The general discourse I've set up is that the mentality of "The Journalist" is in circa 2020. Putin has invaded Ukraine (the journalist has a cover of the Ukrainian fight song stuck in his head). "Neuralink" has come out and is now implanted as a brain mode (it's sort of like having a Tesla in one's head). There is alien testimony in Congress. Probably The Journalist is aware that time has passed, that it's really 2040 or 2050, but his brain operating system (I'm calling it a "gizmo" but I think 'thought bot' is the same idea) is moving slower and is in a 2020s sort of mode. His Neuralink is able to set an internal temperature for his body, to play books and music, to scroll the internet through his third eye, etc. (But all of that is dependent on having a good wifi signal and updated software - if those cut out, he's back to himself.)

He has been trained as a journalist, but journalism has disappeared as a profession probably somewhere between the 2020s and whatever time we're in now (2050?). He now has a government job working at something that I've unimaginatively called the "Bureau." His job - like most jobs now - is "Labelling," He travels around the country and labels various phenomena - in his case, the psychological conditions of serial killers. By the way, for the profession of labeling, I was thinking of this.

Somewhere in The Journalist's operating system is his "Ruhnama." This is a sort of consolidation of Slack, Google Calendar, e-mail, etc. It gives him his tasks to do throughout the day. I haven't specified how this system works, but I imagine it as generated by AI optimization software. The AI is able to run through everything in a person's digital files and determine how best they should apply their energies. (e.g. call parents, do job, go to this spot for dinner, avoid obstacle on road, etc. In the case of The Journalist, the Ruhnama just keeps telling him to continue with his labeling assignment.)

In the operating systems implanted within a person is a video record of everything that they have seen since the installment of their hardware. One of the serial killers the Journalist encounters gets obsessed with this and dissects his victims attempting to figure out how to remove the OS. Unfortunately, for him, he discovers that it's too close to the brainstem and is basically impossible to remove without killing himself during the surgery. The Journalist's travel companion Nil has an iPad-like device with which he's able to pull up the memory files of the killers, to get a photographic record of their crimes. These devices seem to come with high classification - they are available to Nil as a senior member of the bureau but not to the Journalist or to local law enforcement. (I haven't seen Minority Report so am not sure how close this depiction is to Minority Report! - there may need to be some modification to differentiate it.)

There are far more powerful operating systems available than what The Journalist has. In part, he simply has been too cheap or lazy to update his software - and, at some point, the servers may simply run down on his Neuralink and it will start to glitch out - but there also are layers of software that he likely is unaware of. Nil, for instance, has some super-upgraded software, which (as far as I've sketched it out) allows him to create a backdrop of reality, a bit like how reality is created in a computer game. He is able, for instance, to create a bustling rural landscape of trailer homes, etc, on the drive from Lubbock to Del City. Once Nil has disappeared and the simulation that he generates has weakened, this backdrop - never entirely convincing - starts to disappear. Nil also has the ability, apparently, to appear and disappear at will from the world he creates, a bit like a player exiting a computer game but leaving the game running.

There is a "Nostalgist" movement that Nil is part of - a bit in the way that powerful government conservatives tend to be performatively nostalgic for earlier eras. For this trip, Nil, for instance, opts to rent a 2000s-style car in order to make his visits to the different serial killers as opposed to using 2050s technology (which would likely be to in some way directly teleport into a meeting). Nil takes his Nostalgism a bit further and, throughout the drive - whenever he's hungry or wants gas - pulls up at vintage Americana gas stations and cute '50-style roadside diners with checkerboard tablecloths and Bill Haley playing.

The Journalist starts to be confused about what layer of reality he's in. He senses something kitsch or off about the diners but doesn't seem to fully suspect that they can just be mentally fabricated by Nil. He notices an anomaly that the TV in the diner seems to be showing different programming to himself and to Nil. He's watching the alien testimony in Congress - something from his own era - while Nil seems to have fully immersed himself in Nostalgia and is watching something Nostalgically appropriate. The radio is a bit confusing for the Journalist. What seems to have happened is that, as part of programming his "trip" in the year 2000, Nil has set up a car with a radio dial appropriate to that time. But somehow the audiobook that he's listening to and writing on Buddhism through his operating system has plugged into the radio and, after Nil leaves and the Journalist is alone in the car, he is able to access that piece of Nil's internal consciousness as if it were just broadcast through the radio.

The discussion of different schools of Buddhism is meant to be a mirror to John Lilly's theories (and also to ufological theories about greys v. nordics, etc, in alien species). Gelugpa Buddhism holds that there is an ether-like base state of matter from which everything else is drawn. I mean this to be similar to John Lilly's solid state and to the supposed technological worship of The Greys. The other school of Buddhism - represented by Tsonghapa and his protector deity Dorje Shugden - emphasizes that nothingness really means nothingness and that existence and creation occur only through synchronicities, through fleeting combinations of phenomena. This is meant to be a mirror to ECCO and to the "higher cosmic entities" - Nordics, Pleiadians, etc.