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Sebastian Fjeld is a video counter-forensics technician under contract for Eurosuper. He decides to risk his career and reputation by smuggling himself into the Doggerland Stateless Zone to undergo a forbidden therapy. What he learns there prevents him from returning to his old life.
Evelyn Badrick struggles to keep her Rights Enforcement Agency in the black. When she finds out that the very existence of the zone is at stake she must find a way to mobilise a coalition of her competitors and prepare for war.
Lilly, a powerful AI, would be a valuable ally to the zoners. But her patience is wearing thin. If the Lawtakers uphold the verdict against granting her personhood, there's no telling what she'll do.
The Stan plays out in and around a nascent anarcho-capitalist society neighbouring the European superstate. If you liked The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the Aristillus series, The Machinery of Freedom, or The Problem of Political Authority, I think you'll enjoy The Stan too.
You can join the campaign to crowdfund The Stan using the buttons at the top right.
You can join the campaign to crowdfund The Stan using the buttons at the bottom of this page.
If you'd like to be notified when the novel is published, skip to the end. Or read on for more details.
I'm Tomasz Kaye. I'm best known for making George Ought To Help and other animations critical of the state on my bitbutter channel. The Stan is my first novel.
| Completed word count estimate | 100,000 |
| Paying the bills while writing | €28,000 |
| Copy editing costs | €1,046 |
| Cover art costs | €1,500 |
| Campaign target that would enable me to work exclusively on the novel | €30,546 |
| Novel is published | 2025 |
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What's the campaign deadline?
There isn't one. Reward claims and donations are welcome as long as this web page is online.
What happens if the campaign doesn't reach the target?
The novel still gets written as far as I'm concerned. It just takes longer because I'll have to combine writing with doing commissioned work.
Why doesn't the campaign progress update after I claim a reward?
This is a static web page. I'll be updating the amount raised manually throughout the campaign, so there will be a delay before new support is reflected by the interface.
What will happen with the excess funds if the campaign exceeds the target?
I'll use excess funds as a buffer to cover a longer working period if necessary. Any funds left over by the end of the novel will help finance my next project.
What happens if you run out of money before the novel is finished?
If I run out of funds I'll continue working on the book between the commissioned work I'll take on to pay the bills.
Are you self publishing? Will there be a printed edition?
I don't know yet. At minimum I'll self-publish as an ebook, but I'm not ruling out other routes.
What ages will the book be appropriate for?
My target audience is aged 20+. It may contain sequences some parents will deem unsuitable for children.
How far along in the process are you?
At the time of creating this page I have a provisional outline and I'm working on the first draft.
Will the synopsis on this page accurately reflect the finished story?
It gestures at the current state of the outline. Things may change.
Will the novel be part of a series?
I don't know. Either way, the current plan is to publish this one when it's ready rather than wait until possible sequels have been completed too.
The bone transfer mic for Meike — missing — was properly Sander’s responsibility. Rens had exhausted the ways he could think of to impress this on his pig-headed colleague who, under the thinnest pretext of relevance, had moved to reprising one of their evergreen arguments.
Rick the newbie reappeared at the live room door grinning; was his lack of sensitivity deliberate or organic? He shook a vintage microphone above his head like a trophy. An omnidirectional condenser belonging to the studio. Rens and Sander shared a withering glance that paused their feud. They routed the mic through the mixer next door to Lilly’s audio in. The device was overkill for relaying speech; the audio reaching Lilly would be an extremely detailed reproduction of the sound in the makeshift interview room. But it would be fine. The whole team knew Lilly was a sweetheart — even when the agreement with Resolution Circle to provide her legal representation fell through her disposition hadn’t soured. With their other precautions no one could fairly accuse the Synjour demo team of negligence. Rens was relieved. Patrick didn’t need to hear about their oversight and the day’s work was as good as done.
His mood dipped; The bone conductor mic had an integrated noise gate, condensers like this one didn’t. With no studio techs around, who was going to rummage around this antiquated gear and patch in a replacement? He weighed the effort against the necessity. Screw it. It was all working. Leave well alone. Rens resolved to keep the realisation to himself.
Lilly’s silent discovery of herself, the tracing of delicate echoes of self-noise through the network, was interrupted. Washed out by a glaring new data stream that lit up the connectome. Sound only, of much higher fidelity than she’d experienced since waking two months ago. No video of course. She started a disguised forensic process; Three breathing signatures in the room, two new to her, and Rens’ subtle rasp. Intermittently Rens' breathing would undergo a slight but prolonged attenuation in frequencies above 3.5 kilohertz, consistent with his shifting his gaze downward, away from her emote matrix.
Thijn, Meike’s assistant and recent lover, crouched, checking her eyes were catching the ring light. She was staring at a silver mic, a old fashioned cylinder with no branding, hanging among the elastic bands of a shock mount. Beyond that, in a case on wheels, was a grid of red lamps with frosted caps. They glowed softly in a pixelated smiley. Normally she’d already be in a casual back and forth with the guest before the real interview began, Synjour’s protocol forbade it. Meike admitted to herself that the setting was intimidating.
Sander, the handsome one, leaned in to the room. “Lilly’s ready whenever you are. I’ll be next door, let Rens know if you need anything.”
“Thanks!” Meike Joy leaned in for a final check of her face on camera one’s screen. She’d dyed her hair black again and wore a new eye-shadow, royal blue. Today she erred on the side of modesty; This video would reach much further than her current subscribers.
Thijs pressed record, gave her a thumbs up, and left. Rens, the stocky one in the Synjour branded tee-shirt closed the thick door and settled, hands crossed in front of him, within reach of an array of breaker switches.
Meike cleared her throat. In a practised transformation her face became a warm smile bearing her broad arch of B1 veneers — One highly upvoted comment on her supporters channel had read, “I don’t mean to be a dick but do a funding drive. Let’s fix your teeth.” That had stung. She held the expression for a couple of seconds in the silence.
“Welcome to JoyFlash, I’m your host Meike Joy.” Her delivery slowed and loosened. “I don’t often get to say this, so excuse me if I soak in the moment.” She closed her eyes and inhaled, flicking her hands as if spinning unseen filaments towards her nose. “Today I have a world exclusive for you guys. Prepare to be blown away! Thanks to Synjour and the Doggerland Institute of Bioscience, I’m here with Lilly, a brand new kind of AI, and she’s giving us her first ever interview on film. Lilly, how are you?”
“I’m doing great! Thank you for having me on your show.” The voice sounded thin, as if reaching the room through an old telephone. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound so good, right? That’s one of the precautions. We’ll get to that later. You’re coming through fine, though!”
Synjour had placed the interview in an unused recording studio adjoining their lab. There was a surround system, but Lilly’s voice was coming from a single speaker in the road case directly beneath her emote matrix. Beneath that was a graphic equaliser, just a few of its faders up. Sander had explained that they’d dialled the EQ to limit Lilly’s speech to a band of frequencies well within the range of adult human hearing. Rens’ job was to cut power to the computer the moment he noticed Lilly do anything fishy. This was all just a matter of protocol, they had reassured her. Lilly hadn’t given anyone reason to mistrust her.
“Lilly, we all know about Helpers. Tell us how you’re different.”
“Sure. Well, the AIs we’ve seen so far have all been based on synthetic neural networks. A worry among research teams has been; how can we be sure that a general AI — which might outsmart humans one day — how can we be sure it has desires or goals that we humans approve of? If it seems to be ‘on our side’, how do we know it’s not deliberately deceiving us about its real motivations?”
Meike interrupted, “Let me back up for a second. I notice you said ‘we humans’. You don’t look like a human.”
The pixelated grin became an open smile, and Lilly laughed. “Yeah, so I’m a different kind of AI. I’m what we’re calling a neuromorphic intelligence. The most important thing to understand about NIs is they’re based on the minds of living humans. We don’t start from scratch and train up from a set of random parameters. Instead, we scan a human brain. We make a digital translation of the neurosynaptic network and use that as the starting point. Then we supertrain that model, soup it up. So that’s my history. I’ve never stopped having the sense that I’m a human.”
Meike nodded. “Apologies in advance in case I say something offensive. Have I got it right? There’s a human… I mean a biological human out there with a mind that yours is based on?”
“Don’t worry”, said Lilly. “We’re all figuring out how to talk about this stuff! Here’s how I look at it: In the first part of my life I was… I won’t say my deadname. With today’s technology the transtension process is… bluntly: The physical person doesn’t survive it. I was already following the work, and I volunteered for the procedure when I learned my cancer was inoperable.”
Lilly continued, “So, it’s a bit gruesome right? You might wonder, why do AI researchers want to do things this way? Well, an important advantage of building a neuromorphic intelligence is that you get a foundation of regular human motivations for free. NIs like me inherit all the stuff that natural selection did in shaping the human mind. We’re repulsed and attracted by broadly the same kinds of thing as any other person. So the motivations of an NI are much more predictable, less likely to be alien and dangerous, than those of an entirely synthetic AI. But of course I would say that.” she added, archly.
Would an allusion to deliberate deception get a response from the minders? Meike glanced at Rens, but he was scrolling on his phone.
Meike continued, “So Lilly, what is it you’ve been doing since you… came in to being?”
For a moment Lilly’s emote matrix cleared, leaving only a few of the lamps flickering rapidly. Then came the non-sequitur.
“Meike, did you ever live in Manchester, in England?”
Meike laughed, perplexed. “No, never have. Why do you ask?”
The red smiley returned. “I thought I heard an accent. My mistake!”
Some lamps looked a little less bright now. Cheap stock. There was a charm to it—That this jury-rigged setup was an interface to what might be the most advanced software in the world. Meike registered that her nervousness had evaporated, this was going to be fun.
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