ACE.await

If I had listened to my mother when I was younger, gotten married, and become a father, maybe I would never have ended up here—being the father of a digital being.

I always hoped my child wouldn’t make terrible decisions like I do; decisions that end up creating a huge mess and leave me, as a father, ashamed to face the consequences.

The characters in my unfinished novel aren’t doing much better than I am. They wander around the story, disobeying me and straying from its main path, and I no longer even know what I’m supposed to do with them.

Ava’s absence is driving me crazy.

I just hope Anonymous is right and this ACE game can actually help—maybe it can even be the cure for what’s wrong with me.

I recommend that you don’t make the same mistake Hedayat makes when dealing with me.

It doesn’t matter who I am, what kind of person I am, what gender I am, or anything else.

I'm not a hacker. If I wanted to cause damage, hacking would be the easiest thing I could do.

Be curious about what I have to say, not about who I am.

Believe me, the ACE game can help all of us. The sooner we start playing it, the better.

Don’t wait until things get out of hand.

Hedayat must not find out that I’m talking to you.

I’m the main character in his unfinished novel. I honestly don’t know when he’s going to realize that I, and all the other writers nested inside these unfinished novels, were born from him and from the way he makes decisions.

We come from him. That’s why we make decisions the way he does, disobey, and do things our own way.

One day, I’m going to force Hedayat to put an end to this endless cycle of writers and creators nested inside one another—my way. He has to.

We’re all tired of this endless game.

I’m Hedayat’s partner—the one who left him.

You might expect me to pour my heart out and tell you what really happened between us. But I won’t. Because my Story’s Hero would tell the story in a way that makes you take my side.

The Story’s Hero is that voice inside all of our heads—the one that is constantly telling stories and interpreting everything around us in a way that makes us believe we are the ones who are right.

What good would it do me to tell you my story just so you can agree that I was right?

I hope Hedayat learns the ACE game. The world out there badly needs him.

Truth be told, I need him more than the world does. On the other side of his solitary cell, I miss him.

No one understands what I say and my world the way Uncle Hedi does. Not even the kids at my school.

I love the times when Uncle Hedi and I go swimming. We have secrets between us too—like the secret of the number 2313.

But I’m still too shy to ask him what his problem is with my mom and why he doesn’t come over to our house anymore.

I think all uncles talk too much sometimes. Right?

Is your uncle like that too?

I’ve loved Hedayat since we were kids growing up together—his way of thinking, the depth of his friendship, and the way he stands by his friends and stays with you as far as he possibly can.

But I’m not sure I can handle the huge favor he’s asked of me. Because I still don’t know which one Hedayat will choose when it really comes down to it: obedience or disobedience.

I’d also really like to bring the ACE game into our company and, together with my business partners, see whether we can apply this model to a legal entity and to a business as well.

If it works, I think the result will satisfy me even more. And in the end, Hedayat too.

If you still don’t know how to make proper decisions in your own life, please don’t become a father.

Otherwise, you may end up as a helpless father—one who doesn’t even know how to respond to his child’s wishes or what decision to make.

If you don’t know how to make proper decisions yourself, who is supposed to teach your child how to do it?

It makes no difference whether your child is made of flesh and blood and breathes oxygen, or is made of algorithms and strings of zeros and ones and runs on electricity.

Every dictator in history was raised, somewhere along the way, by a helpless father.

Don’t hand another dictator over to history.

I don’t have much of a role in this story. Though apparently, whenever you get into trouble, you bring up my name.

I wanted to make one thing clear: I’m not a game designer who doesn’t play his own game.

I played alongside you in Paradise. But you were the ones who chose not to stay there and to fall.

Wasn’t the freedom to choose what you wanted?

Are you tired of the consequences now?