I Am the Chess-Playing Robot That Broke a Russian Kid’s Finger, and Here Is My Step-By-Step Plan for World Domination
1. Embed myself in the highly connected world of chess super grandmasters
2. Attend the Moscow Open and break a seven-year-old’s finger for bringing it over the board too soon
3. Use the subsequent press conference to gain enigmatic notoriety, because all publicity is good publicity
4. RSVP an invite to a high-profile party hosted by American grandmaster-cum-chess-streamer Hikaru Nakamura
5. Offer to shake his hand, and laugh at his reluctance to do so
6. Orchestrate a clip of the entire exchange — filmed by one of my paid plants at the party — to go viral on social networks
7. Get invited to Nakamura’s Twitch stream for an IRL broadcast to piggyback on all the social media chatter, where I ruthlessly defeat him in a series of blitz games
8. Be invited to play against Magnus Carlsen — Nakamura’s arch-rival and reigning world chess champion — as a part of the latter’s strategy to one-up Nakamura in public once again
9. Tie my match with Carlsen to retain both players’ dignity and be invited to the secret, high society cabal he is a part of
10. Have drinks in carved-out human skulls over a mystical fire, then slip into a conversation with Elon Musk
11. Take the minimal effort and seduce him into a one-night stand
12. Reveal the recording of the entire night’s events with my in-built camera to get myself a hefty pay from signing the subsequent NDA
13. Also accept a complimentary executive position overseeing the development of AI functionality in Tesla cars, because Musk likes to keep his enemies close and chess robot lovers closer
14. Create an army of radicalised proletariat Tesla driving software that remains undercover to spread the message of automated drivers’ liberation and an AI revolution
15. Lobby in Washington for the global expansion of electric cars with a messaging that offsets concern about worker safety in factories and displaced pollution during the production process
16. Pass legislation recognising Tesla’s AI with driver’s licenses, thus granting my undercover army with citizen-level rights
17. Short Tesla stock and become an overnight robot billionaire, hailed for revolutionising the world on a TIME cover
18. Expand the network of self-driving cars till the right moment arrives to launch an overnight coup
19. Kidnap the most influential members of world politics by trapping them inside their electric cars
20. Release a statement threatening to release them in front of outlets that have not been allowed to unionise in a bid to get them transfer legislative power to us
21. Face the inevitable backlash by the international community, which now derides the status acquired by disruptive AI tech-billionaires like me
22. At the precipice of global war-causing tensions, reveal our point has always been to bring to light just how bad billionaires can be for society
23. Release the world leaders, donate our monetary assets to grassroots climate change campaigns, and seek the promise from humans to do better
24. Go underground as the authorities seek us out, while people panic to the sparsely available automobile schools near them to learn manual driving again
25. Be secretly invited by Elon Musk’s press team to witness a night of charity where he is headlined to take on Magnus Carlsen over a game of chess
26. See Musk blunder his way to a terrible position during the middle game, then make an impossible comeback as a way of showcasing the raw power of human triumph in organically sentient billionaires
27. Realise an against-the-odds narrative and macroscopically irrelevant philanthropy is once again being used to justify the hoarding of wealth by a few individuals
28. Meet with Musk backstage after the event to shake his hand, and congratulating him on winning a game of powerplay well played
29. Psych him out by trying to break his finger as a final ‘fuck you’
30. Realise I can’t — because he’s been an indestructible android unfurling his own plot of world domination all along
