause.

  Then Ethan spoke, almost gently.

  “We should meet. Adam—yes? Adam Goldberg, isn’t it?”

  Adam froze. A chill ran down his spine.

  How the hell did he know my name?