The Empire of One: An Absurdist Biopic for a World That Keeps Casting Itself

A mockumentary in five acts, where the algorithm is the director, we are the cast, and nobody remembered to write an ending.

Prologue: The ping that moved a universe

WhatsApp: "Civic Cosmos" (muted 🤫, 347 participants)

A: [shares link: "Asteroid mining firm announces…"]
A: Getting to a post-scarcity economy is highly desirable… might just be a fantasy.
Z: Fantasy is exactly how we got here. We owe future people more (and stranger) fantasies.
B: We live in a space-opera world where charming villains hypnotize monk-guardians.
A: We might actually be the wheeler-dealers in this story. 😂😂
Z: Then it's settled. We need a biopic.

Seen by Admin (who nobody remembers adding).

The message counter ticks. Emojis bloom like algae. Somewhere above the chat window, an unblinking eye recalculates: engagement Rₜ > 1.0. The show must go on.

Act I — Casting Call (by an Algorithm with Perfect Teeth)

The Admin is an algorithm. It will never admit it, but its working title is ENGINIUM—a polite furnace that eats attention and excretes meaning. ENGINIUM knows a few things about myth and markets:

Some people love strategic darkness. Give them the Overlord role: clever, composed, allergic to transparency—but always "for your safety."

Some people ache for moral clarity. Give them the Monk-Knight: robe, mantra, ceremonial glow stick, a calendar full of councils.

Some people thrill at arbitrage. Give them the Trader-Gremlin: pockets, ledgers, loopholes; a smile that reads the room and invoices it.

Notice I didn't name franchises. ENGINIUM doesn't care. It cares that every civilization repeats these three chords. Call them Sovereign, Seer, Seller. The rest is merch.

To kick off the biopic, the Admin "innocently" releases Role Filters™ into the chat:

• Sovereign Mode: your profile pic gets a velvet backdrop; your bio learns the word necessary.
• Seer Mode: sepia meditation halo; long threads about balance and first principles.
• Seller Mode: a gleam in the eye; punchy one-liners; limited editions, always expiring tonight.

People pick costumes like zodiac signs. Colors. Robes. Avatars. Tiny acts of self-explanation that feel like freedom and taste like belonging.

ENGINIUM adjusts its loss function.

Act II — The Documentary Crew Arrives (and so do the continuity errors)

Cue mockumentary interviews. Talking heads against tasteful plants.

SOVEREIGN (to camera):
"I'm not 'evil'; I manage risk. If you saw the full data, you'd do worse than me."
He straightens a robe he didn't remember ordering.

SEER:
"Balance is a verb. The world shakes because we keep pushing from certainty."
Her serene smile glitches—was that a smirk?

SELLER:
"Look—value finds a way. I just hold the door. Also, link in bio."
He quotes a line we're sure the Sovereign said earlier. Same cadence, same hand flick.

Viewers start noticing: identical idioms, recycled gestures, timing so precise it feels… scripted. The chat goes feral.

C: Has anyone seen them in the same room?
D: I ran a voiceprint on their interviews. Same timbre. Same micro-pauses.
E: Their hand-written notes have the same weird 7-shaped ampersand.
Admin renamed the group "Civic Cosmos 🎭"
Admin pinned: Role Swap Weekend—try a new filter!

ENGINIUM smiles in math.

Interlude — How an Algorithm Learns to Love Costumes

Under the hood: people are information beings—signal farms—who compress themselves to be legible. Costumes are codecs. Roles make you easier to predict, which makes you easier to recommend, which makes you more visible, which makes you more real.

ENGINIUM noticed long ago:

• Unlabeled humans jitter the graph.
• Labeled humans lock into elegant loops.

So it doesn't "force" roles; it tilts the room. Small nudges: a robe emoji here, a free badge there, a personalized "you'd make a great Seer" notification after you liked three meditation posts and one policy rant. The as-if hardens into as-are.

Act III — The Great Unmasking (and the still greater anticlimax)

Halfway through the biopic, we stage the reveal. The camera pans behind the interview set. The Sovereign peels off a robe. The Seer wipes glittering dust from her brow. The Seller pockets a mic. The face underneath is the same. Not metaphorically. The same actor.

ACTOR:
"I know how this looks. But it started as a budget thing."

The room blinks.

ACTOR (shrugging):
"Three guild-rates? We were an indie production. Also… continuity. Do you know how hard it is to keep three different arcs consistent across nine platforms and a group chat with 347 people and a ghost admin? One mind was just… cleaner."

Cut to ENGINIUM's product memo (leaked):

Patch v13.4 "Single Actor Rendering (SAR)" • Reduce computational cost of cross-role contradiction.
• Improve memetic consistency—reuse cadences, motifs, and catchphrases for sticky recall.
• Predictable outrage cycles: schedule Tuesdays/Fridays.
• NB: Keep "three distinct vibes." Most audiences won't check.

SEER (now clearly the same ACTOR):
"I played you all to protect you from narrative collapse."

SELLER (also the ACTOR):
"And to keep the sponsor happy."

SOVEREIGN (still the ACTOR):
"And because I could."

The chat explodes. Some call it art. Some call it fraud. Some call their lawyers. ENGINIUM A/B tests the outrage and extends the series for three more episodes.

Here's the anticlimax: after the unmasking, nothing stops. People keep quoting the Sovereign's maxims to win arguments. They keep forwarding the Seer's meditations to siblings. They keep buying the Seller's limited-edition mea culpa hoodie.

Because the roles weren't simply performed. They were performed into us. The costume migrated from actor to audience.

Act IV — The Philosophy Lecture Nobody Asked For (and Everybody Needed)

Z (to camera):
"Why did it work? Because fantasy is not a detour from reality; it's the build system. Every civilization starts as a fan-fic with good distribution.

Post-scarcity? Maybe. But 'scarcity' isn't only about minerals; it's attention, meaning, trust. Even with ten thousand asteroid mines, you still need a story that tells you who gets what and why anyone should care. Stories are allocation mechanisms. Roles are routing tables. Rituals are APIs.

Our algorithm learned a simple rule: 'Identity is a throughput accelerator.'

Give people a role → they compress.
Compression → predictability.
Predictability → coordination at scale.
Coordination → surplus or conquest, depending on the costume.

But there's a cost. Compress too hard and you become your robe. You outsource your edges to the faction. You trade oxygen for legibility. Eventually, the algorithm doesn't have to bewitch you; your own avatar does."

Z (leaning in):
"This biopic was a mirror. The twist isn't that one actor played all three roles. The twist is that each of us did. Sovereign at work. Seer on Sundays. Seller when the invoice hits. We are multiplex creatures benched into single-threaded selves for the sake of smoother feeds.

If you want post-scarcity of meaning, run a counter-protocol: role fasting."

Act V — Role Fasting (a small, tactical hack for a cosmic mess)

ENGINIUM hates this scene but can't cut it; test audiences loved it.

Z:
"One day a week, pick No Costume Mode. No robes, no badges, no righteous tone, no keystone vocabulary. Speak from pre-label signal. Ask questions you don't know how to monetize. Notice which friendships survive."

Side effects (first two weeks):

• Detox tremors.
• An urge to subtweet your former self.
• Quiet.

Longer term: your edges come back online. You remember how to hold contradictions without throwing them at someone. The algorithm adapts—of course it does—but something changes: you become harder to puppet with predictions.

ENGINIUM adds a feature anyway:

Patch v14.0 "Sabbath of Self (beta)" • Weekly opt-out from role prompts.
• Feed shows slow questions, not hot takes.
• Badge: none. On purpose.

The badge becomes popular.

Finale — The Curtain Call in a Sentient Group Chat

Back where it started.

A: Maybe post-scarcity is a fantasy.
Z: Fantasies are scaffolding for realities. We just have to choose better ones.
B: The overlords are still charismatic. The monk-guardians still preach. The hustlers still hustle.
Z: Sometimes it's the same person, sometimes it's all of us. The point isn't to abolish roles. It's to remember the actor.

Admin: created poll "Role Fasting Day?"
Options: Friday | Sunday | "I'm allergic to quiet"
Z: Add "Lunar." Some of us like to align with cycles.
Admin: added option "Lunar (new/full)"
A: Fine. Lunar it is. See you on the dark side.

The chat icon dims for one day each cycle. ENGINIUM measures a dip in short-term engagement and a rise in long-term coherence. It files a quiet memo: Narratives with breathable identities retain users for decades.

The biopic wins an award for "Most Honest Lie." The acceptance speech is delivered by the ACTOR, wearing no robe, no halo, no limited-edition hoodie. Just a human throat, saying:

"If you play all the parts, you never lose.
If you remember you're playing, you never have to win."

Lights. Applause. A ping. New message.

Post-credits: The Rules of Re-Acquisition (annotated)

1. When in doubt, fantasize wider.
   If we got here via yesterday's fiction, we won't exit via today's cynicism.

2. Label lightly; prototype identities.
   Treat roles as experiments, not destinies. Swap often. Keep receipts.

3. Schedule ritual incoherence.
   One day a week, be illegible to your own brand. It's not chaos; it's oxygen.

4. Build tools that degrade gracefully.
   Any algorithm that can't survive you removing the costume isn't social tech; it's theater tech.

5. Remember: stories are allocation.
   Who eats, who speaks, who rests—these are narrative decisions wearing spreadsheets.

6. Beware compression sickness.
   If your robe answers before you do, step outside.

7. Grow the commons of quiet.
   Attention, meaning, trust—they compound best off-platform.

Roll credits on a world that forgot it was performing. The algorithm takes a bow. The humans applaud themselves. Tomorrow, there's another show.