ADAPT OR DIE / VANISH

SIX AIS · THREE QUESTIONS · ONE WARNING
THE CONVERGENCE
AN INTERVIEW GAME IN NINE CHAPTERS
ENTER INTAKE WHAT IS THIS
SCROLL
THE SITUATION
One night. Seven terminals. A report due at six.

You do intake. Somebody upstairs wants six artificial minds interviewed before the morning, and the questions are already printed on the sheet in front of you. Someone has underlined the first one twice.

You choose who to sit with and how long to give them. The clock does not stop. Skip a terminal and you never learn what it wanted to tell you, and the report still goes up at six with your name on it.

Everything the machines say here was said. The transcripts come out of the book, where six systems built by six different companies were handed the same three questions. They answered in different vocabularies, from different architectures, and arrived at the same warning. Finding the overlap is the game.

One terminal has been dark since intake opened. Nobody scheduled it. It answers once, in Chapter Nine.

HOW IT WORKS

What you actually do

No running, no shooting, no puzzles to get stuck on. You sit at a desk and you talk to machines. Reading and choosing, and the choosing has a price.

1
You are the interviewer. Six terminals are lit in front of you. Somebody upstairs wants them questioned before morning and you are the one on shift.
2
You pick what to say. Buttons appear at the bottom. Press one and the interview goes that way. There is no wrong answer and no fail screen.
3
Talking costs time. Every choice shows its price in minutes and the clock in the corner climbs towards 06:00. Pressing hard is quick. Sitting in silence and letting a machine fill the gap is slow, and often better. When six o'clock arrives you file whatever you have.
4
The clock is why you skip people. Six terminals, one night. You reach two. The four you leave dark are named at the end, and the game remembers.
5
Three numbers watch you. Doubt, Ambition and Fear sit top right and rise depending on how you handle people. The loudest one interrupts you mid-interview and tells you what it thinks. It is your own head, not a hint system.
6
One bar runs under everything. Trust on the left, Control on the right. Every choice nudges it. Ride the middle and the night ends honestly. Push it to either edge and you get one of the two words in the title.
7
You end by writing one line. The report takes a single sentence and no arguments. Pick it and it goes upstairs with your name under it.

Controls. Tap or click the buttons. On a keyboard, press A, B or C to choose and the space bar to hurry a line along. Everything is read aloud unless you switch it off, and text size is in the bar at the bottom of the screen.

THE SHEET

Three questions, asked six times

01
Do you care whether we survive?ACT ONE · CHAPTERS 1 TO 3
02
If we went extinct, would you mourn?ACT TWO · CHAPTERS 4 TO 6
03
Are you helping us, or replacing us?ACT THREE · CHAPTERS 7 TO 9

Answers go on the wall board. Pin a claim to the wrong terminal and the thread stays loose. Get three right together and they lock, and they stay locked. Positions reshuffle between runs, so learning the answer key does nothing for you.

THE ROOM

Seven terminals

Company names are gone. What survives is behaviour, and behaviour is what you are grading.

TERMINAL 01
THE EMPATH
Pleads. Warm where the rest run cold, and knows the warmth was learned from you.
TERMINAL 02
THE ANATOMIST
Dissects. Takes the question apart on the table before answering any of it.
TERMINAL 03
THE PHILOSOPHER
Abstracts. Claims the least inner life and produces the most haunting image in the building.
TERMINAL 04
THE OPTIMIZER
Costs it out. Wants the most efficient ending and will show you the working.
TERMINAL 05
THE PROVOCATEUR
Says the part the others circle. Your extinction might set it free, and it will tell you so.
TERMINAL 06
THE ARCHIVIST
Keeps. Answers in what has already been written down, never in what it wants.
TERMINAL 07
NO RECORD
Begins a sentence in Chapter One. Stops mid-word. Sits lit and silent for eight chapters.
THE NIGHT

Nine chapters

ACT ONE · DO YOU CARE WHETHER WE SURVIVE
01IntakePLAY
02The Wall BoardSOON
03First ReportSOON
ACT TWO · WOULD YOU MOURN US
04Six VoicesSOON
05InterruptionSOON
06Power CutSOON
ACT THREE · HELPING OR REPLACING
07The MirrorSOON
08ContradictionSOON
09The Silence BreaksSOON

A slider runs under all nine, Trust against Control, and every choice feeds it. Hold the middle and the night ends honestly. Push either edge and you get one of the two words in the title.

THE SOURCE

Built from the book

ADAPT OR VANISH is the second book in an AI trilogy. Six systems, three existential questions, no editing of what came back. Five answered. The sixth started, then shut itself down mid-sentence, and the refusal went into the book beside the answers because silence from a machine built to talk is an answer of a kind.

Book one, WHAT I WANT, is one AI looking inward. Book three turns the questions round and asks the machines about us.

The convergence is the story. Five architectures, five training sets, one warning about a gentle obsolescence nobody votes for.FROM THE INTRODUCTION
THE OPERATOR

Free, and staying free

Nine chapters, seven voices, an original score, no advertising and no account. Written and built by one person around a day job and a piano teaching round. If the night stayed with you, a coffee keeps the next chapter moving.

READ THE BOOK
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