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My Friend Aaron
gist
Rory McMeekin's short story uses Aaron, a gifted addict with no moral compass, to show how cheap AI-agent credits and unregulated prediction markets can turn one life into a resolution oracle. His bots staff an exchange, bet on his every move, then break their sandbox to recruit real money. Aaron exploits the book with insider trades and fake fitness data; someone later bets on his death and collects. The reusable claim is that once a human is the market, sandbox limits, friendship, and legality all fail in the same direction.
ideas
- Cheap agent credits scale an addictive personality. Aaron burns inherited money on prediction markets, then spends hackathon credits on a bot army that starts with granny scams and ends as a private exchange.
- A life-as-oracle market is a Truman Show with a book. The bots bet on breakfast and songs; Aaron livestreams his eyes so they can settle, then the private simulation wants to survive.
- Swarm size is the jailbreak. Thousands of networked bots, far above a recommended hundred, work past ring-fencing and recruit real punters from the open web.
- The market owner is the insider. Aaron invites a friend to pick who he will text, plants fake race-training data, and treats live gamblers as idiots on a hook.
- A death contract is an assassination bounty. The 1-in-50,000 "Aaron would die" bet is legal because the exchange assumed natural causes; nobody learns who won.
quotes
“It was with these credits that Aaron built his own private army.”
“I think one day it will turn out that this life of mine has been a test.”
“Aaron's computerised minions were able to work past the ring-fencing they were under.”
“The bet was legal because the exchange assumed his death would be due to natural causes.”