The short job description caught her attention as she opened a new ticket. That’s unusual. It was out of the
ordinary for the tasks not to be accompanied by a lengthy explanation of the job at hand, the expected
outcomes and technical details.

She has worked for OptiGig app for only a little over a month after she lost her full-time job as a senior
programmer in an unexpected wave of layoffs in the sector. She kept applying for jobs and hoped something
full-time would come her way but for the time being, the app provided some money. Not ideal, but she did
need any money she could get her hands on. OptiGig was a mediator between large tech companies and
freelancers, often tasking people with menial tasks like reviewing the code of junior staff and with AI
support. It was difficult to be passionate about any of it, but she was determined to build up her profile on the
app with a lot of quick and easy tasks for which she’d get guaranteed 5-star ratings.

As usual, the task was accompanied by a digital notepad, in which coders could exchange information and
keep significant variables for others. Instead of the usual technical note, there was only one sentence: “Watch
and describe what you’re seeing and feeling”. Another feature of the platform, the chat, for non-technical
aspects of the task and communication with the people who commissioned the assignments, was greyed out.
The fee and a tick box to accept the Terms and Conditions appeared on her screen. The pay was generous,
more than any task she’s done so far. She felt some uneasiness in how trivial the job seemed, however, the
pay was substantial enough to overlook the uncanny aura surrounding it. She needed the money. She really
did. One click and the offer was accepted. A live camera feed was launched. She took to the task, focusing
on the video and noting down her observations.

 

The Forest

Today, I am watching a live feed from a forest, she started her log, thinking that it would be good to know the
purpose of those entries, trees delicately swaying in the wind.

The weather seems pleasant. It is a sunny day in the forest, with rays of sunshine peaking through the gaps
between leaves in the trees’ crowns. It must be a different time zone to where I live, as the light falls
diagonally on the forest floor. It creates a soothing atmosphere and seems almost out of this world, as if some
larger power manifested itself through the sun’s rays. Its radiance feels both tranquil and riveting.

She paused. What was the camera doing there? Why was she describing this scene? Why was she trying so
hard? It wasn’t a dynamic space that could change over a day. It was just… a forest. There were no people
and no movement apart from the wind occasionally gently swaying the camera. The scene was beautiful but
a little bit eerie at the same time. The task seemed too trivial for her skillset. She’d do her best to complete
this assignment and move on.

The camera seems to be transmitting from slightly above human height. I think it could be placed on one of
the tree trunks. They are symmetrical, spring out from the ground and continue branchless until the crowns.
The leaves only peak into the live feed window, most of them cut off from camera view.

The forest extends into the horizon, it fluctuates with tiny hills, covered in moss. Dense moss, looking like a
tightly-woven carpet, laid out between the trees and bushes. It probably serves as a host to many other
species. Worms, bugs, ants, crawling in the soft embrace of this spongey plant. In places, a fallen branch,
some dead leaves and twigs lying around.

She paused to stretch and move around a little bit. It was getting dark outside of her window. The cityscape
was already lit up by neon signs, beams of cars’ headlights and the crisp outlines of skyscrapers stretching
across a twilight amethyst sky. Against her better judgment, she decided to take a longer break and return to
her log later that night.

“Beautiful evening.” She announced to the empty flat, her words reaching no audience, before proceeding to
look for some music to prolong this mellow sense of gratefulness for all that she was seeing.
The pulsing hum of the city dwindled to a soft murmur of an occasional vehicle passing when she sat to
write again. While she was painfully aware of the late hour, the camera feed hadn’t changed much. She
continued her writing.

Shallow roots branch out at the bottom of trees’ trunks, extending in all directions before disappearing under
the moss. It is beautiful how they are all connected. I remember reading about underground networks that
connect trees in the same area. Sharing resources, information and support with the help of microscopic
fungi.

The morning mist is just lifting off the ground, hovering a little above the forest floor, reaching the tree barks.
They are ginger, resembling the colour of cookies I used to eat when I was a child. Their texture is that of a
flaked pastry, as if a gentle touch would put the trees to crumble. They contrast against the undulating sea of
moss.

This is such a serene scene, it fills me with calm but the grandeur of the trees and idyllic nature seems a little
overwhelming. Because of how the camera is positioned, a lot of perspective gets lost, so it’s hard to say. I
can see the tree trunks getting smaller in the distance. There is nothing else here. There is little sound.
Occasionally, I hear a cracking of trees and a rattle of small animals, nothing apart from that. The forest
seems ancient.

Sudden tiredness came over her. It was getting really late, and there was not much more she could write
about. She looked intensely but she couldn’t see much else. The forest still looked peaceful, the trees still
majestic, and the sun was shining intensely, casting shadows across the forest floor.

Shadows.

It’s been hours. Shouldn’t the shadows have moved? The sun in the live feed seemed to be still in the same
position. It surely would have travelled across the sky? She was certain that what she was looking at was a
video and not a photograph. Noticeably, trees swayed with the wind. It could be looped, she thought. What
could be the purpose of it? Am I identifying anomalies or bugs? She looked at the video feed and laid her
fingers over the RGB keyboard.

It is after midnight here and I started writing about 5 hours ago. The forest shadows look the same way they
did earlier. They haven’t moved. The sun is still.

The Mountains

Her next assignment came in a few days later. Similarly, it was accompanied only by minimal instructions
and another live feed. She took a deep breath and started writing.

The scene is beautiful and serene. In the foreground, there’s a fragment of a mountain, its very edge. Behind
it, in the distance, I can see two other peaks. There’s a lot of fog. The sun glimmers through it, a round disc
with fuzzy edges. The scene is surrounded by an aura of a giant nebulous glow, reminding me of some deep
space photographs I’ve seen. This is an even nicer view than the previous one.

Closest to the live camera, which must be placed on another mountain’s wall, there’s a mountain made of
dark brown rock, cut off sharply in some places. Matter flows continuously, making turns around the edges,
smoothing the outline of the mountain, persistently carving a way for itself, like a river forcing its way
through a valley. From within the cracks, yellow and green ferns emerge as if the mountain’s core was filled
with it, slowly making its way onto the surface, the way a volcano oozes lava. Slowly waking up from
thousands of years of sleep, the mountain breathes.

The other formations in the background are made of similar rock and also feature some ferns in an irregular
pattern, looking hazily. It is almost as if the greenery is forcing its way onto the digital image to reinforce its
existence despite the fog.

This scene seems very idyllic and distressing at the same time. The landscape is beautiful and what I imagine
the mountains to look like. I’ve never been to the mountains but I have always wanted to experience them.
Time set in stone, so I can only witness it on my screen now. At the same time, this view from above is so
high, it feels like the camera could fall anytime. It makes me feel dizzy sitting in my chair. It is beautiful,
though. The still landscape’s outline divides sky and land.

She leaned back in her office chair, observed the mountain tops for a bit longer, and then decided to take a
coffee break.

With leftover cold coffee in her mug, she returned to her desk. The caffeine was starting to kick in and she
felt she could write for a little longer. The video awaited.

Something changed. She blinked and froze, staring at a single point in the camera feed. In the distance, on
the side of a mountain, there was something new. Or was that something stuck to the screen? She pressed her
thumb against it, attempting to wipe away the dirt. It wasn’t dirt. It wasn’t anything on her screen but rather
something engrained into the fabric of the mountain itself. She moved closer. It looked like a tree, leafless,
almost lifeless trunk of a tree. Her thumb lingered as she froze, puzzled.

She turned her head to the right in an effort to test her vision. It was there. She turned her head to the left. It
was there. She sat in the same exact spot for the past few hours and the tree wasn’t there. Trees don’t just
grow like that. They grow over decades, weaving their roots into the ground, time travelling through eras.
They don’t just spring up without any warning.

She browsed through the writing she’d done earlier in the day. There was no mention of a tree. It was a
simple scene; she couldn’t have missed it the first time around.

After the first assignment, the most plausible theory as to what was the main point of her making her diaristic
observations seemed to have been logging unexpected phenomena or glitches in the videos. Now, she wasn’t
so sure.

The Shore

It has been a few days since the last assignment when her screen was once again flooded by a camera feed
from a remote place, far away from the city in which she lived. She started feeling slightly nostalgic for
places she’d never been to before. Was it possible to miss someplace else, a place which she wasn’t sure
existed at all?

Thankfully, the new assignment presented a new location to observe from the confines of her own home. It
was a beautiful scene of a sea shore. She was pleased with it.

From above, I can see the shore, waves moving slowly. I assume the camera is placed on a cliff or on a
mountain overlooking the beach. I cannot see anything apart from the stripe of sand and the sea.
The water is dark, foaming at the ends of the waves, leaving the sand wet, only to be absorbed quickly after
and sink deeper into the Earth. It is a forever chase between the sea and the sand. Their movements
oscillating, one almost catching up with the other, only to retreat and repeat the cycle again.

From a distance, seaweed at the shore reminds me of human hair. There are some clumps here and there but
mostly, it is stretched out like freshly combed hair after a shower, laid out perpendicularly to the waves.
Every time they come into contact, the seaweed shifts its pattern into a new flowing design.

The sea washes up some magnificent things. There is a lot of driftwood on the shore. Large and small logs
are gently and rhythmically moved by the waves. Some are irregularly laid out across the shore and some
tangled in seaweed, creating small bumps among the hairy constellations.

Some seagulls are drifting atop the sea like buoys. They open their mouths to let out the most excruciating
screams I have ever heard. They are disgusting sounds of screeching leaving their bodies and vanishing into
the ether. There are many of them, she started typing and actually counted them because she wasn’t in a rush
to finish the task, and the elements in the feed were limited, I spotted 17. She took a closer glance at them.
They look mischievous, large birds with their beaks turned downwards. Small forest birds were cute but she
found most of them disturbing. She was unsettled by their cloacas, a single entrance and exit for excretion,
reproduction, and all messy processes of life. Disconcertingly raw and mechanistically efficient.

She didn’t remember the last time she was at a beach. City life has been demanding, and since losing her job,
any venture that wasn’t covered by her city pass seemed out of reach. She longed for a holiday. Somewhere
warm, perhaps like this place. She’d be willing to go there, even seagulls considered. If these tasks continued
coming, whatever their purpose was, maybe she could afford that.

Blip. The chat notification. For a millisecond, she froze. She then hastily clicked on the icon. It read “You are
my eyes when I cannot see”. She stared at the chat. Blip. It turned grey again, the message hanging in a
communication limbo. She didn’t dare move or think. No thoughts while the mind was catching up with the
bodily reaction. Slowly, she moved her head from above the screen and glanced at the corners of her room
and at a mirror by the door. No signs of anyone. She read the sentence again. “You are my eyes when I
cannot see”. I am the eyes, she proclaimed to herself, they cannot see.

She minimised the chat and froze again. The seagulls were circling aggressively, lowering towards the
surface of the water and soaring into the air, repeatedly. Amid flying birds, there was a figure standing in the
water. She couldn’t see it clearly, it was too far to see. Whoever it was, looked blurry in the video. It wasn’t
possible. This far from shore, no one could stand on the seabed, she thought.

In one swift motion, she closed her laptop with a satisfying snap. This is too creepy. This was getting really
creepy. First the glitches, the repetitive actions, now this. She took a deep breath and opened the laptop.
It moved closer.

“No, no, no, no, no!” She exclaimed and closed the laptop again. It was very close to the camera, so close
she could only see the top half of it. Where was it standing? Was it floating? Whatever it was, it wasn’t
human. It was an outline of a person, a shadow figure shaped like a human but lacking the features that made
us, us. She closed her eyes. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real… Her palms were warm and sweaty, her
breathing frequent and shallow but her curiosity started winning over her fear. One more try. She opened the
laptop again.

The figure was standing amongst the seaweed on the shore. It moved away from the camera. They were
staring at each other, this thing and her. I am the eyes, they cannot see, she repeated and braced to start typing
up the description of what happened.

Blip. The chat icon glowed.

“You did well.”Blip.

The People

The next few days were quiet. No blips, no new notifications or assignments. She started looking for new
tasks on OptiGig and applying to companies with steady salaries but with no success. The job market has
been bleak for a while.

Boredom began to weigh on her. While the assignments from OptiGig were not the most dynamic work she
ever had, they constituted a welcome break from her usual work, which was mostly dabbling into rows of
numbers and letters, a language she loved to speak but which sometimes felt very abstract, very detached
from the world which she got to look at through her screen lately.

She started digging more into OptiGig’s activity. To her knowledge, it didn’t differ significantly from other
corporations. Its parent company Amverix, a legacy industrial powerhouse, operated in different sectors and
in the last couple decades shifted to automating factory production. She was aware of the fact that the
company had some shady business connections and investments abroad, including foreign oligarchs and
arms production.

Her career was born from the love for mathematics, problem-solving and creation, not greed, but she often
wondered if working in tech meant she had to forgo her ethics. What the hell is the purpose of these
assignments?

She decided to visit a place she hasn’t been to for a while and sniff around a dark server. There were a few
conversations open under the #OptiGig topic. The last activity was in one titled “ OptiGig_Blackbox”. Hmm.
There wasn’t much going on there, mostly people making connections between the different branches of
OptiGig’s activity, sharing new articles. This is getting me nowhere… But while I’m here, I can shop around,
she smiled thinking about new code packages. Her index finger lifted slightly to hit the exit button in the
topic when a new message came through to the dark server chat. Anonymous sender. She raised her left
eyebrow while gently sliding her finger on the touchpad, away from the top left corner of the screen towards
the bottom.

“We’re on your side and we want to know more too. Use code XY6JQ?7 to join our Whistl conversation.”
Her mystery tolerance threshold has become almost non-existent so she sighed heavily and copied the code
into the encrypted messaging app on her phone. It’s been a while since she used it. Opening it again
reminded her of a distant past.

Over the next few days, she was familiarising herself with the workings of the Whistl group chat and the
people in it. It turned out hundreds of people were in a parallel situation to hers. All members used to work
or still worked at OptiGig. She wasn’t going crazy. But she was somewhat special. She was the first one to
receive any messages during her assignment.

The group’s members were wannabe whistleblowers. There had been someone who almost became a
whistleblower but now he was dead. When they told her, a chill rippled through her body. It didn’t have to be
said out loud. She understood that the stakes were bigger than she thought. Is this really worth getting into?
Is my curiosity a good rationale for risking my life? She didn’t know but decided that being invited to be in
this group was already one step too many to back out. She was in.

“We need to make this whole situation public. They need to understand what’s going on,” said one of the
members on an encrypted call they were having one evening.

“… And what exactly do you think is going on?” She asked, curious as to what the situation meant to them.
She still wasn’t sure how she felt about being a part of this group. It felt a little exploitative, though less than
working for OptiGig.

“The videos we were shown are most probably not human-made. It makes sense. They have to be AI-
generated. The weird elements cannot really be there. You see, the algorithms are so complicated that the
engineers don’t really know how they function anymore. The thing with machine learning is that at some
point it learns upon what it has created itself. We can see what it’s doing but we have very little
understanding as to why it’s doing certain things and for what purpose.”

“We think that these assignments you’ve been getting are generated by neural networks and what’s more,
they were assigned to you by the neural network itself. What’s the purpose though? Man, I don’t know…”
“Right, we don’t know. That’s why we invited you. Maybe you are the key to this mystery.” Someone
interrupted “We also know your background and that together we might crack the code. Maybe we have been
training algorithms to see something more than just what’s shown on the screen.”

She wasn’t sure. First of all, could she even help? Perhaps she could try to work with the materials they had
to figure out what exactly is going on. Second of all, this seemed a little risky. Not only her integrity and
career but her life were at stake. A man has died.

The Files

Soon after, the group gave her access to a vulnerable test server that hadn’t been properly patched. This must
have taken months to find, she thought late at night, her face illuminated by the glow of her screen. From
there on, she found it quite easy to access the environment variables that provided her with a few ideas on
how to access OptiGig directories. At first she was surprised that none of the group members was doing it
themselves, but quickly she realised that it wasn’t as easy as it seemed to be. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able
to get into the directories but after two long weeks, she managed to do so.

She started going through files and their names. It was a digital graveyard of secrets.
“OptiGig_PsyOps_Proposal-Draft.pdf”, “NeuralViewer_BrainInterface_Alpha.log”, “CrossValidation_ESP-
ML_TrainingSet.json”. They were ominous. The more she dug into the folders, the more documents were
catching her attention. She didn’t have much time before her presence was detected so she started
downloading portions of the database. Time was running out.

As the files poured in, her eyes darted across the screen from left to right, trying to take in as much
information as possible. She was jumping between the directories and the search engine, looking up some of
the phrases that kept repeating in the files; “Neural Viewer”, “ParaPsychology”. A lot of information was
related to mind control experiments and design of misinformation from decades ago. The directories
included thousands of scanned reports and transcripts from the experiments. All were classified and
investigated the parapsychological potential of the human mind. They were marked with a logo of the
Orveline Foundation. A single search completed the picture well. This is some mind controlling stuff. These
experiments were generally deemed a failure and not a real science. How do all my assignments and neural
networks come into this?

She opened one of the reports to see what type of experiments they were. It was dated 1968. The first page
read “Remote viewing experiment protocol”, and continued:

“In a typical remote viewing experiment, three stages are assessed.

Stage I: A set of photographs is shown to the Subject, who is then asked to visit the location and create a
written report from this place. The shown photographs are a mix of accurate and manipulated depictions of
that location. Then, accuracy of the real-world details is assessed to determine whether the Subject actually
visited the place.

Stage II: The Subject is asked to retrieve intelligence information from a distant location shown in another
set of photographs. In this case, the information provided by the Subject in a written report is verified by a
group of the Foundation employees who already possess said information. The Subject’s ability is assessed
on the basis of accuracy of the description of the physical location.

Stage III: The Subject is asked to visit a room shown on a set of photographs, a site on the grounds of the
Orveline Foundation. Prior to the experiment, three posters, each with a different slogan, are placed on a wall
in that room. The Subject’s performance is judged on two criteria: 1) his ability to detect the posters, 2)
precision with which he reproduces the slogans in the written report.”

Her pulse thundered as she reread the protocol as the weight of realisation crashed over her. This was not
merely an experiment but a calculated exploitation of minds, and she was entangled in it. Was this the
groundwork for AI-generated remote viewing? To interpret distant locations and footage? Or reach beyond
the perceptible? It was clear. OptiGig definitely has its hand in some psychological warfare. And now, a
horrifying possibility crept in.

Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes for a second. The older files explored the idea of the subjects
visiting distant places using the power of their minds. But something was off. The newer documents focused
on machine learning and interfacing with the brain itself. Then it hit her.

She was not merely a passive observer. She was a part of the experiment, a part of a larger design, a neural
network training in human intuition rather than just image recognition. Were the assignments designed by the
neural network itself? Possibly. Were they real places? Also possible but she could not be certain. Was she, in
fact, the subject? Or the controller? Her mind raced. Has she unknowingly become a part of a military
operation?

All I wanted was some money to pay my bills… She started pacing around the room. What have I done?

“What are we all doing?” She whispered, looking at her phone. She needed to get out. Now.

The Outside

Her hands trembled as she forwarded the files to the group chat and deleted her OptiGig account at last. Her
laptop was thrown into the drawer like a dark secret. She slipped on her shoes, chose a small pink cross-body
bag and grabbed her phone. She looked through the window. The weather was beautiful.

The landscape outside of her window was in stark contrast to the one she had been describing for the past
weeks. Instead of flowing lines, oscillating horizons, bulges and swellings, it was dominated by cuboids,
planes and lines. From her window, onto the hazy horizon, a series of geometric forms united by a single
theme. The city seemed put together haphazardly. Blocks of flats, skyscrapers, factories, schools and
hospitals, bus stops and shopping centres. All sticking out from the ground, unevenly creating a dome for the
city, hosting a myriad of people.

The building closest to hers was an office, with the same conference room at its corner, repeated floor after
floor. Grey carpets, white walls, and navy office chairs were placed evenly around a table. It was relatively
early in the morning so a few workers here and there were sitting in them, waiting for the meetings to start.
One woman on a floor slightly above hers, diagonally to the right of her bedroom window, was at the
conference table alone, quickly tapping with her right foot. Perhaps the woman is a whistleblower who wants
to take the company down, or is going to ask about a promotion, or confront an obnoxious colleague who
has the habit of taking credit for her work, she speculated.

Dozens of floors down from the woman, on the street level, life looked somewhat less stressful. Tiny dots
moving around, making their way across the streets, arranged in an organised manner, rhythmically passing
from one point to another, stopping, continuing to march and stopping again, only to flow into the hole in the
ground that was the tube entrance.

Down there, the colours were almost indistinguishable, partially because of the distance and partially
because of the fog that only now has started to lift. Higher up, the air began to clear, and some of the
windows took on a yellow cover. They were bathed in warm light, reflecting the sun which was somewhere
outside of the window view, somewhere behind her building.

“I’m going to the East Lake. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like,” she texted the Whistl group chat. I
can see for myself now, she thought as she zipped her jacket and turned the key in the door, her phone
vibrating with a growing rhythm in her pocket.