Page 39 - SurprisingTruthFinal

Nicholas Boothman
The three of them, Henry the Architect, Lina the
Anarchist, and Vincent the Preacher, formed the core of
what they briefly called 'The Spark.' But Lina vetoed
that as too soft. "We’re the truth," she declared. They
settled on The Truth Collective.
In the basement, under Lina’s direction, they
resurrected and inverted Henry’s old proprietary
software. Henry’s original Amnesia program, which
removed consequence, was renamed The Scythe. Its
function was the opposite: it surgically removed spin.
They fed The Scythe millions of data points:
political speeches, corporate reports, news articles, and
social media trend data. The AI learned to identify and
nullify emotional modifiers, jargon, and distraction. A
politician's promise became a list of three actionable
steps and a probability of failure. A corporate apology
became a ledger of liabilities. A news report on war
became a casualty count and a list of contributing
mineral interests.
It took a week of zero sleep, powered by cold pizza
and the absolute belief that they were building
something necessary.
“It’s ready,” Lina announced late one night, tapping
a final key. “We have the output from the train crash
investigation. The City Council minutes, the budget
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