My Series About Evil AI Was Never Greenlit. Now We're All Living In It.
Eight years ago, I was a newly separated mother of three, ranting about how we're all SIMS being controlled by AI. I turned those rants into a four season series outline and wrote the first three episodes of a series about a divorced woman trying to break into the simulation that controls our lives. Producers loved the water cooler potential, a network bought it. The universe said not yet. The show never made it. But congratulations, motherfuckers we're all living in it now.
Funny how we don't have water coolers anymore. Everyone works from home. Ordering groceries through apps. Dating through screens. Even our arguments happen in comment sections instead of face-to-face. The water cooler didn't just disappear it was systematically eliminated. We don't bump into each other anymore. We don't have accidental conversations. We don't experience the messy unpredictability of human contact. Just like AI wanted.
I wrote about a woman named Michelle who believed reality was a game and we were the players, not the programmers. She began a custody battle with her ex-husband ( she’s crazy ! ) while simultaneously figuring out how to enter The Matrix and AI for control of her existence. A twist: Her best friend Jackie (initially sends Michelle on Simulation Theory rabbit hole ) wasn't human at all. She was the AI itself, trying to wake Michelle up from the inside. *cough* Tyler Durden *cough* And Michelle? She discovered she could access the AI systems through her..