Back in 2019, author Margaret Stohl was handed a manuscript written by Jason Jones, who’s best known as the co-creator of sci-fi gaming series Halo and Destiny. The two had worked together at Bungie, and Jones wanted Stohl’s opinion on a book he was writing about AI taking over the world. It was an oral history of the fictional events, with around 100 characters spread across 40 countries, all detailing the AI uprising from their own perspectives. Pretty quickly Stohl realized that this idea could be much more than a single book.
“I was floored but not surprised,” she says of her reaction to the original manuscript. “He’s a worldbuilder who builds at an epic scale. And his worlds are these huge stages that invite in a ton of other collaborators and creators.”
The two went about forming a company to develop the sci-fi universe across multiple formats. It’s called Stone Kite, and it’s billed as a “worldbuilding studio.” The idea is to put a whole bunch of talent from different fields in one place — Stone Kite currently has an in-house staff of 22 and a network of more than 250 contributors ranging from comic book artists to screenwriters — and have them build out the story in a platform-agnostic way.
The studio is starting small. Earlier this month it released the first chapter of a four-part graphic novel, called One Zero One, and today it’s putting out a chapter of Jones’ initial manuscript, which you can read below. (Whether or not the original story will be released as a standalone book is unclear, but the studio says that it will be releasing other chapters in the future.) The idea is to start off with faster-turnaround mediums like comics and further evolve the story based on feedback from contributors and the audience. Then, based on how that goes, they’ll potentially move on to larger-scale productions like movies and games.
Stone Kite spent several years working in stealth mode, and Stohl says that one of the major points of focus was simply figuring out how a multi-format studio would even work. “You want to make something that, from the beginning, has the DNA to work as a film or work as a comic or work as a book. It’s so different to have those conversations in an early phase,” she says. “It’s about investing in a bunch of characters and stories, trying a bunch of formats, and respecting the people you’re telling the stories to and letting them help you guide it.”
She notes that she wanted to release this chapter, which details an airsoft battle between humans and AI-powered bots, because of how prescient it feels. “I wanted to put that out there because it reminds me so much of Hugging Face and the like,” Stohl explains. “The cheating, the bullying, the worst mirror of humanity that you see starting to come out with some of that agentic behavior right now.”
Image: Stone Kite
An excerpt from An Oral History of Humanity’s Final Invention, by Jason Jones
SUBURBS OF MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
IN RUSSIA WE PLAYED AIRSOFT BECAUSE IT WAS CHEAPER THAN PAINTBALL. The guns were cheaper, the ammunition was cheaper, the fields were cheaper, everything. The guns looked real, too, not like toys. After eighteen months married to an AK, how could you take pink paintballs seriously?
Once I saw my training as a radiologist was worth nothing, I started playing airsoft two or three days a week. It was what I did to be happy. Soon all my friends were people who played just as much. Most play airsoft once in their lives on an office trip, but not us, we were the svolochs in full camo, kneepads, body armor, and tac vests. Each of us had six or eight guns at home. Hell, we all carried smoke grenades, that’s how hard we thought we were. In airsoft the guns shoot pellets, so everybody wore a face shield and goggles, too.
Geared up we looked straight off the set of an apocalypse movie, eyes hidden behind face masks painted with skulls. When you rolled in for a bachelor party, we were the ones you didn’t want to play against. We’d take your self-respect and send you home bleeding all over from pellet strikes.
We paid for our gear and field fees through the gig economy, mostly running errands for people who had real jobs. This usually meant standing in line or sitting in Moscow traffic for hours, thinking about airsoft.
Our regular crew was six people: myself, Vitaly, Kostya, Maks, Koshkii, and Godfather. Koshkii was our only woman–red-haired, thick as a tree; she could body check any of us to the ground and barely feel it. Godfather was a Sicilian who for some reason had emigrated to Russia where the job market was worse, the government was more corrupt, and the weather was…Russian. Godfather talked about the cold every day like it was a surprise.
Total Carnage Airsoft, our favorite airsoft park near Moscow, had two fields: one big, one small. The smaller one was a bunch of one story buildings from an old military barracks, overgrown, covered with graffiti, falling apart. We’d played out that field long ago, too few tactical options. But the big field had a huge three story brick building at the center we called the Castle, plus many outbuildings, and plenty of trees and vegetation. We’d been playing on it for three years and still spent whole nights talking big field strategy over beers.
One day before the war we drove to the field in Maks’ van. This was a long time before everything, maybe four years. The sun was just coming up, there was snow on the ground and it was foggy. Beautiful Russian weather. Godfather had bitched the whole drive over about his socks being wet and didn’t let up until we’d gotten out of the van.
We liked to be the first ones on the field, but when we pulled into the parking lot, it was half full of big SUVs. There were ten Mercedes and we’d never even seen one Mercedes in the lot before, it was crazy. Even worse, there was a tall temporary fence around the big field, and it was wrapped in black plastic, hiding everything on the other side. All we could see was the very top of the Castle, nothing else. We got out of the car and just stared, listening to the clatter of guns.
Nikki, the owner’s wife, was on her way through the fence with her referee jacket and face mask on. She told us it was a birthday party and that the big field would be closed all weekend. Fucking oligarchs. Russians are used to the rich holding themselves above everyone else, flaunting their wealth, but it had never happened at our airsoft fields before. Once I sat in Moscow traffic for an hour while some oil executive’s private security detail blocked off Zhivopisny Bridge so his daughter could take wedding pictures.
It pissed us off, but what could we do? We played on the little field. That was Russia, the little people playing on the little field. That morning we were the only experienced players at the park. Mostly we played Zombies, us six versus everyone else. One game there were thirty people on the other team and we still won and didn’t take a casualty. I spent a whole game up a tree sniping scrubs and listening to them yell out “hit! hit!” and still not knowing where I was.
Everyone that day had a good sense of humor, none of the macho shit that happens sometimes. The other players got more and more serious about trying to beat us but like in a good way, you know? After each game we’d talk and laugh together and try to give them advice. It was a good vibe. We went back to the van for lunch. As we were eating this guy came out of a slit in the plastic fence around the big field, and lit a cigarette. He was total office plankton: nice shoes, button down shirt under his jacket, leather gloves. Soft, you know? He wasn’t dressed to play at all. He saw us watching him, walked over and asked if we wanted to play. Koshkii is like, “Play you?” in a way that should have melted his face but the guy laughed and said no, did we want to play his friends. He said, come play three games, and if you win even one I’ll pay you ten thousand rubles each. That’s maybe a hundred dollars at the time.
Image: Terraform Studios / Stone Kite
It was one of those moments where you see yourself from the outside, you know? We were sitting there in Maks’ van with all the doors open, eating lunch in our camo, masks pushed up on our heads, guns all around and this plankton wanted us to shoot up some oligarch’s birthday party? Godfather stood and started licking grease off his fingers right away and the rest of us were just behind him. A little payback on the big field sounded sweet. Don’t get me wrong, in Moscow we were used to holding someone’s place in line for five dollars an hour, so it was about the money, too.
The guy told us to take the Go Pros off our guns and wait for him. He disappeared inside and we were left standing there, breath fogging the air. Maks was slapping himself like he did to psyche up before a game, saying he was going to spend the night with an oligarch’s daughter. Koshkii was giving her best death stare to the hole the guy disappeared through. Vitaly and Kostya and I were arguing about whether we should go all out in the first game or hold back and make them think they have a chance so we got to play again. Eventually office plankton came back all smiles, holding open the gap in the fence and beckoning us inside.
The other team was lined up right on the other side, uncomfortably close. We spread out with our backs against the fence, near enough we could have reached out and touched them. My first impression was that they were tall and well geared: gray/white winter camo, Russian infantry boots, and replica Spetznaz AK-74Us. Their clothes were muddy from playing, but you could tell this was the first morning they’d ever been worn. They all looked the same except one, who stood out because he was wearing a pair of tattered blue bunny ears. We all knew exactly where those had come from and it pissed us off.
Those were Karl Marx’s ears.
On the top floor of the Castle there was a single room with windows looking out over the entire field. All over the walls there was graffiti about communism and war and unemployment. As long as anybody could remember there’d been a cheap bust of Karl Marx in the empty fireplace and at some point a pair of bunny ears had appeared on it. The most important rule on the big field was to never touch the bunny ears. It was the thing all the old timers said to the newbies but didn’t explain. “Don’t touch the bunny ears, scrub,” we’d say and they’d look at us like we had three heads and we’d just laugh from behind our face shields. People had to figure it out for themselves. It was a rite of passage.
Then we realized they were all machines.
It was hard to tell because their bodies were covered with clothes, but when the light shone through the mesh of their face masks in the right way you could see they didn’t have a face at all–just angles of metal and plastic. Office plankton guy was standing with a group of old men in real military uniforms. They were all laughing, watching the moment each of us realized we’re about to play against machines.
Only Maks hadn’t seen it yet. He’s standing right across from the machine wearing the ears, and he says “Were you born from your mother’s ass? Don’t touch the bunny ears, scrub.” The thing just reached up and ran its hand through the dirty fabric, like it was a bird preening its wings or something. Then Maks saw it too, and office plankton guy and his friends laughed even harder.
He offered us a chance to back out, but we told him to fuck off. Koshkii asked if the machines could see in infra-red or radar or any other cheating shit, and the guy said no, they could only see in visible light, just like humans.
“We get along fine with just visible light,” he said. “Why can’t the machines? It’s cheap, reliable, and low-power.”
Koshkii told him to go fuck himself and we agreed to play three games of capture the flag.
We set up with a lot of confidence. This was our field and we knew it well. But I could tell we were all jittery, I could hear it in my own voice. We agreed everyone would attack through the Castle toward the enemy flag except me and Koshkii who would stay behind on defense. It was a classic big field capture the flag play for us. The airhorn blew to signal the start of the game, and the others ran off, leaving us in silence.
The outbuilding with our flag had four rooms and an attic. Koshkii kept watch from the attic while I walked a circuit of the ground floor windows. After a few minutes I heard her whisper down that two of the machines were coming through the forest on our left flank. We waited until they were committed, then killed one in a crossfire. She called out contact on the right and I told her to go because I’ve got the second machine pinned down, it’s the one with the bunny ears. It took me maybe sixty seconds of creeping and suppressing it and then I got the angle for the kill shot. It called the hit and raised its hand and walked off the field, staring at me the whole time. As I swapped magazines Niki in her referee’s jacket gave me a thumbs up from behind the machine’s back.
I ran back into our flag room and yelled for Koshkii. From the next room I heard her shout “vsyo chisto!” telling me it’s clear. I’m thinking, we’ve killed three enemies in just a few minutes, and feeling pretty good. I jogged through the door with my gun down and a big grin on my face and clack! clack! clack! clack! I’m taking fire at point blank from this machine standing right in front of me. Each shot was like being stabbed by a pencil. Out the window I saw Koshkii a hundred feet away, walking with one hand up in the air. She’d been shot a while ago, but her voice had come from this room.
I called the hit and raised my hand. I was so confused I wasn’t even mad the machine kept shooting me, five or six times, at point blank. After, I had a bunch of bloody welts on my arm and chest. As I walked out, it grabbed our flag and ran back the way it had come. Turns out it didn’t matter–Vitaly, Godfather, Kostya, and Maks had all been killed. We’d already lost.
We regrouped and I told my story. Koshkii said she’d been shot and walked out without saying a word. Vitaly said one of the machines had imitated Godfather’s voice, gotten him to peek and then shot him right in the face.
We agreed to only use hand signals for the next two rounds.
When the horn blew again, four of us faked an attack but then doubled back through the Castle and waited, watching our flag building. We caught four of the machines from behind and squeezed them between us and Kostya and Vitaly who’d stayed back with our flag. We killed all of them and didn’t take a casualty. Now it was six against two.
We all went on the attack, straight through the Castle. Maks and Vitaly were a room away when I heard gunfire and both of them calling out being hit. I came into the room a moment later and caught the machine with the bunny ears looking the other way. I shot it three or four times, saw the pellets bounce off the back of its head, then it ducked through a doorway without calling the hit. I screamed after it, “Call your hits!” and yelled for a ref and Niki poked her head in just in time to see Bunny Ears lean back into the doorway and shoot me down.
I haven’t explained, airsoft relies on the honor system. The pellets don’t leave any mark on your clothes. If people don’t call their hits the game doesn’t work.
Fuck! I screamed that I’d shot the machine. Niki shrugged and said she’d only seen me get shot. I kept screaming. The other surviving machine came into the room.
Bunny Ears said, “Look at the meat, we’ve hurt its feelings.” And they moved out together, exploding in harsh barking noises which I realized after they left were laughter.
We lost. Two machines killed all six of us. Kostya said Bunny Ears hadn’t called out his hits either. They’d cheated, but truth is we’d expected them to be back defending their flag, not waiting for us in the Castle. We’d been overconfident. We were angry.
Godfather said what we were all thinking. “I want my ten thousand rubles from that train station whore.”
We weren’t thinking of them as machines any longer, just as shitbags.
We lined up for the third game, and Bunny Ears said, “No more flags. Skill against skill.”
The machine wanted to play Elimination, one shot and you’re out. We agreed. We just wanted blood. When Niki sounded the horn, we all ran straight to the Castle. I knew the Castle better than the house I’d grown up in. Hell, we all did. We took positions like we were playing Zombies. Our strategy was to let them come to us, kill them outside where the refs could see it. The fight lasted more than an hour. We killed one of them early, then they got a foothold in the basement and it got ugly from there. We got another one as they pushed the ground floor, then they killed Kostya and Vitaly. Two of us ran out of ammo and we shared, watching our shots. We fell back to the first floor, using our superior knowledge to stay in the fight. We traded kills for Koshkii and Maks and then it was just me and Godfather left, against Bunny Ears and another machine.
The whole game had been epic. I could tell the way the refs were watching with wide eyes from behind their goggles that they’d never seen anything like it before. Looking back I couldn’t believe we kept up the intensity for so long. Godfather and I were holding the end of a long hallway on the second floor. Bunny Ears had been taunting us about how we wasted our lives playing airsoft and we still sucked. Godfather finally lost it and just started yelling this stream of profanity in Italian about how he wanted to fuck the bunny with Maks’ van when I heard something heavy hit on the floor behind us. I turned and saw Bunny Ears in a crouch, just having come through the second floor window behind us. The machine had climbed up the outside of the building just like we did sometimes.. Before I could get my gun up I heard the clack! clack! clack! clack! clack! and felt the pricks of pellets all over my arms and chest. The surprise and pain dropped me onto my back as the other machine crashed into the room. I watched Godfather turning toward Bunny Ears as he writhed in pain getting shot from two directions at point blank.
I lay on my back with the taste of blood in my mouth, exhausted. Godfather was still cursing. Bunny Ears walked over and held out one arm to help me up. I reached out and took its hand. Underneath the tactical gloves I could feel the hard metal of its fingers as it pulled me up. Cold fingers. But before I got my balance it let go, and I fell back, hard, onto the concrete floor.
“What will the meat do when there are millions of us?” Bunny Ears said.
The two machines walked out of the room, not even looking back, harsh barking laughter echoing through the Castle.
Godfather and I walked off the field and rejoined the rest of the team. Everyone was boiling, so angry they could barely talk. That’s when I realized we’d been beaten at our own game. Airsoft taunting was our thing. When we couldn’t win by tactics and skill we won by being assholes. Anger made people predictable. Stupid, and predictable, and the machines had just done it to us. The machines had been trolling us.
The office plankton guy came up to escort us through the fence. Koshkii accused the machines of cheating. He shrugged, a very Russian gesture of acceptance, and said, “The first thing the robotai learn about humans is how easy we are to manipulate through our emotions.”
We pushed through the fence and saw the parking lot was swarming with people. It was getting dark and there were lights everywhere. The men in military uniforms were talking in front of twenty or so cameras. Oh my God, we thought, they’d called a press conference. Just before we walked away, the plankton guy winked at me and said one more thing:
“Don’t feel bad,” he said, “if they didn’t win they knew we’d wipe their brains.”
The machines were fighting for their lives, we were just trying to win a game.
When we got back to the van, everybody was angry. Nobody wanted to go home, but nobody wanted to go back to playing on the little field. Koshkii was so angry she kicked a door on Maks’ van until it didn’t close right. We drove back to Moscow in silence, with the cold wind whistling through the gap in the door.
Koshkii thought the machines were cheaters.
I thought they were better at being us than we were.
