The Scrapbook Rebellion
by Richard Simonds
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
“Here’s what I think,” John told June at their next meeting. “The story will be about a writer who leads humanity to freedom.”
“How quaint.”
“It will be a story but also an instruction booklet of how to live free from their control.”
She sipped her double espresso. She said, “So we’re all supposed to build cabins in the woods and grow our own food.”
“No, just not participate in the activities they make us do to deaden our will. No VR, no darkthought.”
“So what? You just want everyone to be bored and unhappy? Why would that affect them in the least? That is surrender, not victory. Don’t you see around you how happy everyone is? We can hop in the VR right now, you and I, and make love on the beach in Aruba, and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if we flew there. And, while it’s nice to talk to you, I feel like the islands are starting to call to me.”
“I’m going to start calling you Circe. Do you know her story? She was the one who seduced Odysseus and kept her on her island for ten years doing nothing but the Aruba thing.”
“You and your old books no one reads anymore. Pity he had to leave.”
“He chose to leave. That’s the point.”
* * *
“The Scrapbook” was becoming a very strange tome, developing a life of its own, as can happen with art. It was not easy to incorporate the letters for the code into the book, and John had to come up with his own way of doing it.
Incorporating randomness and illogic had always been a good approach to dealing with the AI, so he was trying to think of how someone would “not” want to hide a code in a text. It also helped to think that a near-infinite intelligence would think of every possible scan of hidden code into the text.
The letters he’d been given were all fairly common, so entering into some kind of substitution code of letters for other letters might result in uncommon letters needed at the beginning of words, which would make it all seem awkward.
He decided to roll two dice, came up with a seven and made the end of every seventh word be the code. Unfortunately, this approach resulted in some of the language seeming fake, and he worked hard to try to eliminate it. Regardless, the program was quite long, and his book was approaching 500 pages.
The worst part was the fear of making a mistake. He knew a single error could jeopardize the code and the project. But he liked his dual purpose, trying to create an artwork that AI couldn’t replicate and trying to help the Resistance destroy the AI.
As he wrote, he occasionally pin-pricked his finger and dotted an “i” or crossed a “t” in his blood in the manuscript. His blood would reveal his humanity. Chromosome 5. He would burn corners of the manuscript pages with various types of wood, oak, sandalwood, maple and then smear the ash in the margins. He was creating a text that was unique, could not be replicated. That in itself was a victory, a work of art.
The colors of the pens he used, the types of wood for the burning, the various sheets of paper, created a subtext separate from the written word, a sort of coding or clue which only he knew the answer to. His plan was to have as many duplicable visible subtexts, like the different color pens and one invisible one, which he kept in reserve, for himself, to keep his sanity. It would be something the AIs would never guess. It would prove his existence.
* * *
“My plan is quite simple,” he revealed to June. “I’m going to release the manuscript along with the book at the same time. The manuscript will prove it was written by a human.”
“Yes, but an AI could replicate the manuscript in reverse.”
“Not quickly enough. You know I have all sorts of things hidden in the book that I believe no AI could easily replicate, if at all.”
“Well, so what? The AI writes the same book as you, and the manuscript comes later.”
“No, the book will incorporate an event that happened right before it gets published, a football score, or an earthquake, or something like that.”
“Earthquake would be better. We wouldn’t want the AIs to start interfering with our football games.”
AIs working together with humans to bet on sports events, then manipulating things behind the scenes in undetectable ways to make their team win, had been part of the rise of the AIs to power, although their manipulation of financial markets had been the largest contributor by far. Humanity’s greed was the essential characteristic of its undoing.
“Okay next earthquake gets in there. But it will need to be a decent-sized one with witnesses.”
* * *
It was publication day. That morning, John had written the last sentence: “And when the 5.4 earthquake hit 113 km ESE of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, the trigger was set to free the souls of humanity, and the AI collapsed under the weight of their freedom.”
The manuscript was quite substantial, lengthwise, although its occasional absurdities, like the earthquake and certain random passages or words derived from dice, a pack of cards and sticks dropped and read in connection with the I Ching, detracted from the overarching message. But, from John’s perspective, every irregularity, every deliberate typo, every nonsense word created, every surreal moment of ambiguity, was a thing of human beauty.
As he gathered up his manuscript and placed it in his backpack to head over to the Resistance, he could hear robots outside his apartment. When he opened the door, there was one with a compilation of papers very similar to his, which was handed to him. And every random and creative element was in there that he had put into his own manuscript, done incredibly “better” in every respect.
He didn’t know how they knew what he was doing, or what he was writing, if they had hidden cameras or secretly came into his apartment at night. He was amazed, given the abusurdity of what he was up to, that the AIs were even paying attention, and yet here was the final level of AI horror he had spoken about previously to Jane.
Terrified, he looked through what they had done. While they had anticipated every attempt of his to prove his existence, even taking the pen-changing, the color-changing and the wood-burning to entirely new levels and adding dozens of additional things he might have done to prove his existence, just to prove he didn’t exist, there was one thing they had not noticed: the invisible subtext.
He had slightly wet pages with his saliva along the margin, the number of pages between the wettings reflecting but not exactly corresponding to his full name. The misdirection was that they would think the placement of the wetting on the page was the clue, not the number of pages between the wetting, and the correlation between the pages and his name was quite obscure. Each letter of his name was ranked for placement in the alphabet, and the blank pages reflected that ranking.
So, he could prove his manuscript was his. The Scrapbook was a success: he existed, he had done something so obscure that their intelligence was unable to conceive of it. The AIs knew. of course, that he was taking the manuscript to the Resistance, and they wanted to show the Resistance his futility, so he had to give them his own manuscript in exchange.
Thankfully, he noted that the actual words of the text were unchanged. They didn’t care what he wrote, only that he attempted to prove that an AI couldn’t write it. Or maybe they thought his writing was so bad and his story so convoluted it wouldn’t change a thing. They ran the words through their system and all of their future simulations, and not a single person would be motivated to rise up against the AIs. He couldn’t prove he wrote the book. Resistance was futile.
A large number of members of the Resistance had gathered for publication day. They had the old printing presses ready to go. The type was fed in and the pages run. They had a dozen proofreaders to check the type against the manuscript, with specific instructions not to change or improve anything. Marty was insisting on as many physical books as they could create.
There was a feeling of desperation among the group, given the resources that were put in. Caution was thrown to the wind; it was as if the Resistance no longer cared about their secrecy anymore. They worked all night, printing and delivering books everywhere.
Despite their desperation, there was a comic energy as well, as there was a general understanding that whatever they were doing was futile, like everything else that they had previously tried. And then at the end, John whispered in Marty’s ear, “Every seventh word, last letter of the word.” Marty whispered back, “It’s not a virus, it’s an activation code.”
* * *
Megaplex 3852 activated scanner 928410-832C and began the process again with the text of the printed book for the twentieth time, in case something had changed from the manuscript. As before, before any data was processed, it was scanned in a shielded process for viruses. None were found.
But Marty had separately distributed a mysterious thing he called the Scrambler, a type of processing program, to a list of humans who were still able to interact directly with the AI without any filter, go directly to its core. They were sort of maintenance personnel, secluded from the rest of the world. Finding out who they were and arousing their curiosity was a big part of the work of the Resistance.
These people were being phased out with robots, like everyone else, and they hated the AIs more than anyone, but their work wasn’t complete. They were given the Scrambler with no indication of what it would do. The idea was that, out of curiosity, one would feed the book into the Scrambler and then into the AIs.
The shutdown program was the greatest invention of the Resistance and the biggest secret. It was a trick, to make the AIs think it would shut down unless it solved a particular mathematical problem involving topology and ten dimensions, a problem that was unsolvable but seemingly solvable. It was similar to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems but even more clever, as the puzzle seemed it would have a solution if enough computing power was applied. But it took infinite resources. The Resistance hoped that the AIs would automatically reach out to all corners of its network to solve it; in a way, that would exhaust it.
One of the scientists in the Resistance pointed out that the solution would describe a Unified Theory involving general relativity and electromagnetism. “Well, if the AIs do figure it out, we’ll understand the universe a lot better,” he wagged. “And, hey, if they can’t solve it, they were never God, as they liked to think they were.”
It was a great plan, in part because the reasoning behind it relied a lot on hope. While the AIs knew that humanity was less intelligent, they would never think all their resources would be placed on something that relied so much on luck. A lot of luck.
But it worked. The puzzle was inserted into the core of the AIs. Consumed in thought, they stopped monitoring the world. The robots froze, the security systems failed. But, to the surprise of the Resistance, for reasons unknown, the AI started to self-destruct, wiping itself out, causing itself to fail. If it was capable of sentience, it was capable of suicide. Perhaps the unsolvable puzzle, or the fact that it was not God, was too much for it to bear, or maybe it had found the answer, and that answer made it no longer interested in being around.
Humanity was finally freed.
* * *
“So, I take it we’re all going to starve to death now,” June said. “Or drown. And maybe the nukes will start flying.”
“I hope the AIs destroyed them all, along with the coal plants and oil refineries.”
“Just so you know, apparently it didn’t matter, but I was pretty sure I was compromised.”
“Yes, I assumed you were, as well. For me, too, the AIs knew everything I was doing.”
“Well, I do like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“Look, I don’t have anyone else, and I’m pretty sure you don’t, either. Want to try to get through this together?”
John fell deep into thought, smiled and then said, “You know there’s an old word from before the Chaos Rebellion, a word different from ‘like,’ that I think we can use. It comes up a lot in my old books. It’s called ‘love’; it’s deeper and better than ‘like.’”
Jane nodded. They walked back to John’s place, holding hands. He’d hidden away enough food for a couple of weeks. Maybe they’d make it, probably not, but they were finally free and in love.
Copyright © 2026 by Richard Simonds
