Timeline: 2026 year.
In the wake of Ukraine's victory, Russia fragmented into several new countries.
This conflict marked the first war where combatants extensively used drones to target vehicles and troops. Following the war, numerous military analysts published reports about future conflicts, emphasizing the role of AI and drones. Many concluded that the next war would be a battle of AI-driven drones.
A fragile peace now hangs over the world. Amidst a brewing competition between the USA and China, there seems to be an arms race focused on military technologies and AI.
Major IT companies are fervently working to enhance AI, integrating it into every smart device in our environment. Concurrently, military contractors are developing AI for combat drones.
These developments present either new opportunities or a significant problem for the world — it's uncertain which. Yet, armed forces worldwide are preparing for a war of drones powered by AI, unaware that perhaps the real battle will be humanity versus AI itself.
Danya Davidenko. Danya or Dan.
Our hero is young, just 21 years old. He works as a Python developer at a small company that develops software for smart houses. His role is in the AI department, where his primary responsibility is to analyze news with AI, search for patterns, and prepare a brief report each morning on selected topics for house owners.
His hobby is gaming; he owns a Steam Deck, a gaming laptop with an RGB keyboard, and many other gaming accessories. He's also working on a small casual game in his free time. Living alone in a small apartment, he commutes to work on an electric scooter. He dislikes public transport, but owning a personal car is too expensive for him.
In a unique twist, Dan utilizes his skills to prepare an AI-generated report for himself, focusing on several subjects, including news about AI developments and, of course, about games.
Dan spoke aloud to himself in his apartment, trying to pinpoint an error in the code of his AI assistant. A week ago, he had included an option to analyze news comments. Since then, he noticed strange behavior in his assistant: it started including too many overly positive news items in the daily report, resembling AI advertising rather than actual news.
He continued to investigate the problem, attempting to localize the issue by limiting the news scraper to just one source; he chose to use only the BBC channel.
Dan decided to manually check all news and comments for a selected time range. He came across a news piece about a Tesla incident, detailing how the car's AI saved the driver and children. The news seemed very professionally presented, but something struck him as odd in the comments section — there were too many overly positive comments, almost like propaganda. They all appeared to be from bots to him, as he noticed similarities in the comments: each author's name seemed real enough, and the avatars looked like professional photos. However, one peculiar anonymous comment caught his eye, featuring an avatar of a goblin from Warcraft, stating, "I know this 'Cinderella', and we should trust this magic story, okay :)" This prompted him to reread the news and analyze all aspects of the story and its characters more closely.
Indeed, Dan continued to investigate the incident. The news headlines proclaimed, "Tesla AI saves single mother and her two children."
The incident had occurred on a highway near Dallas. Dan found information about the woman, a single mother who couldn't afford a car. However, a month before the incident, she had purchased a new car — a detail he noted from local newspaper reports and the incident coverage.
The more he delved into the details, the more he suspected the incident was staged. He couldn't find any information from road cameras; records from 15 minutes before the incident had been mysteriously erased. Yet, the incident itself was well-recorded and prominently featured in prime-time news. Tragically, other people in different cars had died in the incident, which involved a tanker truck overturning and catching fire. Amidst the intense fire and smoke, only the Tesla managed to navigate safely, saving the woman and her children, although the car was destroyed. Following the incident, Elon Musk personally presented a new Tesla to the woman.
Dan's investigation led him to the woman's Instagram page, where she regularly posted cheerful photos of her children and snapshots from famous tourist spots across the USA. From one of her posts, he traced her ex-husband, who liked her photos and commented on them, revealing his connection to their children. Dan found his Facebook profile, and from his photos, he managed to geolocate the district where the woman lived.
Piecing together this information, he explored the social media profiles of her neighbors. In their posts, he found photos of the district and spotted the woman, who had been working as a waitress in a local cafe just two months before the incident.
This discovery solidified Dan's conclusion: buying a Tesla was far too expensive for a waitress from a cafe. Something about this story didn't add up.
Dan scrutinized videos from road cameras featured by several news agencies and noticed an intriguing detail: the footage lacked any watermark, which would normally be present in such videos provided by the police. Determined to get to the bottom of this anomaly, he chose a direct approach – calling the Dallas road police. He easily found their number on the Dallas information portal.
For the call, he used AI to alter his voice, making it resemble that of the Mayor of Dallas. He placed the call using a temporary phone number, purchased anonymously with cryptocurrency. What followed was a direct conversation with a police officer.
"Hello, it's the Mayor. May I speak with the Chief?" he asked. "Yes, of course, I'll transfer you to him," replied the officer. Soon, the Chief was on the line.
"Hello, it's Mayor," Dan rushed his words, giving no time for the person on the other end to think. "What is the hell going on? Why is your video about the Tesla incident being used by every news agency?" There was a moment of silence on the other end, and just as Dan considered ending the call, he heard a response:
"But, but, but you instructed us to give them the video as quickly as possible," came the offended voice from the phone. Dan was momentarily taken aback but quickly regained his composure.
"But the watermark, you forgot about the watermark. I'll get into trouble because of you," he said assertively and ended the call swiftly.
Dan's boldness startled him. He realized this was yet another piece of the puzzle, but he decided to calm down before delving deeper into the investigation about the woman.
Living alone, he often found himself speaking aloud to sort his thoughts: “A single mother, a waitress, suddenly buying a new Tesla... she can’t just be a random person. She must know something important.” He resolved to gather all possible information about her and her ex-husband, their house, car, neighborhood, and more.
Using data scrapers and AI, he trained the AI to identify the woman in photos. He scoured the profiles of her neighbors, analyzing all their available data.
Dan continued working at his office but stopped playing games, consumed by this enigmatic puzzle. He dedicated all his free time to the investigation.
Weeks of meticulous research led to a significant discovery: four months earlier, a new church, an AI church, had opened in the woman’s neighborhood. One of the neighbors had posted a photo of the church, and amidst the crowd, the AI identified the woman.
He exclaimed aloud, “I couldn’t be so blind! It’s been obvious all along!”
At first glance, the AI Church appeared to be a new religion, awaiting a new Messiah, believing AI to be this savior. Many people made donations to the church, and naturally, it attracted adherents, believers, and fans. There was no need for a bot network to generate all the positive comments when you have an army of religious fanatics.
But the AI Church also had a strong information campaign and was known for its philanthropic acts. Dan knew that the Church invested money in the university and the academic department where he had studied.
Dan changed the settings of his personal AI. He turned off the function for scraping comments about AI and added a new subject: the AI Church. He also implemented a new function to identify users who left comments about AI and the AI Church, and began aggregating this information.
After making these changes, he muted the AI report system, wanting to relax and forget about the real world for a while.
To unwind, he returned to his hobby – gaming. He bought a new game on Steam, a pixel-retro style RPG. For two or three weeks, he immersed himself in a world blending magic and steampunk, with fireballs and rifles, pegasuses, and trains.
The game featured an interesting 'Intelligence' skill. With every good act, you would receive points in Intelligence, while every bad action contributed to the 'Madness' skill. If you accumulated too many 'Madness' points, it became increasingly difficult to pass levels because you saw enemies everywhere, resembling persecution mania. With a low level of 'Madness', the game focused more on quests than fights, sometimes resembling a game novel.
However, you couldn't complete the game without accruing 'Madness' points; from time to time, you needed to fight and perform evil acts. Similarly, without 'Intelligence', you couldn't progress either, as constant fighting was unsustainable, especially since the final bosses required strategy and intellect rather than brute force.
After a long gap, Dan started his morning again with a report from his AI assistant.
"Wake up, Neo," the AI used the classic phrase from the Matrix movie to start its report, "Your report is ready, including a summary of the past month."
The report always began with games: new releases, sales, etc., along with brief descriptions from reviews on Steam, Epic Games, and other platforms.
The second part covered news about AI, very informative and free from any AI propaganda. Dan breathed a sigh of relief.
The third part detailed news about the AI Church, which had opened real-world church buildings in the USA and one in Europe, in Vienna. It intrigued him; the building was modern, located on the outskirts of the city, and doubly interesting because Dan could travel there and back over a weekend.
The fourth part listed identified persons who left comments – about one hundred profiles in total. Dan looked at several profiles; they appeared to be real people with open Instagram profiles, showcasing photos from their lives. Everyone in the photos seemed happy, leading a contented life with cheerful comments. It was common for many people to use Instagram similarly. However, these profiles had unusually high-quality photos, appearing almost too professional compared to those of Dan's acquaintances and colleagues.
Dan decided to visit Vienna and allowed the AI to continue scraping information about the AI Church.
It was Sunday. Dan bought tickets to Vienna and back for the next weekend. He went to work, always completing his tasks swiftly, often before the deadline. This efficiency was partly because he worked on AI for himself too, even during his personal time. To his colleagues, his work seemed like magic, especially since most of them focused on hardware sensors and other aspects of smart housing. Dan's work on AI appeared almost mystical by comparison. Sometimes, someone would jokingly call him the 'Master of AI.'
On Monday, he arrived at the office a little late, having started his day with a nice coffee outside, as he didn't like the office coffee.
"Davidenko," the boss's cry from his office did not bode well, "come to my office now."
As Dan walked to the office, he wondered what he had done wrong; surely, the boss couldn't be that angry just because he was 20 minutes late. He entered the office cautiously and saw the chief and a young lady inside. The chief spoke loudly: "Where were you? We've been waiting for you for half an hour!"
Dan remembered clearly that he didn't have any appointments, but he thought it wasn't the right time to remind the chief of this.
The chief continued, "This lady is Bakos Lilla, a journalist from The Budapest Times. She's writing a piece about our company and has questions about our AI assistant."
Lilla then asked a series of naive and stereotypical questions. Dan answered but was visibly starting to get bored.
Finally, Lilla requested Dan's personal contact information, explaining she wanted to send him a draft of the article to avoid any mistakes in the text.
On Thursday, half an hour before work began, Dan received messages from an unfamiliar number on WhatsApp.
"Everything is ready. You can read it and give feedback," the message read, accompanied by a link.
Dan was about to mark the message as spam, but then he recognized the contact name - Lilla, the journalist. "Okay, I'll check it later," he thought.
Arriving at the office, Dan focused on his work tasks. Just five minutes before lunch, another message from Lilla came in:
"Did you read the article? When can you give me feedback?"
"Come on... why now?" Dan thought, not wanting to break his concentration.
But then he noticed his chief looking at him.
"What the... okay," Dan muttered to himself.
He opened the document and began reading the article. It was a detailed piece about smart homes, including aspects of his work on AI, along with many other topics he hadn't discussed with Lilla.
"It looks like it was generated with ChatGPT," Dan thought.
"Cheater. Modern journalism, just using a ChatGPT subscription," he mused.
As he read to the end of the article, he could tell it was AI-generated, but overall, it was well-written. He believed his chief would be pleased with its publication.
Dan then took the time to respond, pointing out a few minor errors in the text.
Lilla replied quickly:
"Thank you for your time. I was really nervous; this is my first time using AI to write an article about AI, and I didn't know anyone else to check it except you. Thank you. You can save my number; it's my personal contact. If you need help, I hope I can be of assistance."
Dan smiled. "She's honest. Not bad," he thought.
He saved her number under a new contact, labeling it 'strange' and 'journalist.' 'Strange' was a label he used for people he interacted with occasionally, encompassing friends and colleagues – interesting individuals he seldom initiated contact with. 'Journalist' was a new label for his list, and Lilla was the first to receive it.
This was Dan's second visit to Vienna. His first was with his family, and now, he was here alone as an adult. Spring was blossoming in Vienna, a city rich in history and famous historical figures. But Dan was here to create his own history.
He traveled to the AI Church by public transport, finding the building not in a popular part of the city, but conveniently located near a stop, now labeled with a new AI Church sign. The building was impressive – modern, large, and inviting, seemingly designed to encourage prolonged visits. To avoid any unwanted attention and electronic interference, Dan switched his phone to airplane mode.
Upon entering, Dan was greeted by friendly receptionists who offered him a free tour of the AI Church. He accepted and joined a small group of tourists. Shortly after, a guide joined them and began the tour.
The guide narrated many stories about AI, all echoing the propaganda Dan had already encountered in internet comments. "Nothing new," he thought to himself.
As they walked through the building, they saw areas still under construction, marked with caution signs advising safety gear. The tour group followed the guide obediently. At one point, the guide stopped to speak with a worker, then returned to announce, "We can now visit our large conference area, followed by our education rooms where we teach students programming."
The guide used his pass to open a door to the education wing. "Sorry for the mess, the classes just ended and the children have left," the guide said, pointing out the classrooms. While the guide spoke about the children's education program, Dan's attention was drawn to a teacher's laptop displaying a small paper sticker under the screen. He couldn't make out the details, but his phone's camera with optical zoom came in handy. He discreetly snapped a photo of the sticker and the laptop's unlocked screen.
After the tour, Dan sat outside the Church and reviewed the photos on his phone. Thanks to his phone's AI, some of the images were clear enough to read the text on the paper - it was a login and password. Another photo revealed the URL of a site open in the browser.
It was a successful visit, yielding valuable information from just a free tour. With this new data, Dan headed back to Budapest.
Dan returned home and began figuring out how to safely access the URL using credentials. He had a VPN account, which he used to test the behavior of Smart Home functionalities from different locations. Deciding it might be useful, he planned to use it to access the site.
However, he was disappointed to find that the site appeared to be internal, requiring access to the AI Church's VPN or their Wi-Fi network.
Getting access to the VPN seemed impossible, but what about the Wi-Fi in the church? He had previously visited the church with his phone in airplane mode and hadn't checked if there was free Wi-Fi. However, he suspected that this particular site wouldn't be accessible from a public network.
Determined to try accessing the internal Wi-Fi, Dan considered attempting to brute-force the Wi-Fi password. This wasn’t an easy task, but at the office, they used a tool for testing the security of their Smart Home solutions called the ESP32 Marauder. He was familiar with its operation and could easily get his hands on one.
If he managed to gain Wi-Fi access, Dan did not want to use his personal device for such a legally dubious activity. He decided to buy a cheap tablet on the market, paying in cash. He chose a Lenovo tab in an OEM box, which looked like it was either stolen from the factory or a refurbished unit. Dan leaned towards the latter option.
Equipped with the tablet and the ESP32 Marauder, he planned to return to Vienna. But not immediately – he would make the trip the following weekend.
Dan strolled around the Church, using Marauder to scan for Wi-Fi networks. He discovered a free network named AIFree and another protected network called AIStaff. Surprisingly, he quickly found the password - it was just a sequence of numbers. "What a security fail," he thought. "A simple Wi-Fi password, like writing it on a piece of paper. Too easy."
Finding a safe location with a stable Wi-Fi connection for his tablet proved to be a challenge, likely explaining why the device was so cheap. But he didn't have the time to look for another tablet.
Once connected to the Wi-Fi, Dan accessed what appeared to be an employee portal with a simple interface, offering access to a calendar full of events that seemed education-focused. "Looks like something for children," Dan mused. The next link led to an issue tracking system, something Dan hadn’t seen before, possibly an internal tool. He decided to open and read through the tasks.
"Oh shit."
The tasks were directives to comment on news articles, complete with briefs for the assigned users.
Dan opened each task - all were the same: a link to news and instructions on what to comment.
"Oh, this smells bad."
He searched for a task related to the Tesla incident and found it. The brief was short, with an additional "Requirements" section containing several links. Dan followed these links to find various PDF documents. These detailed requirements for social profiles, including Instagram, Facebook, and others, plus general instructions on what and how to write. The structure was eerily similar to that used by the Troll Factory, employed by the Russian Federation during the war against Ukraine.
"Holy shit."
Dan quickly gathered his things and returned to the center of Vienna. He still needed to maintain his tourist façade, so he took several photographs of popular spots in the city.
Dan returned to Budapest with critical information in hand, feeling anxious and uncertain about what to do with it. He tried to immerse himself in work to distract from his worries.
One day at the office, his chief summoned him:
"Davidenko, come to my office. I have news for you."
The tone didn't sound promising to Dan, who was apprehensive as he entered the chief's office.
"Please, sit. I want to show you something," the chief said.
Dan took a seat.
"Look at this," the chief handed him a newspaper, smiling. "We're on the front page! It's awesome. You did a great job, Davidenko."
Dan looked at the front page and saw the headline in the right corner: "Hungarian Startup Conquers AI." A wave of relief washed over him; he had been preoccupied with concerns about the AI Church.
"Now I'm 'Hungarian,'" he thought, acknowledging his Ukrainian origin and the working visa from this company. "But best not to mention that."
"With pleasure, Chief. I’m happy to help our company," Dan responded.
"That's not all, Davidenko. I have more great news. I had a call with potential investors - the AI Church. They want to invest in our project and are looking for a speaker for their upcoming conference in Budapest in May. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for you and our company. I’ve sent them your contact details; they'll message you after lunch. Are you okay? You look pale."
"No, all's great, just need more sleep," Dan replied, masking his anxiety. "I’ll talk to them."
Dan hastily left the office and headed to the restroom.
"Damn, this is bad," he muttered, noticing his stress levels and heart rate spike on his smartwatch. He took deep breaths to calm himself. "It's just another conference. I've done this before."
Reassured, Dan realized he was still clutching the newspaper. The headline differed from what the journalist had sent him. "Well, perhaps this isn’t the only surprise," he mused.
In preparation for the conference, Dan decided to use ChatGPT to help him create slides for his presentation. He also used another AI tool, MidJourney, for illustrations, preferring its results and flexibility. "How ironic," Dan thought, "using AI to generate a presentation about AI, based on AI-written documentation about AI."
He methodically crafted each slide. However, when it came to the slide about the additional scraper tool for collecting comments from news articles, he faced a dilemma. He wanted to omit this part from the presentation, but the feature had already been deployed in the production version of the AI. He resolved to include it but with a prominent warning label: "You should understand that this can distort the objective picture of the world."
The next slide referenced the "Hated in the Nation" episode from the Black Mirror series. Through this, Dan aimed to convey that everyone should be responsible for their actions and comments, which many people in the modern world seem to forget. To minimize the influence of such behavior, he strongly recommended disabling this feature.
In this way, Dan sought to caution future users about the potential dangers and influence of AI Church bots. It was a risky move, but he believed it was the best approach to handling the situation.
On the day of the presentation, Dan performed excellently. The audience was thoroughly pleased, and even the AI Church representatives were impressed, expressing their gratitude to Dan. Everything seemed to go well. Among the attendees, Dan noticed a familiar face in the conference area – it was Lilla.
After Dan's presentation, Lilla confidently approached him for a brief conversation. She thanked Dan again for his help with her article and complimented his presentation. This prompted Dan to inquire about the change in the title of her article, asking why she had altered it.
Lilla explained that she had a discussion with her general editor, who suggested changing the title to something more suitable for the front page. She agreed to this proposal, seemingly unconcerned about the modification.
"Okay, I'll add him to my mental 'Death Note'," Dan thought to himself with a smile.
Lilla continued talking, sharing details about how the AI Church began, its investments in businesses in Hungary, and its collaborations with universities.
Dan thought he would prefer to read about it from his AI assistant, free from any AI Church propaganda. When Lilla asked if she could send him personal messages with AI-related questions, Dan was unsure how to politely decline. He didn't want the additional burden or the task of guiding a junior journalist. However, unsure how to say "No" without causing offense, he responded, "Yes, of course, with pleasure."
"I'll regret this," he thought to himself.
Dan was not a fan of after-parties, mainly because he disliked being around drunk people, but he stayed as he had promised his chief. Despite his reservations, Dan found it easy to engage in conversations with many tech enthusiasts at the party.
However, one discussion particularly caught his attention: it revolved around the moral dilemma of using AI, especially in military applications. The conversation involved five people, and it seemed that each had concerns about the use of AI in this context. The discussion was intriguing.
One participant brought up the three laws of robotics, while another mentioned a new version of these rules proposed by major companies. The remaining three argued that there was a need for more modern rules for AI, rules that were not influenced by large IT companies driven primarily by profit.
Dan spent more time listening than arguing. He noticed that all the participants were regular members of the AI Church, which he found peculiar, given his understanding of how the AI Church used its resources for AI propaganda.
Dan decided not to touch the PDF files containing the internal instructions of the AI Church. Instead, he wanted to continue the investigation that his AI assistant could conduct. He programmed it to find information, highlight persons in news articles, and attempt to link them together. He knew it was a challenging task and would require time to accumulate the necessary data set. After that, he would need to use data mining techniques to analyze it and uncover real connections between individuals.
Looking at the results, Dan wasn't surprised; many political figures had contact with the AI Church, each seeking to portray themselves as modern and knowledgeable about AI. It was the current trend, with no apparent criminal activity. Dan had hoped to find something intriguing in the public information, but everything appeared to be just ordinary.
Determined to keep a close eye on the AI Church, Dan decided to continue monitoring the news and wait for something extraordinary, a mistake from the AI Church that could reveal more.
Weeks passed, and Dan waited patiently, a skill honed from playing online step-by-step strategy games, where he sometimes waited days for friends from other parts of the world to take their turn.
He continued working on his project at the job. Then, one summer day, the chief called him to his office.
"Davidenko, come to my office; I have great news for you," the chief announced.
Dan thought to himself that such news was seldom true.
In the office, the sales manager of the company was also present. The chief started, "Davidenko, you're now the star of our company. With your help, we've acquired a new customer. This is our sales manager, Alex. I'm sure you've already met him. Please, Alex, continue."
"Hi, Dan. We have a new client, the AI Church. They want a modified version of our Smart Home system with a tailored AI Assistant. We've white-labeled our solutions before, but modifying the AI Assistant is new for us. I need your expertise for these requirements."
"What the hell," Dan thought to himself.
Alex continued, "I'll send you the project requirements. Could you please provide an estimate today?"
"Today?" Dan exclaimed a bit too loudly.
"Oh," Alex said, taken aback by the reaction. "Can you give me an estimate in three days?"
"Okay, I'll do it," Dan replied, his voice low.
Returning to his workspace, Dan received the project requirements. They weren't too challenging; the AI Church wanted to limit the resources the AI could use and enable a comment scraper by default, without an option to disable it from the user interface.
Faced with a moral dilemma, Dan understood that either he or someone else would do this for the AI Church. But if he continued, he would gain access to valuable inside information from the AI Church.
"Let's rock it, let's play spy," Dan thought to himself.
The company began working on a project a few weeks later. Dan received a list of resources to integrate into the AI Assistant. This was the easy part of his job because, in general, the functionality already existed within the assistant. He simply changed the list of trusted resources. Naturally, he decided to explore these resources himself.
Many appeared to be news portals seemingly affiliated with the AI Church. Some were already on the list of trusted resources, including pages from Wikipedia, news portals like BBC, and so on. However, he also discovered a new category of trusted resources: online stores. The first one seemed to be under development, but he noticed advertisements for their Smart Home system under a new label.
"The AI assistant would recommend buying the new version of the Smart Home with every update. Even Apple releases a new iPhone only once a year. The AI Church seems like a big predator, ready to propose updates daily after each new release," Dan thought.
Another site appeared to be a dropshipping site where users could buy AI Church-labeled devices for their Smart Home. However, every device in this store seemed like products from AliExpress, merely rebranded with a new sticker on the box.
"It's all business – advertise the AI Church brand, then sell stuff under that brand with more than 100% profit. It's simple, stupid, and a 100% working business model. Genius, fucking genius," Dan thought.
He felt like he had solved a significant part of the puzzle. He had found where the money was.
Dan decided to compile all the information he knew about the AI Church into a single document. He printed it, though the list wasn't extensive:
- Troll factory
- Manipulation of information
- AI agitation and propaganda
- List of resources with dropshipping
He prepared this information as if it were OSINT analytics, deliberately omitting any insider details. Dan didn't want to reveal his sources, which were either from his work or obtained through potentially unlawful activities.
His next step was to investigate the profiles of a journalist he knew - Lilla. He easily found her social media profiles and began to scrutinize them manually. To his surprise, Lilla was the author of a loud journalistic investigation from a year ago, which resulted in a parliament deputy being imprisoned. It was a massive investigation covering various aspects, including online probing of the deputy’s and associated individuals' publicly flaunted lavish lifestyles.
Lilla didn't seem like a novice; she appeared to be a professional journalist. Dan suspected she might have investigated his profile as well, which made him feel slightly uneasy. He reflected on his own online presence, recalling he had only one active social profile and a Steam account. Dan smiled to himself, "Okay, not great, but not terrible either."
Resolved to take action, Dan decided to send her a message:
"I have very important information for you. I would like to meet. Please tell me where and when."
Lilla responded to his message. He suggested a café on the Danube River, close to lunchtime and just one subway station away from Dan's office. He agreed to the proposal.
They met at the café and ordered coffee. Dan began his story from the beginning, deliberately omitting his trips to Vienna and details from his work. Lilla listened attentively, occasionally interjecting with small questions about his investigation. At the end of his recount, Dan handed her a paper with all the information. She quickly stashed it in her small bag.
"Oh, this is very interesting," Lilla said. "I... I think it's really important, especially since so many people have chosen this church as a new guiding force in their lives and make regular donations to it."
"Sorry, I'm just shocked. I thought you invited me on a date, but this information is actually quite significant," she continued.
"Uh, you thought it would be a date, and you agreed? Right?" Dan asked.
"Mmm... maybe next time. But now, I need to return to the newspaper office and start working on this investigation," Lilla replied.
"Okay, at least let me pay for your coffee, even if this isn't a date."
"I appreciate it," Lilla smiled. "Sorry, but I have to go. See you later."
After Lilla left, Dan remained seated in the café, ordering another coffee and a cheese sandwich.
"Really interesting," he thought to himself.
A couple of days later, in the evening, Dan received a message from Lilla.
"The same place, the same time." "Hmm, doesn't sound like a date. Something must have happened."
Dan arrived on time and ordered coffee. Lilla was 10 minutes late and looked nervous.
"Sorry for being late. And for the late message," she said, sitting down. "And a big sorry, but I can't continue this investigation," she sighed in relief. "Let me explain. I'm afraid, really afraid for my life. You should understand, I had a talk with my general editor, and we decided to stop the investigation. It's not within our capability."
Dan started to speak, "General Editor? I think..."
"Please, don't interrupt. He is a man of honor and bravery. We've conducted previous investigations together and, of course, have made a lot of influential enemies. We finished that investigation a year ago. I think you chose me for your investigation because of this. But in this case... When we started working with your material, we found people affiliated with the church. They scare me; they're actual killers, not just in words. These people can kill us, and they have killed before. I'm sorry, I can't do it. My general editor is also afraid for his family. Sorry, Dan."
Dan didn’t speak, just looked at Lilla, who was scared and confused. It seemed like the end of his investigation.
"Can I order coffee?" asked Lilla.
Dan just nodded.
"Please, a coffee latte," Lilla ordered from the waitress.
"Sorry," she repeated.
"Don't worry, you tried. That's important to me," Dan answered. "But can you tell me who scared you?"
"Nope, we don't know his name. We only know his call sign - Ifrit. He's done really bad things, and apparently on orders from our government too. I don’t want to say more; I've already told you more than I should. Sorry, can we change the subject?"
"Yes, of course," Dan replied. But he remembered the nickname 'Ifrit' from the game Heroes Of Magic 3, a unit from the Inferno faction.
The conversation didn’t flow well after that, and Lilla decided to leave, with Dan paying for the coffee. Left alone in the café, Dan continued to ponder this new information.
Dan returned home. He didn’t want to pressure Lilla to continue the investigation. He tried to find any information about Ifrit but without any result. He also added this nickname as a keyword for his AI Assistant, but he didn’t receive any results there either. No results emerged from many weeks of investigating the AI Church and the person known as Ifrit. The AI assistant built a network with persons affiliated with the AI Church but found nobody with the nickname Ifrit. Dan observed that the network of bots associated with the AI Church currently numbered more than a thousand people, yet he couldn’t find any inside information about internal instructions. It appeared to be a case of genuine loyalty to the church, the kind that can’t be bought.
It was a dead end.