Adele Falco

Scene: meeting Tess, a day after moving in to the farmhouse: “Hello!” She was dressed in sleek black workout gear, glossy and energetic ponytail tresses dancing around the collar of her warm-up jacket. Her skin, her hair and the fabric of her clothing all reflecting the morning sun as she stood in the frame of the half-door. Her smile wide and brimming with polished teeth. In her hand she held a white cake box. “Hi, I’m Tess!” she pronounced with enthusiasm as she shot her free arm straight at me - a hand open for grasping. Emma struggled to open the lower half of the door from its crooked frame but was able to snap the door free by giving it a hard pull, which caused it to hit her in the knee. She knelt down to hold her kneecap for a moment as the neighbor entered, hence she found herself shaking hands from her crouched position. “Hello, I’m Emma. So sorry, we haven’t used this door before.” “Oh, don’t worry about it. Are you all right? I shouldn’t have startled you like that. I just came by to welcome you to the neighborhood. Thought I’d catch you early before I went to the gym.” “I’m fine. I was just getting going here,” Emma stumbled upright, realizing she was in her clothes from yesterday, which she had slept in after collapsing in a sudden finale at the end of a long day of physical labor. She hadn’t looked at a mirror or would even know where to find one. “Come in, come in. I’m so sorry. I’m just not thinking yet. Moving is a bear,” Emma gestured into the kitchen, which had suddenly taken on a worn out, cluttered and neglected appearance. By entering the house, Tess had aged everything around her, a form of energy that draws up all that around it and discards the extras. At this moment, Emma felt like an extra herself, older and more flaccid that she had been just moments before Tess entered that room, like an accelerator that aged all the matter around it. She extended the white box in her direction. “Here’s the best blueberry pie you’ll ever have,” she said. “From a bakery just a few miles from here and the best one around. You’re going to love it. I put myself on a quota, just once per month or I’d be eating something from there every day.” She laughed easily, the way you can laugh when you know the risk of eating too many baked goods does not apply to you. “Thank you. Thank you so much. The kids will love this,” Emma took the pie and placed it safely among a pile of boxes on the counter. “This place is a mess. So much to do. A pie will make a good breakfast, right?” She smirked. Tess paused and then smiled. “Why not? Suppose it’s not much different than a muffin or croissant, right? Where did you guys move from? And I saw two kids, right? Are they twins? So adorable. I watched them trying to help the movers yesterday. What helpers you have there!” “New York and yes, those are my two - Nate and Sara. They’re eight years old.” “We’re also New Yorkers. Moved up two years ago. Big change! But I love it now. We have two kids too, Bryce and Madison. Eight and ten-years old. They’re getting ready for camp now or I’d have brought them with me. Plus I need any excuse to get out in the morning. Always chaos around there looking for something at the last minute. You know, crazy sock day or whatever.” She glanced around the kitchen. “Nice old bones, these farmhouses, right? So much you can do with them. Did you pick your architect yet? I can recommend a few that have done some awesome renovation projects around here.” “Architect? Uh, no. We’re just moving in here,” Emma said. “Of course! I get it, but when you need some names, just ask. I’ve got some friends who turned their farmhouses into some spectacular homes, you know the kind, the ones with lots of…” and she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “Stunning homes. Modern farmhouse and all that jazz.” “Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, that would be great,” Emma stuttered. “And you have so much land! Are you thinking of a pool? Imagine sitting out there with a nice gin and tonic!” She smiled so broadly. A big overarching smile so wide it looked as if the whole dim room might be swept up into its cavern. “Pool? Uh, I don’t think so. I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it.” “With that land, I’d put in a pool, a pool house and who-else-knows-what?!? This place could be a resort! Your husband better not be listening or he’ll hate me before he even meets me,” she laughed and looked quizzically into the living room. “Ha. No, no husband - just me and the kids here,” Emma replied. “Our first actual, physical, home on an actual piece of land that we can put our feet on. We’ve always lived in apartments.” Just then Nate appeared in the kitchen doorway, blurry eyed and with a fuzzy clump of hair sticking sideways from his head. “Mom?” “Good morning, Nate! I’m Tess, your new neighbor.” Tess stooped to extend her arm to him now. Nate stood placidly against the wall, a look of cautious wonder on his face. “Oh, I get it. Bryce needs time to wake up too. You’re going to love Bryce, Nate. Do you play video games? He does. And he plays them a lot! Too much, I think but heck, you gotta let them find the thing they love, right?” Emma put an arm around Nate’s shoulder, drawing him closer. “Tess bought us a blueberry pie, Nate. Isn’t that great?” Nate stared at her silently. “Yeah, Nate, it’s from one of the best bakeries around here and we’re even going to have a piece for breakfast!” Emma added a false-sounding enthusiasm but could see Nate had not sniffed the bait. He stood still, blinking his eyes as if to improve his focus on Tess. “No worries, Emma. We’ve got plenty of time to get these guys together. I’ve got to run to my cross-fit class now. We’ll catch up soon, okay?” “Yeah, sure. Looking forward to it. Thank you again. Thanks for stopping by. So nice of you to bring us a pie. We’ll enjoy that today.” Emma moved towards the Dutch door to yank it open again, giving it extra exertion. It swung open clumsily. “Aren’t these half doors charming?” Tess moved to the doorway and down the uneven stone steps with caution, her every step thoughtful and precise. A rush of air hurried after her, carrying a scent of perfumed cleanliness. Emma stood in the kitchen reconstructing herself, a pie box in hand.

Adele Falco NY Pitch, September 2023 Story Statement An AI scientist must reconcile unexpected limitations in her ability to follow a logical and pre-programmed life path provided by an intelligent life assistant or Projektion, as it is known to the individuals who use them. But she steps outside her own Projektion and finds a world of beauty, pain and hope. Antagonistic Force ProjektIon develops intelligent systems, AI assistants that transparently guide and respond to humans to help them lead quality lives. Emma Gatewood is a leader among the thousands of engineers helping to build these systems. By constraining the effects of human impulse, Projektions create patterns that can tell us when and how to have children, when to work and when to pursue leisure, how much and when to sleep and eat, and eventually, as the systems builds knowledge of an individual, how to feel and how to respond to our own feelings and those of others. ProjektIon is building the tools for optimized self-fulfillment. But Emma disrupts her own Projektion by buying a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse that sits on the ten remaining acres of an abandoned farm – clearly an irrational decision. But something is driving her to this place, this landscape that she can neither manage nor explain. Neighbors demand she gentrify it to the standards of their cliche, upscale development. Then a serious illness drives her even further away from the life she had planned. The neglected antique farmhouse, a disease that makes its way in her body without her consent – these forces can’t be solved through her Projektion and Emma must lean on others if she is to survive. Potential Titles 1. ProjectIons for a Quality Life 2. A Labor of No Love 3. All the Apples We Can Find Comparables: This is a story with an eco-literary and nature theme: · Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley · Flight Behaviour, Barbara Kingsolver · Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens Hook Line: An AI scientist designs and believes in the ability of intelligent assistants to help us lead better lives. She trusts in this science to avoid the typical pitfalls of human experience; love, loss, loneliness. But her discovery of the beauty and threats lurking in the unpredictable corners of her life drives her to see life in another way and she must challenge her own defenses if she is to survive. Expansion of Conflict Emma’s core belief is that predictability ensures happiness. She chose a career in data science in order to gain control of her loneliness, the rejection she has experienced - as she puts it in a talk with her Projektion monitor, her unsolvable “glitch.” “I was born with an unsolvable glitch. I could not be loved - that’s it. It happens in nature, it happens in data, it happens in all the systems in the universe - illogical, unsolvable glitches that defy the reliable models. I have that kind of glitch. I looked in the mirror and saw that I didn’t look much different from other kids. But inside of me, a disastrous error was lurking. I could never be loved. I don’t blame my parents for not wanting to attach themselves to me in the way I saw other kids relied on their parents for all kinds of things. They didn’t notice if I came home late, dirty and scratched from my forays into the wooded lots behind our house. It took them a whole day to realize that I had cut off my own long pigtails. They didn’t notice that I was being stalked by a predator - a man they invited into our house time and time again, who would push me up against the wall and rub himself against me while I softly whined and cried. Were they abusive? No. Not at all. They fed and clothed me and took my picture on the first and last day of school. The only thing they forgot was to actually see me, hear me, figure out who I was and would become and they didn’t feel it was their job to shape the outcome. It was up to me to create an identity for myself.” Emma felt she could never be loved and had come to accept that. But she could also escape from this realization if she built a world around her that didn’t require attachment. When her Projektion determines that children would make her life more fulfilling, she signs up for IVF and has twins. Her work involves building silent, invisible data models that guide people in their life choices from the most mundane to the most profound. She helps others make choices so that they don’t need to make them for themselves, avoiding the risk of emotionally charged misjudgments. The Projektion monitors take away the pain of waiting to be seen or heard by others. In a world programmed by machines, you don’t wait to get noticed. You are always being observed and noticed. And this works for Emma until she usurps her own safely contained Projektion. She moves away from the city to a place where she can begin to feel the earth, see its movements, feel the subtle beauty of a meadow or the bursting of fruit on old trees in an abandoned orchard. But she cannot manage such a place alone and the wealthy neighbors want her to conform with their standards for modernization. Emma begins to uncover the silent messages of an abandoned farm. What would happen if she tried to revive it? And the old barn - the one sold “as is” and probably needed to be demolished. Isn’t it a statement to the work of those that came before her, people that worked the land and lived upon what they could produce with their hands? She sees her children flourish in this environment that allows them freedom and exploration. She does not want to change this old place into a designer tribute to the past - she wants to make it real in the present. For that, she’ll need help and she finds it online when she reaches out to someone with the avatar “TractorWheel.” TractorWheel has history with her place but it would seem they have nothing else in common. He has worked on farms his whole life and she studies data models to see how they can become more intelligent through subtle uptake of people’s behaviors. But they both have boundaries that have stood strong until now. She in her virtual world, he in his gruff manner of avoiding interaction with others. But something unexplainable draws them closer. And when Emma needs real help - a human hand in the real world - her Projektion fails to recognize this, and she must reconcile the ability of intelligent systems to navigate human experience. Setting This story is set mainly in an antique farmhouse in disrepair, located in a rural area some 150 miles from NYC. The land itself was once a productive farm, established by the first settlers to the area – English Colonists - who cleared the fields and stacked rocks to build miles upon mile of still-standing walls. These walls stretch across the property in varying angles. The farmhouse itself dates to the 1700s. Its floors are tilted, its doors and windows had been randomly updated over the decades, but none held fast to any seam. A large fireplace in the main room on the first floor was used as a hearth and over - its portal for cooking still intact. A narrow staircase leads to the second floor. The floors were made of chestnut, a tree once abundant in the area (now nearly extinct). They had been worn but still held strong, joined together by antique handmade nails. The ceilings were less than seven feet high and lined with thick supporting beams. Over the years, additions and renovations to the farmhouse had been made. What stands out in this environment is the land upon which the farmhouse sits. It is ten acres - a sizeable lot by today’s standards. But the farm once consisted of three hundred acres, which had been sold off in increments over the years. The house stood close to one of the developments that had been built on the relinquished land - Orchard Estates. It contained large modern houses that had been designed in “farmhouse” style. Each of those houses sat on one acre. The remaining area of the land consists of a large meadow ringed by tall fir trees, an orchard, a wooded pine stand, rolling hay fields, a large kitchen garden and a severely deteriorated barn. The barn has not been opened for many years and was sold “as is” - without any kind of certification to its structural integrity. The inspector advised her to tear it down after she moved in. Its doors were long overgrown by thick wild grape vines - some of them with stems as thick as small trees. But the muted beauty of the barn becomes apparent - its integration to the landscape, its hand in the various decades of work performed on the farm. Emma will open this barn with the help of TractorWheel and together they will discover its contents - a historical archive held in time for their discovery.

NYPitch.docx