Barbed Wire Fence , Photograph, Getty Images
The writers came at night. Three of them, all dressed in black. The Napa Valley countryside was empty, epically quiet, its glades lit by moonlight. The screenwriter led them through the trees. He had worked on season two of Seal Team VI, and when it came to reconnaissance or questions of strategy, the poet and novelist deferred to him unerringly.
They moved as quietly as they could, dark shapes in the darkness. Sam Altman’s weekend ranch was 950 acres, ringed by a perimeter fence. Their plan was to kidnap him and hold him for ransom until they stopped AI. Altman’s lot and all the others, including the Chinese. The scheme was light on detail, the novelist readily conceded, but when you drilled down into it, how thought through was Byron’s plan to break the siege of Missolonghi? Or Mishima’s attempted coup? In the arena of violent-gesture-as-ultimate-artistic-statement, all that really mattered was the headline.
One of them stepped on a twig. The screenwriter stopped, one arm behind him, his palm raised. He was famous for his deep research and knew the hand gestures as well as any serving soldier. Using two fingers, he pointed first at his eyes and then at a large oak with splayed branches, one of which was close to crossing the perimeter fence. It wasn’t exactly a weak point but it had potential. The ranch had turned out to be more heavily fortified than they had expected.
“I can’t climb that.”
The novelist and screenwriter turned to look at the poet. The black stripes of tactical makeup on his cheeks were smudgy with sweat and he was breathing heavily.
They had debated lengthily whether or not to involve him. He was a depressive and probably an alcoholic, and was at least forty pounds overweight. But he was a poet. And no one had ever engraved a film script on the pedestal of a statue. For all they had talked it round and round, they had always known that if they wanted to play the historical long game, he was an essential part of the unit. The specifics of what they were about to do would likely be lost to future generations, but the verse glorifying it would endure forever.
The poet sat down on a fallen tree trunk. They had done nearly a full loop of the fence.
“I’m exhausted,” he said.
He opened his rucksack and pulled out a bottle of water. As he drank, his rucksack tipped forwards, revealing its contents.
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