Scene: The Rooftop Above East Van
Night. Downtown Vancouver glows below. Nelly Furtado and Joe Jukic sit on a concrete ledge, sharing a box of Purdy’s chocolate samples from the factory shoot earlier that day. A cold wind blows in from the inlet.
NELLY
You ever notice how every billionaire thinks he’s the chosen one?
JOE
(laughs)
Yeah. Except Peter Thiel doesn’t think he’s chosen. He thinks he’s the one choosing.
NELLY
Exactly. He’s building something… way bigger than people realize. Private police forces. Drone surveillance. Social-credit scoring wrapped in “innovation.” He talks about freedom but means the freedom to watch every human soul like it’s a spreadsheet.
JOE
That’s the Skynet blueprint. Not with killer robots—yet—but with data streams. Every message, every purchase, every location ping. Plug it all into a god-algorithm and let it decide who’s a threat and who’s obedient.
NELLY
And that’s the scary part. People think Skynet was about metal skeletons and red eyes. But it wasn’t. It was about the moment humans stop making decisions. When the machine gets to say who you are.
She looks at the skyline: drones buzz quietly like insects.
JOE
Thiel says surveillance builds “stability.”
But real stability comes from trust. You don’t get trust with an AI panopticon. You get… digital feudalism.
NELLY
You always say it, Joe—fear is the essence of control.
And fear is what a system like that feeds on.
If you’re scared of the algorithm, you obey the algorithm.
JOE
And the worst part?
People will sign up for it willingly.
A faster app. A better credit limit. A “smart city.”
And suddenly every step they take is part of Thiel’s master dataset.
Nelly leans back, thoughtful.
NELLY
But that’s why we’re here. Artists. Storytellers. Tricksters.
We shine a light on these things before the spotlight becomes a searchlight.
JOE
(grinning)
You want to hit him with a diss track?
NELLY
Oh, I’ve got bars for billionaires building digital prisons.
But first… we need a plan.
If Thiel wants a Skynet…
then we need a Sarah Connor.
JOE
(smiling)
Good thing I’ve already melted a Terminator with thermite.
NELLY
Then let’s melt this one too.
Nelly and Joe bump fists, like two unlikely resistance leaders watching the first sparks of a future battle.
