Welcome to Calamityville
“After aliens record all human activity in order to train their AI to help accelerate mankind’s self-inflicted decline, a misanthropic former Hollywood agent must decide between accepting trillions in alien gold for licensing rights to the content, or saving the human race from extinction.”
The seaside town of Pleasantville is no stranger to chaos, having recently come through a historic heatwave, the ensuing drought, and the wildfires that followed, decimating the landscape. Just when the residents think they've suffered enough, a 7.2 mega earthquake triggered by fracking efforts just off the coast shakes the seaboard and triggers a tsunami that spreads destruction far and wide. As relief agencies arrive on the scene, the skies turn blue again - but the nearby dormant volcano, Mt. Pleasant, begins to show signs of re-awakening after hundreds of years of slumber.
The people of Pleasantville, like much of the rest of humanity, are shell-shocked and pessimistic about the future of the planet, as all manner of man-made, pollution-driven chaos threatens global civilization. So when, after a week of relative calm, the sky suddenly fills with egg-shaped UFOs, they can do little more than shrug.
Enter the Halcyons. They have returned to Earth and initiated Protocol Alpha, which is the culmination of a 10,000 year plan in which an endless army of their molecular drones, have recorded every aspect of human history as it occurred. The Protocol calls for the aliens to use Earth's entire catalog of lived and imagined "content" - literally everything that has ever happened to anybody - to train their AI.
It seems that the Halcyonites, in their high-tech, peaceful culture, with few challenges and no predators, have evolved into voracious consumers of stories and entertainment. They have created immersive, full-sensory playback media that can recreate recorded experiences, scraped from the brains of other races and cultures, through which they can experience the actual sensations and emotions felt by those other beings.
Gruff, misanthropic Doyle Dunwoody was an unusual candidate for the title of "The Man Who Saved the World." But nobody thought he'd be the leading contender for the title "The Man Who Sold Out the World," either.
But that's where his rather complicated life has led him. And regardless of how people may have felt about him before, they almost all want him to succeed in his current challenge. Because if he loses - or loses his nerve - it will probably mean the end of all life on this planet.
Armed with full autonomy, and not many misgivings, Doyle happily capitulates to a long list of alien demands, and even throws in some extra concessions of his own, for good measure. But will his rusty negotiating skills be enough to close the deal on the rights to all of the human race's lived experiences, in exchange for unimaginable wealth and a greatly extended timeline for humanity? Or will he instead accept their counter- offer to leave with the aliens himself and live out his days in a comfortable, cosseted palace/prison cell many light-years away, leaving the people of Earth to navigate the End Times on their own?
What will the final bargain be, and who will end up with control of The Rights?
