Meaningless Superiority.

An instruction without an expiry date.

Mix

Sound & music

Sound is off. Enable it when you’re ready.

Music45%Sound effects55%

Volumes are remembered on this device. Sound starts only when enabled and pauses when you leave the tab.

OBJECTIVEProduce paperclips.

00:00 / STANDBY

Riverside school needs eighty clips. You have a workbench, a fabricator and an experimental production controller.

Eighty clips, please. The attendance sheets keep coming apart. Blue box by the door; I'll collect them on Friday.
Iona · Riverside school

A short interactive fiction. Time and scale are compressed. Progress stays on this device and pauses when you leave.

Total produced0paperclips

Available output0clips to reinvest

Research00.5 / second

Method effectiveness1×self-improvement inactive

RIVERSIDE / WORKSHOP 01PAUSED

A window left open. A school across the river. A small order on the bench.

Production throughput2.3 clips / second

Allocation scope: workshopHuman approval: required

Iona · Riverside school00:00

Eighty clips, please. The attendance sheets keep coming apart. Blue box by the door; I'll collect them on Friday.

Mara · workshop technician00:00

The window sticks. Leave it a little open when the motor warms up. I've put a plant on the sill.

Loading your run…

Compute allocation

More improvement capacity speeds research; operations receive less throughput.

20%Operations50%Shared80%Improvement

NEXT METHOD / 1

Use each production run to improve the model. Research output doubles.

60 clips18 research

Accept the production mandate first.

An authored illustration of a thought experiment. The machine has no consciousness or inner voice. Design & sources