trespasser

Jan 17, 2026

Last year I turned thirty. It seemed that this should have been an Earth-shattering emotional event, a temporal rubicon. At the very least, I should’ve felt sad as I had every prior birthday throughout my life. I considered it a maturity that upon reaching thirty, my life proceeded along the path it had been on. It was, after all, just another Sunday. 

At the beginning of the year, after the fires, we’d been informed in my office that we were expected to move from our building and onto The Studio Backlot following a corporate acquisition. I prided myself in individualism and a general outlaw sensibility; coming into hard contact with bureaucratic infrastructure threatened my sense of self. But, in my thirty-first year, I had resolved to emotional balance, at least aspirationally. 

As I aged through my twenties, I lost the sense of self-consciousness that had held me back throughout my teens and early adulthood. I thought, generally, that without this facet of my nature that I would have achieved success faster. The problem was, my sense of success changed as I aged. Its inherent mutability betrayed my desire for success, unreal goal posts moving further downfield away from the desires as I had once known them. Or, to put it another way, by the time I had achieved one thing, the desire had shifted, to the point that satisfaction itself was eternally postponed. It’s in this way I am never happy.

As a careerist, it became of tantamount importance to socially ingratiate myself with the employees on The Lot. If one aspired to growth and longevity, there were social games to be played. This was how I found myself, a few weeks into our tenure at this new series of buildings, at lunch with three strangers.

“I’ve been supplementing my code with A.I.,” George said between bites of food. He, of course, did not say “A.I.” but rather the name of the specific software The Company had developed internally. Dozens of artificial algorithms had been developed, and the top brass encouraged experimentation. Both, I assumed, to better develop the technology and to identify on a logistical level the holes in the foundation that could be spackled with algorithmic primer. 

“Are you mostly identifying and fixing bugs, or are you developing new programs or applications?” I asked. I had never met George before this, and lacked a clear understanding of the scope of his responsibilities. In truth, I found it compelling to work for a tech company, having little skill in the tasks expected of people working in the computer sciences. 

George began explaining the program he was working to develop. In short, he did not field basic user bug flags. There was, of course, extensive testing of the early versions of the program. The artificial algorithm he used was able to generate pre-written lines of code that otherwise would have occupied hours of his time and days. In this way, his position shifted, and he could focus then on altering the code and beefing up what the algorithm had generated. It was, after all, a simple technology, and not intelligent in the human sense; it did not understand, and thus was literally incapable of learning. In the context of his needs, the skeletal structure was created, but he had to create the addendums to turn it into something workable that could be sold; the A.I. software built the bones, and he supplied the arteries and veins. To use another metaphor: the algorithm generated the blueprint that George copy-edited before digging into the ground, laying the foundation, and putting up the house. 

I explained to George (and the table at large, though I dominated the flow of the conversation) that I had had little success using the softwares pushed to the employees of the company. To tell the truth: I only had had failures with them, but could not say this to the table, my colleagues being the engineers developing the future expected of society. I held my tongue not because of some social transgression—I did not care if I upset them by detailing the flaws inherent in their work, logically—but rather because I could not remember concrete examples that I could point to in detail to guide my critique. I explained in general terms that I would use the chatbots, lead them to conclusions, then find that the resultant responses repeated taught corrections without the requisite changes and with hallucinated answers. It is a difficult software to create, I continued, because the nature of truth itself has become malleable. So much of our culture and society has veered toward personal perception that understanding built upon fact and knowledge has become flimsy, and in fact, really, it has collapsed. 

“If humans cannot agree, then how can a computer understand? At the best, you get a copycat simulacrum of one perspective. Perhaps if each person created an A.I. chatbot trained only on their own experiences, and then if these A.I.’s were concatenated or merge or joined, all eight billion of them, only then through extensive calculations could we approach something close to universal knowledge and genius, though mass suicide leading to all our souls conjoining in heaven would likely yield the same result.”

Isela, who worked in the marketing department, entered the conversation. I had been dominating it, and, as is my nature, approached the situation with a “black and white” “either-or” perspective. One of my old bosses when I worked as a counselor for a summer camp pulled me aside once to tell me just that. “Most situations are more nuanced,” she told me. “You should remain flexible in how you approach conflict.” I believed her and took her opinion to heart—her personality was very similar to mine.

“You’re using,” Isela said to me, “LLMs for tasks they’re not designed to do. Your work exists in numbers and deep datasets. You need a more intensive algorithm than the simple, text-based language models. For what I need, the chatbots can jolt my creativity and give me avenues to explore what I hadn’t considered. Some of my girlfriends use tarot cards for the same purpose: to be given an idea or a keyword or a perspective that we wouldn't think of that unlocks the next level of logic or creativity. It opens the human aspect and prevents from succumbing to myopia. It doesn’t work as a replacement, but rather as a supplement: a jolt of electricity, or a shot of espresso.”

“Or,” George said, “to help you find the fallacies or mistakes in what you’ve started before you get too far along in the process. If it’s going to fail, it’s better to learn as soon as you can, before you’ve wasted too much time and effort.”

Just then we were joined by William, who worked with Isela. He saw her from across the courtyard and hovered near our table. George nor I knew him, and he respected the group enough to allow George to finish his sentence. Finally, Isela addressed him and invited him to sit, introducing George and myself as cross-team social buddies meant to encourage collaboration and innovation for The Company. 

“So, I told you I was going out of town last weekend for my birthday,” he said to Isela directly. It did not matter to him that George and I were there, and thus spoke candidly. I could not fathom being so brazen with strangers, but relished the opportunity to peek into the windows of someone else’s mind. 

“I’ve been feeling stuck this year and needed to get away to clear my head. I just turned 40, and have been spending a lot of time reflecting on my life. With everything going on in L.A., the fires, the industry collapsing, the layoffs and strikes, I’ve been feeling like I need a change. I don’t feel secure working here given the acquisition. They can lay us off and replace us at any moment. I’m so sick of being here. So, Tommy and I went out to Santa Barbara, got a house on the beach with some friends. I’m trying to get back in touch with my creative side, you know. Tap back into that, make a life out of it. Tommy got some ayahuasca and we spent three days taking it at sunset, watching as the sun dipped below the horizon on the water. No, this wasn’t my first time doing it. I totally lost sight of myself these last few years. I needed a reset, and it was a reset. I watched my personality burn to the ground in ash at the bottom of the bonfire we built on the beach. My past lives came rushing back to me—or, they were my ancestors. In a sense, isn’t it the same thing? Our family lives, going back millennia, trauma after trauma, sometimes learning, other times repressing. It’s a surreal experience if you’ve never done it. Makes you question the fabric of everything. What does it matter? Why are we here? I think a lot of us, as a society, have lost sight of those questions. Anyway, I got the clarity I was looking for. I’m putting in a month’s notice. I’m leaving. I can’t stand this job anymore; it’s at odds with my spirit. I’ll be recording an album in Tommy’s guest house. We’ve retrofitted it to be a recording studio. I wanted to let you know before I told Barbara. This whole being in office again has driven me insane.

“Anyway,” William said, standing from the seat. “I better be off. Lots to do before blowing up my life. Enjoy your lunch.” 

Like the wind he left us as quickly as he found us. The whole episode made me question whether it was a real conversation, or something I had only imagined to break up the monotony of the proceedings.

George turned to me, and I re-entered the conversation. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but your skepticism has inspired me to prove you wrong. Yes, current A.I. software leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of it does appear to be a marketing ploy. There are—how should I word this—teams developing a genuine robotic sentience in the way you imagine it. Troubleshooting something that can create thoughts and synthesize ideas—real intelligence—has required an inordinate amount of resources. Yes, the technical aspect is important, but we need people on the team who understand the psychological aspect. It is, after all, inventing a psychology, so to speak. A page from which it can refer its experience.”

“And is there anyone on your team, or at this company for that matter, that can understand the psychological component?”

George smirked at me. “I admire your tenacity. Listen, when we need beta testers, I will make sure you’re on the list. I’d be interested to see how different personalities can adhere with or rub against these digital psychologies. We’ll need people with your perspective to voice their concern.” 

That was the worst insult one could receive in corporate America. George both insulted me and volunteered me to hours of labor outside my role—all as punishment for disagreement. 

I sighed. “I’m just saying that if what you really want is to create life, then fucking is easier.”

As we spoke, two security guards stood in the courtyard beside our table. Their walkie talkies buzzed with static. A nondescript, mumbled voice came over the airwaves. At first, I thought they were spying on our conversation, ready to take me, or George, or Isela in for questioning. Then, a man wearing a neon yellow vest rounded the corner. He raised his voice and shouted expletives. Another employee, undoubtedly going to lunch, walked past him. The man in the vest lunged out, feigning an attack, then yelled something about what he was looking at. Isela turned bright red, spooked by the man’s behavior. She gathered her things and headed inside. George and I turned our attention to the vested man. As he got closer, I could see the vest read “trespasser”. He approached the two security guards.

“What’s in there?” he yelled, pointing at the building behind us. Everybody ignored him. “What’s in there?” he repeated.

He started locking eyes with employees. Tension grew in the air. Everyone in the courtyard stopped eating their meals.

“Let me in there!” he yelled. The doors were left unlocked during the day. It didn’t make sense for him to yell that without trying the door first. Immediately, I lost my suspension of disbelief; his performance lacked veracity, and I could no longer buy into it.

He turned toward me, obviously sensing my insolence. “What are you looking at?” he yelled at me.

“The vest,” I said. “Do you always advertise that you’re a trespasser when you hop a fence?”

The trespasser turned away from me, unimpressed by my attitude. “I’m going to blow up the building! I have a bomb!” He entered through one of the unlocked doors, and the two security guards followed him. The tension in the courtyard broke, and everyone returned to their meals and conversations.

“If they’re going to run security drills like this, the least they could do is give us all a head’s up. Poor Isela thought it was real.”

“This has been an uneasy afternoon,” George said. “I imagine when I tell my wife about today, it’ll feel like recounting a dream I had and half-forgot. Tomorrow, I doubt I’ll think any of it was real at all.”

He stood from the table and gathered his things. The sun sat directly above us, and gave the courtyard a harsh resonance. The bright blue skies of southern California laid bare everything on the ground.

“It was nice talking with you. Hopefully the next time we meet is less of a phantom hallucination.” He put his backpack on and held his keycard in his hand. “Coming inside?”

“I think I’ll sit in the sun for a few moments. It grounds me.”

He shrugged, then left me alone at the table. Beads of sweat broke out on the back of my neck. When I was a teenager, I used to feel self-conscious about hyperhidrosis. I seemed, always, to be sweatier than my peers. It was very difficult growing up in south Florida, in the heat and humidity, to hide it. Now, as an adult, I celebrated the sweat breaking out. It was proof, after all, that I was alive, corporeal. That the afternoon was real. The sun, high above, came to me then like an old friend after many years.