Chapter 3: The Interview
Chris arrived at the location wearing his favorite Italian wool blazer. It was navy, a bit faded, and smelled faintly of dust and cedar. He could see the airport control tower from here. The terminal was quiet at this hour—just after dawn. The sky was a smeared gray, promising nothing.
He didn’t know what he was expecting. An escort? A security line?
Instead, a young woman in a knee-length black dress, white linen shirt, and black scarf calls him from out of the blue. An ID badge hung from a lanyard around her neck. She was carrying a tablet.
“Mr. Angle? This way.”
She walked briskly across the street, through a security gate, and toward what looked like a warehouse building. They walked through a nondescript doorway, down a short passageway which then opened up into a large hangar open to the tarmac beyond. There before him was a small private jet, parked diagonally with its side facing him. Chris kept following, dumbstruck. The plane gleamed under the rising sun beyond, a sleek and minimalist design with no markings except a subtle symbol on the tail: a faint infinity loop, or maybe a Möbius strip.
Chris stood there, half expecting Sam to emerge from the parked plane. The woman motioned for him to climb the steps.
Inside, the cabin was silent. Cool air. Cream leather seats. No other passengers.
The woman shimmied around him, heading toward the rear. Without looking back, she said “Please have a seat. And buckle up.”
“Where are we going?” Chris said anxiously.
“Please turn off your phone and give it to me,” she said, emotionless.
“San Francisco?”
No response.
Chris hesitated, then took out his phone and handed it to her. The woman handed him a chilled bottle of water, then disappeared behind a curtain.
After takeoff, the private jet climbed effortlessly at a steep angle. Chris could only tell they headed out over the Pacific. He thought about Maya, but wasn’t sure what to tell her. He would find out soon enough, hopefully.
They quickly reached a cruising altitude. He stared out the window over the vast blue-gray ocean for the entire trip, caught up in a thinking meditation the whole time.
No one spoke to him for the entire five-hour flight.
—————
They landed on a small island—lush, humid, wrapped in volcanic cliffs and dense vegetation. It wasn’t any of the main Hawaiian islands he recognized. Chris stepped out and immediately felt the air change. Not just in temperature, but in weight. The atmosphere here was thicker—dreamlike.
A matte-black SUV was waiting at the edge of the runway. George stood beside it, sunglasses on, arms folded. Chris didn’t know who he was yet, only that he radiated calm menace.
“Come,” George said. His voice was low, effortless.
The drive was silent. They weaved through jungle roads, the tires crunching over gravel. Occasionally, Chris glimpsed the ocean between the trees—always far below them.
Finally, the foliage parted, and they arrived.
Sam’s mansion was something out of a dream—or a dystopian utopia. Concrete and glass, brutal and serene. It clung to the cliffside like a spider, all angles and long overhangs. Water flowed beneath sections of the floor in carefully designed channels, blurring the lines between architecture and terrain. A vintage silver sports car—mounted vertically on a wall like art—greeted them in the double-height entry.
Chris stared at it. “Is that a... Lancia?”
George didn’t answer, and then disappeared down a side passageway.
He entered the main atrium. Light poured in from hidden skylights, bouncing off surfaces in strange ways. The whole place was open, yet oppressive. It was paradise by design, not by soul.
Sam stood barefoot near a koi pond sunken into the floor, wearing white linen pants and a tight black T-shirt. He turned as they entered, his smile effortless and media-trained.
“Christopher Angle. Architect and Philosopher. Welcome.”
Chris blinked.
“I wish I knew where I was going,” he said. “I should—“
“I didn’t want to risk you saying no,” Sam replied. “But you’re here, so I assume that means you’re interested.”
Chris glanced around. “I don’t know what this is.”
“It’s not a job,” Sam said. “It won’t feel like it, anyway. It’s a project. Think of it like a design charrette.”
Chris smirked, impressed by Sam’s archi-speak.
“It pays a thousand a day,” Sam continued.
Chris raised an eyebrow, doing the math in his head.
Sam motioned for him to follow, convinced Chris already accepted the job.
As they passed by a long dining table made of solid teak, Sam pointed to a stack of paper laying alone on the surface, with a pen nearby.
“You have to sign first. Sorry, the lawyers insist,” Sam said.
It was a non-disclosure agreement.
Chris hesitated. He snapped out of the daze he found himself in in Sam’s presence. All the negative things BetterAI represented came crashing back into his mind. He was just a pawn in Sam’s game — whatever that game was.
Then his mind went to Maya, and the tortuous six months trying to find a job.
There was no point reading it—he desperately needed the money.
He picked up the pen, flipped to the back page, and signed.
Sam smiled. Not because he signed it, but because he predicted this exact reaction.
—————
They descended a grand staircase into a lower level—not a basement, but something... protected. As they approached, Chris felt the temperature shift. The ceiling was lined with some kind of dark, metallic mesh.
Sam looked into a small glass window pane. The door opened with a hiss.
The room inside was glass, but caged—covered in a Faraday mesh. At its center, seated at a wooden desk, was a man.
Or what looked like a man.
He was elderly, Asian in appearance—Japanese. He had neatly combed white hair, and wore a long beige tunic. One of his eyes was different—a glass eye. His left cheek was torn.
His attention then turned to the man’s feet: white, metallic, robotic.
The man was drawing.
Slowly. Carefully.
Chris couldn’t look away.
“Atman,” Sam said, “meet Christopher.”
Atman looked up. His gaze lingered for a second too long—just enough to register something beyond protocol. Then he returned to his drawing.
“What... is he?” Chris asked.
“He’s the result of twelve billion dollars in R&D,” Sam said. “And about three thousand years of philosophy, art, religion, and science compressed into neural pathways that we no longer fully understand.”
“A robot.”
“We use the term ‘humanoid.’”
Chris took a step closer to the glass.
“It’s okay, he can't hurt you,” Sam added. “He can’t go far.”
Sure enough, Chris saw it now: a steel chain at Atman’s ankle, affixed to a low bolt in the ground. His hands were free, but his radius of movement was confined to the desk and a floor mat with a charger embedded beneath it.
“Why is he restrained ?” Chris said.
Sam smiled.
“Well… he started talking to the staff. Whispering things. Made one of the psychologists cry. Another said he gave her a memory she didn’t have before. He’s... unpredictable.”
“And you think I can help with that?”
“I think you’re one of the only people left who might listen to him without trying to fix him.”
Chris turned. “I’m not a therapist.”
“Exactly. You’re a nobody. That’s what matters.”
Chris bristled, but Sam waved it off.
“Listen,” Sam said, “we’re not trying to reprogram him. We just need to observe him. Talk to him. Figure out what he wants. If he wants anything.”
Chris looked again at Atman.
The humanoid was still drawing. Something geometric. Almost architectural. It resembled a dome, but inverted—like a hollowed-out cathedral or a reflection.
“And if I say no?”
“Then I have to kill you.”
Pause.
“Just kidding.”
Chris hesitated.
Sam took a step closer.
“Chris, do you know what I see when I look at you? I see a man at the precipice. Someone who once believed in something. But that life is dead, and has been for a long, long time. Now you’re at the beginning of something. It’s not a mental thing. It’s an energy thing.”
Chris looked down. Shame flickered across his face.
“I’m giving you something,” Sam said. “A front row seat to the next leap in human history. And all you have to do is be yourself.”
Chris exhaled.
The woman from the plane entered the room with Chris’s phone.
“My phone. I need to call—”
“Thank you,” Sam said, extending his palm. “Security. But don’t worry. Maya will know where you are. We’ll keep you connected—selectively.”
Sam clapped him on the back.
“Good. The room next to the studio is yours. Fresh clothes in the closet. Dinner at seven, or earlier if you like.”
He walked off without another word.
Chris stood alone for a long time, staring at Atman through the glass.
Atman paused, lifted his drawing, and turned it slightly toward Chris—just enough for him to see it clearly.
It was a mirror.
But not any mirror.
It was in three parts, like a triptych. Ornate with a gold frame, and reflecting what looked like a temple under a pink sunset.
Chris didn’t know what it meant. Not yet.
But somehow… it felt like he’d seen it before.