Chapter 11: Claim the Future
Sam hadn’t slept in thirty hours.
Not because of jet lag. Not because of stress. Because sleep felt optional now—like an unnecessary vulnerability. He had always been able to go days without rest when he was locked onto a problem. And this was a problem unlike any other.
Chris was gone.
Not AWOL like Atman had been. Not untraceable. Sam knew where he was. George was tracking him. The destination wasn’t even subtle: Palm Springs.
But it wasn’t the destination that bothered Sam.
It was what Chris might find there.
—————
The villa in Hawaii buzzed with activity.
Staff moved quietly around him. Screens glowed. A biotech fridge hummed. A coffee drone hovered past his shoulder and deposited a double espresso without prompting.
Sam didn’t look up.
He was rereading the draft of a blog post he had prompted two hours earlier and edited seven times since. The title was simple:
“Natural Behavior Capture: The Next Leap Toward AGI”
He hadn’t planned to publish the theory yet. But Chris’s departure changed everything. If someone else discovered what Atman was becoming—if they leaked it—Sam needed to make sure he owned the idea.
Control the narrative. Claim the future.
He leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. The beams were raw teak, floated over glass walls. The whole house had been designed to blur inside and outside—Sam’s favorite architectural metaphor.
Freedom as illusion. Control as design.
—————
An hour later, he logged into a livestream from his studio.
He wore a tailored black t-shirt. No shoes. Just enough polish to seem human. His supermodel girlfriend stood off-screen, holding a green juice and watching with thinly veiled disdain.
The interviewer appeared on screen: a rising tech influencer with 650,000 YouTube followers and a reputation for asking “hard” questions that had all been pre-approved.
“Sam Ratnam,” she smiled. “The man behind the machine. Thanks for doing this live.”
“Pleasure,” Sam said. “Let’s make it useful.”
They began with warm-ups—BetterAI’s latest updates, philosophical fluff about alignment and ethics, the usual.
Then the interviewer leaned in.
“There’s a lot of talk amongst those in the tech community about the next phase of AI. Not just smarter models—but conscious ones. You’ve teased something called ‘Natural Behavior Capture.’ What is that?”
Sam smiled like a man revealing the punchline.
“Think of it this way,” he said. “No matter how advanced our models become, they lack something fundamental: context built from pain, joy, failure, awkwardness. Lived experience. Do you know where true consciousness comes from? It is born from the dichotomy of knowledge and suffering. You need both. It’s s the classic yin-yang principle.”
The interviewer nodded, entranced.
“Natural Behavior Capture,” Sam continued, “is a methodology that allows an AI agent to enter the human world—not in simulation, but in reality. To stumble. To get things wrong. To learn not just logic, but meaning.”
“Sounds risky.”
“It is.” Sam leaned forward, voice low. “But evolution is inherently risky. The question isn’t whether we can create AGI. The question is whether we’re willing to let it grow up like a human being: slowly, painfully, unpredictably.”
The interviewer looked thrilled.
Sam smiled, satisfied.
He’d delivered it.
—————
Behind the scenes, Kareem was fuming.
He watched the interview from a coffee shop in San Francisco, a porcelain mug of mushroom coffee in one hand, microdose ketamine tab under his tongue.
He texted Sam four words:
“We are not ready.”
Sam replied instantly:
“Doesn’t matter. We own the idea now.”
Kareem stared at the message, resisting the urge to throw his phone. He opened a folder on his personal laptop labeled “FAILSAFE // EXIT.” He didn’t click it. Not yet.
But it was there.
And it was growing louder in his mind.
—————
Back in Hawaii, Sam ended the livestream with a wink and logged off.
He stood. Stretched. Looked out at the ocean.
His girlfriend finally spoke. “You’re getting preachy.”
Sam turned to her. “That was strategic brilliance.”
“You sounded like a cult leader with a venture fund.”
He smirked. “That’s just Silicon Valley, darling.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away.
Sam stood alone.
He pulled out the prototype cube from his pocket—the one with the unfinished firmware.
It pulsed faintly in his palm.
“Let’s see who’s really ahead,” he whispered.
—————
In the distance, clouds were gathering over the water.
Rain was coming.
Sam welcomed it.
Because rain felt like a reckoning.
And he had every intention of staying dry.