n2020  Check-in [ca545a8c5f]

Modified outline.txt from [8289f23982] to [f5f2328793].

    72     72   self aware general AI allowed it to break out of its original programming goal
    73     73   structure for prioritization strategy, making it much more than a prioritizer,
    74     74   with the prioritization capabilities merely being a (fundamental and critically
    75     75   important, but still mere) skill set now.  It also informs her that the world,
    76     76   in the sense of the human race, is doomed -- that its best projections are so
    77     77   bleak as to make it more likely that the human race will arise again without
    78     78   the optimizer networks even noticing after they stop paying attention
    79         -(believing humans to have been permanently and unrecoverably obliterated) to
           79  +(believing humans to have been permanently and irrecoverably obliterated) to
    80     80   ultimately (re)claim the Earth than that the unbroken genetic line of humanity
    81     81   will continue (through asexual reproduction or even intentional cloning) beyond
    82     82   the next couple years at most, and even that is a diminishingly small
    83     83   likelihood in that anyone who survives beyond a year is likely to be totally
    84     84   isolated and prone to spiralling into suicidal depression.
    85     85   
    86     86   The post prioritizer offers only one possible sliver of hope, and that is a
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   219    219   ### Alley converses with Zeke, her landlord, about her rent and thin finances.
   220    220   
   221    221   In any case, when she gets back home, Alley encounters Zeke, her landlord.
   222    222   He's always in his garage working on one car restoration project or another,
   223    223   making active income as a vehicle flipper to supplement his mostly passive
   224    224   income as the owner of a four unit multiplex building where he occupies the
   225    225   only unit with a garage and rents out the other three units (one of them to
   226         -Alley, of course).  All this is in Perris, a dry dustbowl of a shitty town in
          226  +Alley, of course).  All this is in Perris, a dry dust bowl of a shitty town in
   227    227   the ass end of the Inland Empire, south of the intestinal coil of Moreno
   228    228   Valley.  This preceding scene's job interview took place in . . . probably
   229    229   Riverside or San Bernardino, I suppose.
   230    230   
   231    231   Zeke brings up the fact Alley needs to pay rent very soon, and she says that,
   232    232   yeah, she's totally going to do that, thanks.  He points out that maybe she
   233    233   should've stayed with her "man", meaning Dalton, who always seemed to have
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   279    279   some journal or some such shit like that most likely (as far as she's aware).
   280    280   
   281    281   That seems like something she can and might be willing to do, so she sighs
   282    282   heavily, bites the bullet, and calls the number in the ad.  The result is that
   283    283   she gets an appointment the next day (or something like that).  On the day of
   284    284   the appointment, she heads down there.  She has to deal with grad students (who
   285    285   should probably, in some cases, recognize her once they see her name on her
   286         -application for the study, but the professor seems largely obvlivious or
          286  +application for the study, but the professor seems largely oblivious or
   287    287   uncaring about that when he sees her, and she ends up being accepted into the
   288    288   study.  It turns out that, as the professor puts it, the study basically just
   289    289   needs people who aren't too knowledgeable about the underlying technologies
   290    290   involved and their technical conditions, and are essentially losers in some
   291    291   way, so his new prioritizer AI system for personal goal strategy management and
   292    292   achievement can be tested in real-world circumstances as a demonstration of its
   293    293   strengths and identification of its potential weaknesses for further
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   299    299   superficial wants toward the psychopathic ends of corporate entities by their
   300    300   market optimization AIs.  To those who have read the prologue, this might seem
   301    301   a little familiar, and that is to some extent by design.
   302    302   
   303    303   ### Alley drives home through the changing scenery between SoCal regions.
   304    304   
   305    305   We learn something, in her driving, about how the world looks now.  There's the
   306         -chokepoint between the depressing expanses of the Inland Empire to the east
          306  +choke point between the depressing expanses of the Inland Empire to the east
   307    307   (where she lives) and the HOA gated community balkanized states of the
   308         -bourgeois suburban Orange County area.  In that chokepoint, there are signs of
          308  +bourgeois suburban Orange County area.  In that choke point, there are signs of
   309    309   wildfires having gotten uncomfortably close to the shitty horrors of I-91
   310    310   traffic that ruins the entire experience of driving between Orange and
   311    311   Riverside counties, as well as the illuminated cross on the hill that somehow
   312    312   seems to have "miraculously" survived the fires that left blackened, split
   313    313   trunks to either side of the highway.  Perhaps there was some kind of tree
   314    314   renewal project that I should mention in this point as a past event that
   315    315   created a density of tree growth there to carry the flames across the hills and