PROLOGUE
CAN YOU BECOME THE NEXT HENRY KISSINGER?
asked the sockpuppet with knives for teeth. This advertisement appeared in the instagram feeds of five Chicagoland students: three at the University of Chicago, one at the Art Institute and Northwestern. All five
saw the same sockpuppet with knife teeth on the same desaturated orange background asking the same question in the same bolded comic sans font. The text in the caption beneath read: “Apply to TankThink. Download the App-lication.”.
All five clicked on the link. Each read the short description in the app store. TankThink is an AI-forward private conflict strategy platform offering high risk, high reward strategies.
Consultant Level One Salaries begin at two point two million dollars a year. Download the app-lication to app-ly. Break it till you make it.
They all downloaded the app. The app’s icon was a knife-fanged sock puppet. The same creature greeted them when the app opened and introduced itself via speech bubble:
I’m Joel.
Welcome to the TankThink app-lication.
Please upload your student IDs, and we’ll get started.
Relax, no resume needed!
TankThink is an absolutely 100% pure meritocracy.
May the best strategist win!
Two of the Chicagoland students paused here to research TankThink. They both found an article in TechCrunch announcing that TankThink, an “AI-Forward private conflict strategy platform” 5
had received a 40 million Series A led by Sockpuppet Capital. This was enough information for one of the students. The other researched more and discovered that Sockpuppet Capital was a subsidiary of another fund with an unlikely name: Schmucks Capital. She still uploaded her ID. So did the others.
Phase one takes twenty minutes, and will require your complete attention, so click on me only when you are ready.
All five were curious enough to start right away. They clicked, and began phase one with a series of rapid shape rotation questions designed to assess general intelligence under stress. In four seconds the user had to determine, from a series of three prior shapes, what would come next. The difficulty escalated with time, as after the pattern acquisition, increasingly difficult trivia questions were posed before asking the user to complete the shape pattern.
At this point, 90% of all app-licants failed. Their app-lication closed, uninstalled itself. None of our five students failed. Next followed a battery of questions regarding domain-specific intelligence. It asked historical questions:
Chronologically order the following battles: Actium, Antietam, Gallipoli, Leipzig, Lepanto,
Marathon, Midway, Mosul, Tours, Waterloo.
There were questions about hypothetical strategies in international conflict:
There is credible intelligence that Iran will launch a nuclear strike in approximately 18 hours. You are to devise a target set for a counterforce strike.
Satellite reconnaissance indicates that hardened silos are potentially at Isfahan, Tabriz, or Shiraz, with Isfahan the most likely.
Iran has publicly disconfirmed Shiraz as having a nuclear site, warning harsh retaliation if this civilian center is struck. Due to naval exercises, assets in the area can only attack
one city in the next 18 hours
Which city to attack and why?
Another question concerned political economy: Explain Coase’s
Theory of Firm Formation and apply it to the market in protection.
How is a state like a firm?
The app-lication asked applicants to explain why (for Machiavelli) unarmed prophets fail. It asked them how they would handle an employee who is refusing to do a difficult task due to extreme risk. It asked them to clearly explain the way an LLM worked using a metaphor.
Of the remaining candidates, 98% were rejected. Our five made it through. Joel, the sockpuppet, appeared and congratulated them:
You made it to Phase Two!
I’m going to show you a series of four short slow motion videos, and I’d like for you to tell me a story about how they happened.
Trigger warning: these videos are ambiguous and disturbing.
There is no right answer.
Click on me if you would like to go forward. Our five wanted to go forward.
The first video showed a morbidly obese man with purple-gradient hair in a bathtub filled with tom kha gai: a Thai lemongrass soup with lots of chicken. The second video showed the earth
exploding. The third video was an anime version of the Zapruder film. The fourth video showed the POV of a woman massaging the taut ripped back of a man. As she massages his back, illuminated tattoos light up into the word NECESSITY in the back flesh. After all five candidates gave their interpretations of these strange scenes, Joel appeared once more.
You’ve made it to phase three!
Only one more round to go before that TWO MILLION DOLLAR A YEAR JOB is yours.
This Tuesday, at 2pm, go to the University of Chicago’s Pick Hall 319. Make sure to leave ten hours free.
Bring your laptops, and download the app.
1358 CDT // 2058 CEST
The five finalists sat in Pick 319 looking at their laptops. Three women, two men, all with Macbooks. Pick Hall for International Studies sits at the eastern side of the quadrangles of the University of Chicago. The surrounding buildings are neo-gothic, built around the turn of the 20th century. Many gargoyles. Pick went up in 1969, a brutalist concrete and dark glass intrusion. No gargoyles. Narrow, short, noisy, crazy-hot floor-hugging radiators run along the base of the walls. The smaller rooms, and Pick 319 is one of them, were always too hot. The walls were made of gunmetal cinder blocks. The finalists sat around a big table, and there was a large television mounted on the wall. All the finalists had downloaded the TankThink app-lication. The program opened into full-screen mode: a totally orange background with a blinking cursor. At the bottom of the screen was Joel, the fanged sockpuppet from before. Joel looked at the finalists, unblinking, but nodding its sockpuppet head back and forth. The clock struck two and the app spoke, via the same comic sans chat bubble as before.
Hello, I hope you remember that my name is Joel.
I’m happy to welcome you to Round Three TankThink’s competitive app-lication process. By being here and installing the app, I would like to inform you that you have consented to the Terms And Conditions of the process, including but not limited to absolute non-disclosure.
Suffice it to say what happens at
TankThink App-Lication Round Three
Stays at
TankThink App-lication Round Three
To use the app, speak, type, blink in morse code,
I can also read lips or American sign language. You can show me images or handwriting, and I can read and understand them.
Joel didn’t say anything further. Ten, then twenty, then thirty seconds passed. Finally one finalist stuck up her hand and asked “What do we do here?” She had an aggressive perm and wore a vintage 80s power suit. She was twenty one years old. This was Jacky. Excellent question, Jacky.
You will complete objectives with this app and I will evaluate you continuously, and holistically, by monitoring the entire space of the interview.
You’ll be devising and honing and testing strategy memos, operational plans, and tactical adjustments in live scenarios,
generated collaboratively
Basically: competitive Kissingering.
I’ll know who did what.
You work in and submit work through this app.
Another finalist raised his hand and spoke. He said: “Are you people pulling our fucking leg right now?” This finalist had his hair in a ponytail. His biceps bulged. He was beneath average height, North Indian, and twenty two years old. This was Devin.
Let me remind you, Devin, you are competing for a job with annual compensation of two point two million dollars a year.
So let’s get started with icebreakers! *************************************************************
OBJECTIVE: ICEBREAKER AND INITIAL STRATEGY TEST
1. NAME
2. AREA OF INTEREST, FAVORITE DINNER AND BEVERAGE
3. PLAN TO FIX HOMELESSNESS IN SAN FRANCISCO WITH BUDGET OF 1 BILLION USD.
4. CRITICIZE THE PREVIOUS SPEAKER’S PLAN
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Devin.
“It’s for two million, he said right?” asked Jacky.
“Doesn’t that sound a little wrong, though, “fix homelessness” – obviously this is some sort of stupid joke.” said Devin.
A birdfaced blonde six years or so older: “I don’t think this is a joke. TankThink did actually get venture funding. I’m Sharon, by the way. Nice to meet all of you.” She had a sharp nose, beady, narrow eyes, and a pointed chin with a weak jaw and high cheekbones. She seemed aerodynamic and nervous. Her hair was curly, dirty blond, shoulder length.
The other male finalist spoke with a pronounced German accent, possibly exaggerated.
“Even if it is a joke, using the bait of two million dollars to provoke us into making outrageous statements about homeless genocide is very very funny.” This was Lorenz. He was 21 years old, six foot five, unkempt dirty blonde hair and facial scruff intended to hide a receding hairline. On his shirt was an anime version of Hitler with I’M
GERMAN LOVE ME beneath.
“It has to be fake, there’s no fucking way this chatbot is anything but some Potemkin bullshit,” said Devin.
The last of the finalists entered the conversation.
“Potemkin only built the front of his buildings,” This was Mariam. She was 22 years old, Gambian-American. She had long braids, some light brown and some darker, woven into her hair and tied together in a loose bun with a dangling ponytail. Her suit was dark and professional. She wore several silver charm bracelets and had small pearl earrings. She had been reading Hilton Root’s “Network Origins of the Global Economy: East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective.
“What’s your point?”
“This app has, at minimum, a working large language model, a huge knowledge base, and a compute center somewhere in Chicago. Even if we don’t know what it is, it is very clearly not bullshit. But anyways, it is a pleasure to meet all of you. I’m Mariam.” Their computers all made a simultaneous coughing noise. They looked down to see Joel looking sternly at them.
Finalists, follow the protocol!
Name, Area of Interest, Dinner, Drink, Plan, Critique
“Right, right. I’ll start. I’m Jacky. I’m a 4th year in the College here. I’m researching ethnic terrorism in the EU for my thesis. I'm a poli sci and philosophy double major. And my favorite dinner is… oh, yes, I really love veal ossobucco. Drink? Red eye,” said Jacky.
“What about the homeless thing? What’s your strategy?” asked Lorenz.
“I have this theory, it’s kind of hard to explain, but… I want to create social conflict dynamics that make everyone simultaneously detest the homeless. Basically I want to set the working class against the homeless,” said Jacky.
Lorenz snorted.
“I’d want to set up a company that cleans up the streets, use the billion to hire 10,000 working people of San Francisco at minimum wage, but give them a bonus for every street corner cleaned,” said Jacky.
“I don’t get it, " said Sharon. “How does that end homelessness?”
“Conflict between working class cleaning people and homelessness will lead to mass reaction against homelessness leading to immediate political action.”
“You done?” asked Lorenz.
“Sure.”
“I’m Lorenz. Originally from Mannheim, Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Now a student at Art Institute. Performance art. Loosely affiliated with the Postconsentwave subculture. I drink grapefruit coffee. Ice cold doppio. Ice cold. Dried blood orange slice floated on top. Then gently pour red grapefruit juice, top with another dried blood orange slice. Incredible. My favorite dish after that, quesobirria. Can’t ever go wrong with quesobirria. Now, my critique of your proposal, Jacky. Because all of you are so academic, let me try to use a term that’s technically technical: your homeless proposal is… retarded.”
“Excuse me, could you just not?” said Mariam.
“Could I just not what? Please be clear about what I have said wrong. What may I say and not say. What rules are we playing by? Lorenz said.
“Say whatever you want,” Mariam said.
“I will, thank you. Retarded in the sense of being late, slow to develop. Jacky wants to pay working class people to get into fights with ze hobos. Won’t work! Nein! Incentives! Incentives! You won’t be able to motivate them to knock heads, because you can’t pay them enough to knock heads. It’s not in their nature…” Lorenz trailed off.
“So your solution, Lorenz?” asked Sharon.
“The solution is simple: visibility. We tolerate the homeless because we do not see zem. Take the billion, make a streaming video platform of homeless life. Pay the bums to film each other in states of depravity. The way people came to hate the red-headed because
of millennials rickrolling each other, we must do this with hobos suffering from advanced bubonic plague gang fist fucking each other in alleys,” said Lorenz.
“That’s horrible. Even worse than Jacky’s,” Mariam said.
“Dark,” Sharon said while nodding. “Really… dark.”
“Oh! But I like it! That’s the way, I think, yeah, I can like, riff on this, hang on, they’re kind of like a new category of rekt videos?” Devin asked.
“That’s an analogy—yes—” Lorenz interrupted.
“What are wrecked videos?” Mariam asked.
“Rekt. R-e-k-t!” Devin said.
“Videos of people being killed or maimed very abruptly, they’re a fast-growing genre of entertainment, usually on pornography forums.” Lorenz said.
“That’s awful!” Mariam shouted. “Seriously! Are you going to round them up into camps?”
“Oh, and here is Godwin’s law!”
“What’s that?” asked Sharon.
“The longer a conversation, the more likely that someone will compare you to Hitler,” said Jacky.
“Every time I suggest any kind of social performance, any time I think outside of the box—someone like you comes in to call me a Nazi because I’m German.” Lorenz added.
“Someone like me?” Mariam asked.
“Yes, one of you… conservatives.”
“Conservative? I’m a committed communist,” said Mariam.
“So is Joe Biden.”
“What the fuck? You can’t just say whatever you want because you are an artist.”
“It’s my turn, ok, I’ve got it, relax, relax!” interrupted Devin.
“Actually I can. That is what being an artist means.” said Lorenz.
“Lorenz, Lorenz, listen, so, I’ve got why your plan sucks, and I’ve got the fix. Check the method. I’ve got it!”
“You have to give your major and stuff first, Devin,” Jacky reminded.
“Right right the game. So, I’m a 4th year, comp sci/econ double major, I’ve done internships at nVidia, Oracle, and IBM, and I research big data and network architecture, and I also have a passion project about autonomous quadcopter swarms I’m working on. I can talk about that more later. Food. I like a good lamb bunny chow. It’s like a curry bread bowl. It’s really great, my favorite cheat meal.”
“Are you South African?” Mariam asked.
“Yes! Was it my accent? I took a lot of lessons to suppress it. But I was born in Durban, I am a proud, African American brown body of color, thank you very much.”
“My parents are from the Gambia.”
“Ah, what a pity. So, Besides that…favorite drink? Oh! Right. Breakfast. I have it every day. 3 scoops of Optimum Nutrition brand mocha whey powder, and inside a liter of bulletproof coffee made with ghee.”
“How many is 3 scoops?” asked Sharon
“75 grams give or take, it’s about 60 grams of protein. Gets it real thick and slimy with the ghee. And I love shaking it up. Shaking it up is like, a lot of it for me.”
“Wouldn’t that make you shit your brains out?” Lorenz asked.
Devin avoided the question awkwardly.
“And your critique of Lorenz’s plan…” Mariam pressed.
“Right! Yes, sorry, I’m just, start and stop today—so—so, hawoo—uh, listen. Lorenz. Your plan stinks out loud.”
Devin stared at Lorenz. Lorenz looked away, towards Sharon. Noticed that Sharon was looking at him and looked right back. Sharon smiled, held his gaze, Mariam saw the exchange, Jacky too. Devin did not. He snapped his fingers in Lorenz’s face. Lorenz slapped the fingers away.
“Lorenz. No one wants to watch homeless dudes fist fuck each other. Maybe artists? Not anyone else. What do people want? They want bumfights! Build a platform? That’s stupid, we piggyback on an existing one, offload infra cost to them. Now, we have a billion dollar content and marketing budget, we can make the Avengers Infinity War of bumfights, we can literally make and distribute the Avengers Infinity War but with homeless people if we wanted–and we will, because that’s a fantastic idea–and it will be a multichannel network on one of these degen Burmese and Bangla gambastream platforms...”
“I didn’t understand any of that. What is degen? And gambastream?” said Sharon.
“And how does this solve homelessness?” Mariam asked.
“Let me get this straight. Your plan is just to expand my idea of a media vertical around homeless people and zen create a funnel that gets them monetized, mostly on illegal gambling websites in Myanmar?” Lorenz asked.
“And Bangladesh and East India!”
“How does that solve homelessness?” Mariam asked again. Devin thought about this for a second, and then said:
“The ones who get rich will have houses I guess, until they lose all their money, and the ones with no money for us, they will make us money as they’re beaten to death on camera for gambling addicts!”
“Right, that’s enough from you,” Mariam said. “My turn now. Your plan is inhumane, insane, illegal, I have no idea who your audience is, and a lot of your plan just sounds like you want to get cut in with ethnic militias that mostly sell meth and slaughter innocent civilians on the strength of your Internet bumfight ring.”
“Yes! Exactly! Insightful!” said Devin.
“Well that’s idiotic, and I don’t think you belong here. Do you even know the scale of the homeless problem in San Francisco?”
“Do you?” Devin asked.
“Yes. It’s like 8,000 people.”
“Holy fuck California is incompetent.”
“Seriously, I thought it was like, 10x that,” Sharon said.
“Introduce yourself, Mariam,” said Jacky.
“Yes. I study redistribution, land reform, and poverty eradication. I’m a first year at Harris – that’s the public policy school here. I majored in poli sci in undergrad and graduated from UChicago last year. My favorite food… I really like yassa chicken. Drink? Mexican hot chocolate.
Lorenz yawned, stretched his arms up and revealing some belly.
“I think I have to go to the bathroom,” said Lorenz, standing up. Mariam continued as he walked out.
“Fine, go. We should look at the homeless as human capital. Distressed assets. We need to find a way to fix them as distressed assets, human capital that’s upgradeable. A
well-funded pilot community for education and work would be a solution people would imitate, it’d be self-sustaining in that we’d be airdropping an economy into a planned community, creating a higher skilled labor force and—" Devin laughed derisively. “That is unbelievably gay.”
“Don’t be mean Devin. You had your turn anyway. Mariam, your plan just sounds like something the Chinese Communists would do, make a New Homeless City and dump the problem there and tell them to work hard,” Sharon said.
“Let me finish—”
“No! It’s my turn, right now. I’m Sharon, and I’m a PhD at Northwestern. My favorite dinner dish is a South Carolina style pulled pork sandwich. My favorite drink is pumpkin spice–”
Devin started giggling. “No way…” he said under his breath.
“Yes, I drink pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks and I like myself just fine. And like I said I’m in the psychology department’s Personality Development and Health program, I’m researching political psychology and behavior—leadership, dispute resolution, you get it. And your plan, Mariam, is nonspecific. You assume that the homeless want housing. The problem is that they don’t want to be in society, they won’t be in your homeless city, they’re an oppositional group culture.”
“What’s your plan?” Jacky asked.
“Reverse psychology, kind of. Fund a massive media campaign to discredit business leaders in the Valley as incapable of decisive, efficient, reasonable action in any space whatsoever. Tell the billionaires they suck.”
“Okay. Now why would that work?” Devin asked.
“It won’t, directly. They’ll never listen to a person who looks like me again. At least about homelessness. But they’ll fix it to spite people like me. Big solutions. Big budgets. Big egos needing sweet sweet satisfaction.”
“I still don’t think your criticism is valid, Sharon, my plan—” said Mariam. “No! Your plan isn’t political or even clinical, it’s humanitarian. You have to treat the problem. The problem isn’t the homeless, it’s the people who ultimately, passively, decide how they live, the people with money and power. They’re motivated by status, reputation, and acting to fulfill trends and plans. They have no motivation, no reputation at stake in the order and appearance of the city they work in. They have to be reminded that if they are perceived popularly as weak or incompetent, they will become that.”
“I only—" said Mariam.
“Excuse me, I must use the restroom,” Sharon said abruptly. She got up immediately.
“I guess that leaves it to me to criticize Sharon’s plan?” said Jacky. “I think it might work, and that would be a problem, creating private clans to fix our problems with petty insults, when we have a decent, fixable government, more or less, right? It would be politically destabilizing, and it would also disempower future actors to solve problems with state power. It just trades away a solvable problem for an unsolvable one—the billionaires own the city,” Jacky said.
The Tank Think app on their screens all flashed bright orange The three finalists still in the room looked down.
OBJECTIVE: ICEBREAKER
SUCCESS (FINALLY!)
NOT BAD STRATEGISTS. GOOD YAPPING NOT SHABBY.
TAKE A POTTY BREAK, LIKE SHARON AND LORENZ. ;)
NEW OBJECTIVE SOON.
CURRENT LEADERBOARDS:
1. Devin
Sharon
Lorenz
Jacky 5. Mariam
1425 CDT // 2125 CEST
A handwritten sign taped between the two urinals read “FLUSH OR IT WILL STINK
LIKE PISS.” Lorenz washed his hands while Devin peed. The sink was right next to the urinal. Lorenz took a peek over the divider. Devin shifted his pelvis out of view, causing some splatter. Lorenz kept watching.
“How’d it go?” Lorenz asked.
“You’re third.”
“There are rankings?”
“I’m number one.”
“Obviously it’s not over.”
“We’re on break. A few more minutes.”
“Good, good–say, have I ever told you about my personal project to advance ze sciences?”
“No...”
“So I believe there’s large domains of knowledge untapped: ze science of cock size and personal power.”
Devin zipped up. “Third place,” he said. Lorenz stepped back and let Devin wash his hands.
“We fucked,” Lorenz said. “Me and Sharon. Right there. In the stall. On the sink too. All over. You can probably smell it in ze air.” Lorenz sniffed the air then walked out. Devin blinked, turned off the faucet, shook his hands dry, followed Lorenz out into the hall and yelled “You into that pissboy hypno shit?” but Lorenz was gone, already in the stairwell.
Cursing “fuck fuck fuck” under his breath Devin followed, leapt down the stairs, burst
through the big red fire door, and crashed into Sharon as she exited the women’s. She got knocked over.
“You’re built like a truck! That hurt.”
“Yeah. Uh. Sorry.”
Devin pulled Sharon up. They had an eye to eye moment. Sharon realized that Devin knew about her and Lorenz. She saw raw psychic anguish in his strange green eyes.
1430 CDT // 2130 CEST
At the fourth floor lounge, Mariam studied Jacky studying the coffee machine drip hot chocolate into her dark roast.
“That’s clever,” Mariam said.
“I call it a mocha.”
Mariam looked at the available snack options in the basket: Kind Bars, Welch’s fruit snacks, or Planter’s cashews.
“Do you think Kind bars are any good?”
“They’re just candy bars, but with less wax in them.”
“Just what I need.”
Mariam grabbed two Kind bars, and sat down across from Jacky.
“I can’t stand any of them,” Mariam said.
“Sharon didn’t seem too bad.”
“They’re just not serious.”
“Maybe it’s our real test, working with them.”
Mariam nodded and then looked more closely at Jacky.
“Wait... do we know each other? You look familiar, and you said my name before. Before introductions.”
Jacky sighed.
“I read Colin Cochler’s piece denouncing your Columbia DSA manifesto. Your picture was on Twitter.”
“It was an open letter! But… did you... read it, the open letter?”
“I get why they purged you. You told loser Marxists in Columbia that Marxism was dumb. They had normal dork ego problems about it.”
“Marxism was dumb, is dumb! If the German deep state hadn’t given a Marxist terrorist a billion dollars to do a coup nobody would remember that forgettable left Hegelian hack. Fuckers. Wow. Didn’t realize the anger was still… still right there.”
“Did the democratic socialists also send you to the Gulag?”
“Point taken. Privilege checked... I get it. But after that happened I couldn’t stay in New York. Cochler is everywhere.”
“He’s some kind of king shit commissar in Brooklyn, right?
“He’s a short, bald, simpering man. I thought he was a trans man at first, actually, he’s just so… pear shaped.”
“Sounds like my stepfather.”
Mariam smiled.
“Are you close with your mother?” Mariam asked.
“Yeah. Why? Oh, right. The suit?”
“Of course it’s the suit! Look at you. It’s like, legit vintage. Was it hers? You look amazing in it by the way.”
“Thank you! Yeah. My mother is my hero. I want to be just like her when I grow up.”
Mariam laughed politely.
“What does she do?”
“She was a professor. At Brown. She’s retired now. Been for… wow, almost a decade now. Judith Stein-Garde.”
Mariam’s eyes widened with surprise.
“Oh my God! Judith Stein-Garde is your mom? You look just like her! I had her book, I saw her on The Daily Show and then...”
“Then she got canceled. Somehow she upset the Turks, Kurds, and the Armenians.”
“How, again? Seriously, what was it even over?”
“Nothing that made any sense to me.”
Both women’s phones buzzed. They looked onto the Sockpuppet app: Head back downstairs, ladies.
Prime objective coming.
1435 CDT // 2135 CEST
All five finalists had returned to room 216. They sat and looked at their laptops as Joel began.
THIS IS THE BIG ONE.
PRIME OBJECTIVE: POLITICAL CHANGE IN GERMANY.
GOAL: DRAFT A STRATEGY FOR AfD TO GAIN POWER ASAP
BUDGET: 1.3 BILLION EURO. *************************************************************
“I’ll bite. What’s AfD?” Sharon asked.
“Good question. Alternativ fur Deutschland. They’re a German quote unquote far right party,” Lorenz said.
“Don’t air quote it. They are far right. They’re trying to deport migrants. They’re very tolerant of crypto-nazi elements in their party,” Mariam said.
“Stupid American,” Lorenz snapped.
“I’m not an American.” Mariam responded.
“You’re a spiritual American, you repeat stupid New York Times propaganda talking points.”
Mariam smiled and said. “Sure, Lorenz, Germans have no history of industrialized mass murder against scapegoated ethnic groups. Maybe this is hard to see, as you are a German.”
“I may be a German but you are an fool. The AfD are a bunch of libertarian economists who don’t want to give welfare to a bunch of poor, maladjusted refugees in their nice rich peaceful country, ok? Very far from Hitler!”
“Their leader is a lesbian woman and their power base is in ex-Communist Germany and in the more Catholic parts of Germany, if that helps you contextualize things,” Jacky said.
“Germany has Catholics still?” Sharon turned her head in confusion. Lorenz groaned.
“What, the Reformation? You know, Martin Luther and all. I don’t study Germany, ok, I study psychology,” Sharon said.
“No need to be defensive Sharon, the Reformation didn’t work everywhere, south Germany particularly,” Mariam said.
“Wrong again, American. Baden Wurtenberg reformed. Bavaria and in the North, Rhine-Westphalia,” Lorenz interjected.
“Right now the Afd polls at about 20% or so. Low 20s. They’ve been up and down, lots of medium-sized scandals and stuff. In Germany, you need about 30% to lead a government, right Lorenz?” said Jacky.
“Correct. Most likely they form a coalition with CDU and FDP. It’d be in effect an anti-immigrant mandate though.”
“CDU? FDP?” asked Sharon.
“CDU is Angela Merkel’s party. FDP are free market liberals,” Jacky explained.
“We haven’t had any time to research this, is there a time limit?” asked Sharon.
“This is a trick question. The AfD is going to win without our intervention.” Jacky started to type. The text showed up on all the finalist’s screens.
AfD needs 30% to win.
AfD victory currently highly probable without intervention.
Devin slammed the table.
“No, no, Jacky! Jacky! Look at me. We aren’t gonna, gonna gonna gonna… big, big brain bluff our way to a 2 million a year job. We should talk this through and figure out how we’re going to divide up the tasks, or even what our general approach is. We need to learn some stuff, Sharon is right… stop typing…” But Jacky did not.
No strategy is recommended.
Devin balled up a piece of paper and threw it at Jacky to get her to stop typing. She threw her purse at his head. He yelped in pain.
“What the fuck!?” Devin shouted.
“Rude!”
“Does anyone have any kind of general plan? I mean this AfD is not super popular, but they’re most of the way, right?” Sharon said.
“The people who hate the AfD aren’t persuadable about that,” Lorenz said.
“Why do they hate them?” Sharon asked.
“The AfD represent something backward and evil they see in themselves probably,” Lorenz said. Jacky rolled her eyes.
“That or nationalism is just declasse for high human capital,” Jacky said.
“He’s right though, kind of. We can’t make them love the AfD,” Mariam said.
“Maybe we can make them need the AfD?” Devin asked.
