Nighttime Roar Followed by Vacuous Morning-After Hush [3Axiiw]
Blurred Faces Lean Over Protagonist, Gradually Sharpening [3Axip]
Hand Fumbles from Bedclothes for Ringing Phone [3Ayiiin]
When Chris was first assigned the task of scouring movies and TV shows for every possible stock element （“stockblocks”）， and then cataloging and converting them into one algebraic system, he’d thought it impossible. He’d been an English major at Stanford; he loved to read and still devoted his scant free time to the practice. But it turned out that representing stock narratives algebraically was easier than he’d expected:
Protagonist in a heightened state: i2
Protagonist in a reduced state: i?2
Protagonist, excluded by others, feels reduced: i < （a, b, c…） = i?2
i, the protagonist, had even begun to assume the swaggering air of a hero:
i!
Whereas a, b, and c appeared correspondingly meager—bit players who failed to get that the story wasn’t about them and that i would invariably triumph. In the world of stockblocks, redemption was guaranteed.
“SweetSpot is going to do for entertainment what MK did for social media!” Sid Stockton had raved during that first Zoom interview, and although Chris nodded in avid accord, he’d had to look up “MK” afterward. It referred to an anthropologist, Miranda Kline, who had mapped “the genome of human inclinations” almost thirty years ago and created algorithms for predicting behavior. She’d become famous for giving social media companies the means to monetize their business back when that was new, although she took no pride in it. The interview clips Chris had glanced through showed a kind of futility creeping into Kline’s demeanor over the years. In the most recent, a questioner said, “You seem kind of ‘over it’ at this point.” Kline, a silver-haired woman of seventy-two in a red satin blouse, threw back her head and laughed. “I still enjoy being alive, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. And then, in a phrase that haunted Chris, “But I’m tired of my history.”
Chris surged from the morning meeting in a state of jacked-up jittery glory that felt oddly close to tears. Triumph was premature; he was presenting another set of algebraizations tomorrow morning and wasn’t close to being finished. In states of artificial elevation （frequent in this job） he avoided SweetSpot’s roof garden—where bees from the company apiary drowsed in beds of lavender—and instead joined the smokers, who lit up outside the building beyond a yellow perimeter line thirty feet from SweetSpot’s entrance. The smokers’ disdain for their employer and antisocial vibe conformed with uncanny precision to stockblock 1Kiip, Raffish Outsiders. Chris was noticing more and more such correlations, which had the effect of turning the whole world into a matching game. But they also worried him; what did it mean that much of his life could be described in formulaic clichés?
Chris didn’t smoke; his attraction to the smokers was a consequence of his own narrative function—Enabling Sidekick—which he’d become sheepishly aware of in his two years of stockblock codification. All his life he’d played supporting roles in other people’s dramas （except in D&D games, where he usually played a burly leader）， starting with Colin, his best friend from childhood and to this day, and extending to Pamela, his recent ex, whose heroin addiction he’d been unable to fix.
The smokers’ most raffish outsider, Comstock, appeared to do nothing but smoke; Chris had never seen him inside the building. Husky and leather-clad, Comstock quelled a lurking cough with swigs of Robitussin DM from a bottle secreted among his leather layers （post-pandemic, not even raffish outsiders would tolerate coughing）。 During a rare verbal exchange, Comstock had told Chris that his job at SweetSpot was in Diagnostics, which he described as “a repair shop where non-Stanford grads get their hands dirty.” To which Chris had rejoined, in similar spirit, “And we’re the thoroughbreds that can’t actually do anything.” It was the right answer. He was rewarded with a grin and something approaching eye contact.