Interlude: Making Of “The Unforgettables” - A Song for the Laughter and a Song for the Tear, part 2.

  Alone in his room, Ramirez keeps the call paused while he frantically searches news websites to try to understand what's going on. His magical hallucination makes him shuffle his memories of Metropolis with his apparent human existence. He recalls being a journalism student living solo in a small studio, but those are just fragments that seem to belong to someone else. Curious about how complex his imaginative mind can be in his delirium, the mage opens a room window covered with opaque black vinyl, which completely seals his small home from the external environment. He is immediately shocked by the hot, humid, and polluted breath of a chaotic city. His studio wall is less than a meter from an elevated road, a four-lane highway completely crammed with cars stuck in endless traffic, so close to his face that the dirty car tires were within his grasp, a cacophony of honks blended with the tense rumble of idling engines. People are shouting everywhere, so aggressively and stressed that the mage steps back inside.

  Satisfied with the chaos, Ramirez closes the window and returns to the comfort of his room's silence and air conditioning. He goes to the tiny doorless bathroom to look in the mirror. He realizes his illusion is still active under his human clothes. He thinks to himself, “This must be an uncontrolled effect of my advanced perception magic. Maybe they are memories from the past of someone from Frank's world,” Ramirez smiles, ”Good! Let's see what happens if I do magic right now...” He casts another of his advanced perception magic to perceive who is observing him, which works perfectly, and he realizes that only the medibot is watching him, besides an absolute, disturbing silence. Usually, when he uses this magic in Gate, he hears a humming background noise, but now there is nothing.

  “OK, everything I'm seeing here must be ghosts created by my mind, which means I'm still passed out in my bathtub with the medibot next to me,” Ramirez concludes mentally. He picks up the crumpled wad of papers and returns to the last chapter delivered to him. He thinks, "Let′s see this... Chapter 27, it seems that Liora had a daughter named Laetilia, and this passage in the ancestral language seems quite real to me. crazy stuff, is this barely true?" Ramirez returns to the terminal and tries to access the website with the latest chapters. He realizes that the author is already back waiting in the virtual room. “Well, let's enjoy the ride!” says the magic man to himself as he turns on the camera and sound.

  “Hi, er...” Says the author, surprised, “Cool video effect in your eyes!”

  “Nice, isn't it? It's a custom filter.” Ramirez notices the rainbow light show emanating from his eyes in his camera feed. Despite that, he does not intend to interrupt his magic and immediately continues the conversation: “We stopped at the layer of artistic references, right?”

  “That's right! As I was saying, I divide the creative process into layers, and after reviewing each of the layers, I create a new version of each chapter,” continues the author.

  “So I imagine there are several versions for each chapter...” While Ramirez talks to the author, he digs the news and social media websites to find a topic. He continues, "Artificial Intelligence is all the rage. So, is it part of your game when creating these layers?"

  “I use it to review grammar and within the versioning process but not in the creative process, which usually starts with a brainstorm on paper,” replies the author, adjusting his glasses. “And there are indeed several versions. Even the AI ??grammar checker is not automatic. I need to instruct the model, divide and review the context, maintain a dictionary of terms, and sometimes the grammar AI makes a mess.”

  “Alright, but break it down for me and give me a solid example of how this actually works,” Ramirez asks while he buys time to read an interesting part about Adarian, as he begins to notice the richness in details that he would have no way of knowing a priori, so this must be his magic running wild. These visions provided by magic, untethered by time, reveal glimpses of possible futures, concealed pasts, or distant events unfolding elsewhere. Whether fate, memory, or mere chance, the only certainty is that it would be unwise to ignore this information, as it may prove helpful in the future, so Ramirez carefully plans his next question.

  “Let's see...” the author thinks for a few moments, "The titles of chapters 23 and 24 are based on a deliberate translation of a Latin song that became famous during the period portrayed in my story. This song was notably used in a Tarantino film and in an Arthurian fantasy movie from the 80s. Since the original lyrics were in Latin, I chose to use the archaic word 'alway.' Interestingly, this same word appears in a remarkable medieval poem by Spenser, where a sacred fountain’s water is described as having 'welled forth alway.' I wanted to mirror this imagery, as the original Latin term, 'volubilis,' conveys both the flowing nature of water and the fluidity of fortune. While the word choice was not incorrect, the AI corrector persistently suggested changing it."

  “That's very strange...” says Ramirez, understanding the logic but without having the slightest idea of the references. The magic man, however, notices that his Medbot's light and temperature sensor have just been triggered. Something wrong is happening in the real world, which makes him lose track of what the author is saying for a few moments.

  “Yes, curiously enough, this fiction itself could be used to test language models and make the AI agents better, to ask the AI to interpret those layers just by reading the chapters and measure how much they perceive about what was going on behind the curtains, was somewhat funny actually." responded the author perceiving something wrong with his interviewer. "Well, well... But perhaps your disorientation stems from the strange loops layer, a spiraling cadence where themes echo through different chapters, shifting their guise, altering their melody, yet never ceasing their dance. It is recursions within recursions, each tune familiar yet ungraspable. You chase meaning, but reason steps aside, always a half-turn out of reach.” replies the author, speaking through his hands, oblivious to what is going on inside Ramirez′ head. “For example, in this same poem by Spencer, we have knights as protagonists, and the main theme is virtue seeking, long before the modern age and Kant.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Hell! That's not an error...” Ramirez mutters, worried about the readings from his medibot. He seems to be quite unconscious inside his bathtub, but his body is as fine as it could be, given his condition. Something else must be happening around him.

  “Indeed, it's not an error. Funny... the monster in that particular Spencer's poem happens to be called Errour,” the author laughs, thinking wrong but maybe saying the right things.

  “Maybe this is a glitch in the matrix,” Ramirez replies, realizing that it may be a good idea to try to wake up from his dream, as he uses some of the few references he has from Earth.

  “Who knows...” continues the author.

  “Let's move on. We don't have much time, actually,” Ramirez apologizes, now more focused and willing to try to end his hallucination. "Let's continue along these lines. Would these cross-references be strange bridges between different fantastic realities? Like dreams within dreams?"

  “Yes, the figure of dreams is interesting. This idea is recurrent in several points...” replies the author, drawing Ramirez's attention, who interrupts him immediately.

  “Okay! Let's suppose the following now: if you discovered at this moment that you don't actually exist and are just a dream inside my head, and when I wake up, you and the whole world you know would disappear, what would you do?” Ramirez risks being in a hurry to break his delirium.

  “It's a somewhat disturbing idea, but perhaps there is a good Cartesian answer. Regardless of the knowledge I have of reality, as long as I am in possession of my mental capacities, I have some basis to maintain my free will, so I don't think I would do things much differently from what I am doing now...” reflects the author.

  “Hmmm, wait a bit,” Ramirez thinks a little calmer and changes the strategy. "You told me that the trees fall in your world even if no one sees them. Will something important happen right after the end of volume 1?”

  “Of course, but I can't give you spoilers!” the author replies immediately.

  “Give some hint of something that will happen with some secondary character like Ramirez, for example. Or something that is happening near Rocatrista,” the mage challenges.

  “Ramirez will actually be essential in the second volume. Let's see, a hint… Do you like Hendrix's tunes? Or Dylan's?” the author smiles with a certain strangeness.

  "At least it seems I'm going to stay alive!” Ramirez whispers, seeking about the references on the internet.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” the author asks, perplexed.

  “Let's finish with this,” Ramirez says in a different voice but halts suddenly and thinks for a while, saying. "But first, let's talk a little more about politics," looking at the author sideways while fast-reading some websites he left open about current political news.

  "I guess it′s what everyone is talking about these days. I mean, you always are talking about politics no matter what the subject is, even when you say that it is not about politics at all." starts the author.

  "Yeah, may the politics avoidance talking usually be the worst politics. But let us talk about that Biggus character a little." Ramirez suggests, trying to find out if he could dig for some answers about Metropolis operations nearby; he continues. "Could you summarize the real politics of today and make some parallels with what is happening in Metropolis and Rocatrista?"

  “Summarize?” says the author with a suma-dzaobudine-like face. "Well, let me try to start saying something about technology, but since we are in the middle of a storm, things may change pretty fast. I guess that, at the beginning of the millennium, a crisis of political representation started to crack. It was barely noticeable when Frank and Petra died, but it was already taking shape. This crisis grew inside the political discourse, both personal and partisan, but information technology is what set it ablaze. I could propose three key factors as hypotheses for this shift. First, technological media are far more scalable and precise than traditional media, delivering information directly and efficiently to individuals. Second, it lacks editorial oversight, and there are no filters, no gatekeepers, and no clear way to verify an author's intent beyond analyzing the content itself. Third, and perhaps most significantly, digital networks have made targeted advertising remarkably effective, not just for selling products but for selling ideas and shaping beliefs. Over time, this has led to the rise of reality silos, where people share self-contained cosmologies built on perceptions and narratives instead of methods and criticism. This shift marks a profound disruption of the logical, rational, and scientific worldview that had been the consensus from the dawn of the modern era until recently."

  "So, is this what Biggus is up to, a way to control the reality?" asks Ramirez directly.

  "I don't think this is a case of a perfect parallel. Biggus' method to gain power does share some similarities with today's powerplay; specifically, his approach outright rejects rationality, and therefore, it lacks ethics outside its siloed worldview. He offers a simple solution to replace the old way of life, which failed to safeguard people in the cataclysm’s aftermath. Yet, the similarities end there because Gates' society has long since moved past the challenges posed by technology; the disruptive elements in the fiction are different from reality. As for Biggus' true intentions, they're a complete mystery; he never reveals them. All we see is his attempt to become the one and only Neon God; if myths arise after a crisis as an escape from a traumatic reality, then he's positioning himself as that escape one-way door." thinks the author.

  "I totally disagree with your parallel, actually," laments Ramirez. "Since when were technology and unbounded communication problems and not solutions? Since when do people need safeguards for information? People make choices, and consequences follow; if things go wrong, they change their choices. The trouble with Biggus is that there was no choice at all." says Ramirez, trying to figure out if any of this about Biggus is useful. "But let's move on. I have one last question."

  "Yeah, It usually happens when people discuss politics; we have completely different backgrounds. I was not talking only about the people's choices but about the capability to perceive if things go wrong or not." complements the author

  "Well, real consequences are giving a shit about the capabilities of people to perceive if things go wrong, so I still disagree with you on that one, but time is running short, and I need an elaborate answer this time; we may discuss more about those topics on another session" spoke Ramirez in a rush.

  "OK, fire away!" asks the curious author.

  "About Liora, what happened to her before the cataclysm? As I understood from what I just read, this information was completely lost to everyone living in Gate." strategically asks the magic man.

  "This is kind of funny for a last question. Anyway, you are right about this information being completely lost. Let us begin with the old Liora because the old one and the new one are not the same person," thinks the author.

  "I′m all ears!" Ramirez says as he stretches out in his chair, watching the author wet his mouth with coffee before he begins to speak.