The first draft of this introduction wanted to be a list.
I opened a window on a Tuesday in Lisbon when the espresso machine was already screaming and the gasket was already tasting like rubber. I typed something like: gonzo intro, first person, AI money, three reasons I'm writing this. The model gave me a costume — an entrepreneur, a lawyer with a go-bag, a boat where a Camry should have been. David, who exists, became a character who sleeps next to a shredder. I sat with that paragraph until the milk burned in the next room. I deleted it.
I used a language model to write parts of what you are holding. I am saying that on page one because the alternative is to pretend I sat in a cork-lined room and bled a manuscript like a person in a biopic. I sat on a mattress. I sat in a coworking space that smells like burnt milk. I accepted some paragraphs and I rewrote others, and I can no longer always tell which is which except by a tell: when the prose starts numbering itself, when it offers you five takeaways, when a sentence wants to close with and that is how the money works — that is the machine reaching for the form that paid my rent.
I am going to let it slip. Then I am going to catch it. That is the only honest structure I have left. If you are here for a tidy conversion — bad man, good man, fridge — you have the wrong book. I still answer as Mira. I still pay for the workhorse. I still have a tell.
I am a former junior engineer who got promoted, briefly and unofficially, to "prompt engineer," which meant I sat in Slack and asked a chatbot to write release notes that would not make the sales team angry. Northloop sold product analytics to mid-market companies that wanted dashboards more than they wanted answers. I was good at the part that looked like magic in a huddle. I was bad at the part where a human being has to stay a human being. I live in cheap rooms. I have lived in cheaper ones. The title of this book is a ranking title. I kept it because I know what ranks. I was never richer than God. I was richer than the version of me who had a badge and a standup, which is a smaller god and a louder one. Some Tuesdays I felt like a founder. Some Thursdays I was poorer than the barista who made the burnt milk and at least got a name on a cup. I still like the Tuesday. I am writing the Thursday so the Tuesday cannot testify alone. Some months I made enough to stop refreshing the bank app. Some months I didn't.