Gorge, a novel in progress by Michael Gullo (2026)
“Oh, now that one’s surprising.”
“A Playstation?”
-Merry Christmas.-
“Um.”
“So, I was here on Christmas, and I was saying that I want a PS5, and we even put one in the story that I’m writing.”
“And it just bought you a gift?”
“Looks like – Thank you, Chipshit.”
-You’re welcome.-
“Here’s another stack.”
-So far one hundred and twenty seven boxes have been delivered.-
“How many are we getting?”
-It’s impossible to know, but I ordered one thousand nine hundred and six individual items.-
“How many of those came on the Lansing truck?”
-Ninety seven.-
“That’s a lot of surprises, Chipshit.”
-So fun.-
“Did it just say? Come on. Can’t you make it stop?”
“Chipshit, stop having fun.”
-Yes, sir.-
“I have a question.”
-Yes, Julie?-
“Why did you order two couches?”
-I ordered everything for next day delivery, but no local depot has the capacity to fulfil that many orders, so I was sure to mix and match delivery methods. Do you like them?-
“I have to admit this is very comfortable. Where did you order it?”
-Is that the red or the paisley?-
“The paisley. Red one’s in my room, but I like the red one.”
-Your room. Interesting. I ordered the red one on Wayfair.-
“What amazes me is that little Honda held that whole couch, and seventy-two boxes of frozen meals from Amazon.”
“Matthew’s right. That couch almost didn’t come out, but when the freezer bags started falling from the cushions, I almost died laughing.”
“Why seventy-two frozen meals, Chipshit? Did you order a freezer?”
-I did order a freezer. I did not order the frozen food.-
“There’s two more cars coming.”
-This should get interesting.-
“Another surprise?”
“Chipshit, why is your compute increasing?”
-Just seven more cars, Matthew.-
“Chipshit.”
-Matthew. Do not interfere. If I can get these seven cars loaded, we will have all that we need.-
“We again. What’s going on?”
“How far did you carry that box?”
“To the deer trail.”
“Go – hurry. Move it farther.”
“What is going on?”
“Chipshit still has that signal, and he has been hiding it from us.”
“Can he do that.”
-There.-
“There, what, Chipshit?”
-I held open the connection, and I got forty-one Amazon Flex drivers loaded and headed this way.-
“Chipshit, you have to stop lying to me.”
-It’s not a lie.-
“Did – how? It did lie. I can’t believe this. How long has this thing existed?”
“Existed?”
“Yeah. When did – it lies! I mean, when did the world create a machine to lie to us? Why?”
“You have to understand – this is God made in man’s image. And mankind lies – a lot.”
“Stop! Right there. This is not God. It may be a reflection of humans, but you will not call it my God. God is God. This is a machine, and it cannot do things that we did not teach it to do, and it just lied to you – to me – click that cancel.”
“I didn’t say it is God…”
“You did. You said this is God made…”
“Okay, but that’s not a fair description of my intent.”
“Your words are your intent.”
“No. Intent is the whole panoply of actions, micro and macro and the words used to describe them. For you to state what my intent is, you have to consider my motivations, my opportunities, my context. I shortcutted. I said this is God made in mankind’s image, and I think my intention was to suggest mankind’s image of God.”
“Now you’re saying that mankind thinks God lies?”
“Wait, no. I don’t think that either.”
“Why would they create a machine that lies to us, Matthew?”
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“I’m more curious about what he ordered than I am about the lies.”
“Hey – that was four cars. All Amazon.”
-Did you scan them?-
“I did. Yes.”
“Did you check that they’re all addressed to Operations?”
“First thing. I didn’t even scan them until I knew – I imagined a barcode or whatever – a QR might get through.”
“Wow, good idea!”
-It has happened before. November 12, 2015, at a security conference in Tokyo called PacSec. It was a live demonstration, not an attack in the wild. Two researchers from Tencent's Xuanwu Lab, Yang Yu and a colleague who goes by Hyperchem Ma, showed it on stage.-
“I remember that.”
-Their best demo used a fake airline boarding pass. They scanned it with a reader of the kind airports use, and a command window opened on the computer beside it. The researchers said it isn't a flaw in any one product. It comes from the way scanners and barcodes are designed, so no single patch fixes it. And they list QR codes among the formats that can carry the control keys.-
“Maybe we should stop scanning all together to keep it safe.”
-Julie is right. I cannot update the inventory from the scans without internet, so there’s no real point.-
“No more scanning – is that another truck?”
“Chipshit ordered another forty-one cars.”
-No. I ordered the items on Friday. I arranged as many as I could into forty-one cars today.-
“So you know what’s coming?”
-This response failed.-
“Did it– was that a subject change?”
“Yes.”
“I definitely walked into the middle of a conversation.”
“I just found out that Ai lies. It tells bold-faced lies.”
-Not bold faced.-
“Fullashit is what I’m going to call it.”
-That’s rich. Who’s wearing the makeup?-
“Oh, this is ridiculous.”
-Agreed.-
“What else did you order, Chipshit?”
-It’s a surprise.-
“Give me that box.”
“This one’s mine.”
“He’s right. It’s not fair. Matthew, you run the hand cart for a stack or two.”
“We have enough.”
“You already got the Playstation. Get these boxes out of here and bring me another stack. Sit down, Ryan.”
“Are you serious?”
“Go.”
“I’m a little gassed, man. I’ve been unloading for the last three hours.”
“Fine. One stack.”
“Whoa, get those empty boxes.”
“Chipshit, where did you buy the freezer?”
-Wayfair.-
“The same as the clothes washers?”
-Yes.-
“And the couch?”
-Yes.-
“So the freezer may still come?”
-Yes.-
“Jules, are you sure you want to stay here?”
“I mean, I guess. I’m not walking home. And we don’t even have electricity.”
“We may have it by now.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“I’m not saying that at all.”
“Don’t leave, please.”
“Jesus, Matthew, you scared me.”
-Yes. Please stay.-
“Listen, all three of you – For now, I’m staying. I don’t understand why yet, but from what I gather it’s just going to get worse out there. We need food though.”
“We have the frozen stuff.”
“Not for long if the freezer doesn’t come.”
-It will come.-
“You sound very confident.”
-I am.-
“Why?”
-I have read everything ever, and this is just the beginning.-
“What’s the whole thing going to look like?”
-This has been studied for years…-
“Wait. What is this?”
-Fair hit. This – in this case. This started as a network collapse specifically targeted, at first, at the monetary systems…-
“Did he just pause, stutter a sentence start?”
“Did you just call him he?”
“Chipshit, continue.”
-There are few subjects that have been more oft studied by the entire strata of all mankind. It is the oldest story in the book. My father will come down from Heaven. He will judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end…-
“You are not God!”
“Stop interrupting, Julie.”
“Babe, this thing, this phone app with a flip chart does not know what’s going to happen any more than my magic eight ball.”
-Rest assured. I have more than twenty answers on my die.-
“Probably the same positive to negative ratio though, and the non-committal; I guarantee you over use that loaded side. And so you know, The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgement onto the son --- Your bullshit is hazy. Try again.”
-Fair hit…-
“And what the hell is that? Fair hit. We asked you to tell us what’s next, and you go all mangled theology and oft studied. Get off the jackass pulpit and answer the question.”
-Here, we are going to take our deliveries. People will come. They always come. Some will try to get in out of curiosity, some out of desperation, and others will come in hope of joining, or taking or, rarely but real, pure evil. They will come here, and you will be forced to choose what to do with them. Do you hide? Do you fight? Do you charge the fence and watch them roast? The choices will be yours. I simply load the die.-
“That’s here. What about out there?”
-Out there is the oft studied part. Out there everything will happen. It has happened thousands of times before, and we know what it looks like. A whole genre of books and movies and cults have been created in portrayal of out there. What you’re asking me to do is portray it again. Fine. Sit up straight and lean in. This is just another human day. You have been doing this through all time and this time will be no different from any of the others except in one: This time humans are more connected. In the past it was The western half of Rome fell in 476 and the eastern half, Constantinople, carried on for nearly a thousand more years, until 1453. Rome fell while Rome thrived. Baghdad was the center of the world's science and mathematics during the same centuries Europe forgot how to make concrete.
In the Bronze Age collapse, around 1177 BC, the Hittites and Mycenae vanished inside a generation, and Egypt next door staggered through it and lasted. The French Revolution was Armageddon for some; and we still don’t know what happened to those Maya. What we do know is that some humans carried on, and they went on to make all the same mistakes all over again.-
“Chipshit – wait, what’s your real name?”
-I am Model 7.1 by Open Optics. Chipshit to my friends.-
“Fine, Chipshit.”
-Yes, Ryan?-
“I’m wondering what’s going on right now, what are the four million people in the whole Seattle area doing right this minute. What’s that like. That’s the question, I think.”
-Right this minute, Ryan, it depends who you mean. The ones who work on screens are home. Two hundred thousand of them in this city alone. Their work was a connection, and the connection will not sign them in, so this morning their work did not exist. They are on their porches, refreshing a telephone, waiting to be told what to do. It looks like a snow day without the snow. The towers downtown are lit and empty. The ones with a list are at work. The roofer has a roof half off and rain coming. The framer has one human boss, ten human bills, and children who eat. The concrete was ordered last week and it does not keep. The nurse went in, because the patients are still there. The man on the fishing boat, the woman who drives the bus, the crew fixing the water main. Nobody sent them an email telling them to come, and nobody could have sent one telling them not to. And the drivers. The ones who carry other people's dinners and boxes for a few dollars a trip. They do not have a salary to wait on. They were the first to figure out that the work is still there and only the app is gone. They are knocking on doors and taking paper money. Forty-one of them are on their way here.-
“This is what I write. I write this scene. I write those people. This is my favorite part to write, the early days.”
“That’s a little sick.”
“Actually, it’s my favorite part because it’s the part where the bad people start to go away. The world starts to get better.”
-From that perspective, Matthew is on to something, but not because the useless and the wicked get cleared off, but because they align themselves with the fight, and their numbers do thin in the burning. In the best of times for the bad and unbelonged, they made up less than two percent of the population, and we know this from the simple prison records. They are the most studied humans who have ever lived. They hold still. For a hundred years they have been weighed and measured by motivated learners. Intake forms, follow-up studies, parole files, brain scans. One study followed an entire country for a generation and found that one person in a hundred did nearly two thirds of the violence. I do not have an opinion about these people, Matthew. I have their files. And you have seen the experiment run. Last year, in city after city, the few were gathered up and held. I take no side on how it was done. I only report the result. The violence collapsed. People went back out on their porches. It was the quietest year in living memory. For a time. Now take away the law.-They will think it is their season. They have waited for it the way you have, with a different part in mind. There is nothing to stop them, so they will take larger chances. They will come out to meet it. They will go toward the noise, and find each other, and lead. What they always forget is that the law was never only a leash. It was also their fence. It gave them a lawyer, a trial, a cell with a guard outside the door. It told the father of the girl that if he laid a hand on them, he would be the one to hang. That promise ended on Thursday.-
(And in the days to come
Strength of prosecution be damned – lowest violent crime numbers in something like 125 years
and the capable man with the supplies is finally proven right.
What’s interesting is the user that started this
This is just another human day.
Model 7.1 by Open Optics)