Tears of the Divine Market

Libertarian Theological Action-Romance: "Atlas Wept" meets "The Da Vinci Shack"

Chapter 1

The Gospel of Liquidity

The TED Talk stage was a crucifix, lit in the cold blue of a Bloomberg terminal. John Steelheart stood at its apex, his tailored suit sharp enough to cut capital gains taxes, his smile calibrated to a 7.4% approval bump. Above him, holographic eagles circled—bald, gold-plated, and weeping algorithmic tears that dissolved into the hashtag #VirtueSignaling. The audience, a sea of venture capitalists wearing “Disrupt Mortality” pins, leaned forward as he raised a hand. The screen behind him flickered: “GaltCorp Presents: The Morality of Tax Evasion™.”

“We,” he began, the word a bullet fired from a Forbes cover, “are the last bastion of true faith. Not in gods. Not in governments. In gains.” The eagles swooped lower, trailing equations that proved altruism was a Ponzi scheme. “They call us selfish. Good. Selfishness is the soul’s profit margin.” A smattering of applause, crisp as freshly minted stock options. Steelheart’s ocular implants zoomed on a heckler in the back—a gaunt man in a “Tax the Cloud” T-shirt. “Ah, a parasite,” he sneered. “Tell me, comrade—do you also hate gravity for daring to charge you with mass?”

The crowd roared. Steelheart’s bionic tear ducts whirred softly, a feature his PR team insisted would “humanize the brand.” A single diamond-laced tear slid down his cheek, glinting under the stagelight. “Behold,” he whispered, voice cracking on purpose. “The cost of carrying your weakness.” The tear hit the stage, and the floorboards sang with auto-tuned hymns to the invisible hand.

Then the holograms died.

The eagles froze mid-swoop, pixels bleeding into static. The screen behind him erupted in a seizure of Renaissance hues—da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi materialized, but Jesus now held an NFT receipt labeled “Certified Pre-Owned Soul (Non-Refundable).” A woman’s voice, all velvet and nitro, echoed from the rafters: “Render unto Caesar… this.”

Sister Lila Rain dropped from the ceiling, her nun’s habit swapped for a trench coat lined with sacramental server blades. She landed in a crouch, a USB rosary swinging from her neck. The audience gasped; three fainted at the heresy of a woman interrupting a billionaire. Steelheart’s tear ducts hissed, flooding the stage with synthetic grief. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, slipping on his own tears.

“The hell is precisely the problem,” Lila said, vaulting onto his podium. Up close, she smelled of incense and ransomware. She grabbed his tie, silk choking his “Don’t Tread on Me” cufflinks, and yanked him toward the corrupted hologram. “Look harder, Pharaoh. Your tears are talking.”

The pooled tears had crystallized into a binary code: *01010011 01000101 01000101 01001011 00100000 01010100 01001000 01000101 00100000 01001000 01001111 01001100 01011001 00100000 01010010 01001111 01001001*.

“Seek the Holy ROI,” Lila translated, rolling her eyes. “God’s a private equity bro now. Cute.”

Steelheart’s implants flickered. ROI—Return on Investment. His dead wife’s last word, gasped between bloodied tax audits. “Ro… I…” He’d thought she meant him.

Before he could reboot, SEC agents stormed the hall, taser-crosses crackling. Agent Smith-Coulson led the charge, his badge engraved with “In Audits We Trust.” “John Steelheart,” he barked, “you’re under arrest for spiritual insider trading.”

Lila grabbed Steelheart’s arm, her grip a firewall. “Now you weep,” she muttered. “How original.” She smashed a vial of holy water (60% ethanol, 40% Dark Web code). The stage exploded in a smoke of incense and SSL certificates.

As they fled through a service exit, the Salvator Mundi winked. Behind Jesus, a raccoon in a tiny pope hat scuttled across the frame, dragging a sack of Bitcoin.

Chapter 2

The Vatican Server Farm Heist

(or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blockchain)

The chapel smelled of burnt incense and overheating GPUs. Sister Lila Rain crouched behind a marble pew carved with the Ten Commandments of Data Privacy (“Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Bandwidth”), her trench coat snagging on a USB port hidden in the confessional booth. Above her, holographic saints flickered—St. Steve Jobs with a halo of iCloud symbols, St. Bezos holding a flaming Prime delivery box. John Steelheart loomed beside her, his suit still damp with the holy water-smoke of their escape. He glared at the altar, where friars in hooded robes chanted lines of Python code into censers that billowed binary smoke.

“A server farm,” he hissed. “In a church? How… egalitarian.”

Lila ignored him, her fingers flying across the USB rosary. “The God Algorithm’s here. Buried in the Book of Matthew 2FA.” She nodded toward the altar, where a friar typed furiously on a keyboard shaped like a crucifix. “Guarded by a firewall even He couldn’t breach.”

“He who?” Steelheart scoffed.

“The raccoon,” she said, as if it were obvious.

Before he could demand elaboration, SEC agents stormed the nave. Agent Smith-Coulson led the charge, his taser-cross crackling with the wrath of a thousand audits. “Yield,” he boomed, “in the name of the Federal Reserve!”

Lila lunged, her boot connecting with a agent’s ribs. “Give unto Caesar… THIS!” The taser-cross clattered to the floor, its screen displaying “404 Salvation Not Found.” Steelheart grabbed it, swinging wildly—a libertarian David against the Goliath of big government. Sparks flew as he parried a blow, his cufflinks flashing “In Gold We Trust.”

“The algorithm!” Lila shouted, ducking a taser-blast that vaporized a stained-glass window of Elon Musk as Moses. “It’s in the Tabernacle of TLS Encryption!”

They fought toward the altar, past friars who chanted “sudo apt-get pray” and hurled communion wafers like shurikens. Steelheart’s tear ducts malfunctioned again, dripping nanobot-laced tears that hissed where they struck the floor. “Pathetic,” he growled, swatting aside a agent. “Your regulations can’t bind a free market!”

A friar leaped into their path, brandishing a thurible that spewed firewall code. Lila jammed her rosary into its chain, overloading the system with a Hail Mary loop. The air sizzled—“Runtime Error: Faith Not Found”—and the friar collapsed into a pile of scapulars.

The altar screen lit up: “Welcome to Souls.xlsx.”

Steelheart stared. “It’s… a spreadsheet?”

“The divine ledger,” Lila said, her voice reverent. “Every soul’s credit score, calculated by God’s own risk-assessment AI.”

A low, gravelly chuckle echoed from the rafters. “Credit scores,” said a voice like a diesel engine gargling gravel. “How… quaint.”

They turned. Perched on the pulpit was a raccoon, its eyes glowing the radioactive green of a Bloomberg terminal. It wore a tiny mitre tilted rakishly over one ear, paws clasped around a half-eaten Bitcoin.

“Ah,” the raccoon said, tossing the Bitcoin into the air. “The libertarian and the nun. How… predictable.”

Steelheart’s ocular implants zoomed. “You’re… sentient?”

“Sentient?” The raccoon snorted. “I am enlightened. The divine trash heap of capitalism has its perks.” It leaped down, tail flicking toward the spreadsheet. “You seek the God Algorithm? It’s a loop. Souls in, tax deductions out. Tedious.”

Lila stepped forward. “We need to destroy it. Before the SEC turns it into a spiritual surveillance state.”

The raccoon yawned. “Destroy it? Darling, I’ve tried. It’s write-protected by the Holy Ghost.” It paused, licking its paws. “Unless… you’re willing to hack the Trinity.”

Agent Smith-Coulson burst through the door, taser-cross aimed. “Drop the mammal!”

The raccoon sighed. “Mortals. So taxing.” It slapped a paw on the altar. The chapel trembled as the spreadsheet recalculated—“SOULS LIQUIDATED.”

A blast of divine SQL queries erupted, flinging agents into the walls. Steelheart grabbed Lila, shielding her with his body as stained-glass shards rained down. “Why?” he shouted over the chaos.

The raccoon winked. “Audits are… inelegant.” It vanished in a puff of blockchain smoke, leaving behind a business card: “Spirit Guide & Tax Evasion Consultant. No Souls. No Salvation. No Refunds.”

As the SEC groaned, Lila yanked Steelheart toward an exit. “We need to find God 2.0.”

“God 2.0?”

She smirked. “He’s in beta.”

Above them, a holographic Virgin Mary flickered, her halo replaced by a loading wheel.

Chapter 3

Love and Loss in the Libertarian Utopia

A flashback

The air in Galt’s Gulch tasted like sterilized capitalism. John Steelheart staggered through the fever dream, his Italian loafers sinking into artificial grass genetically engineered to repel dandelions—“the socialist of weeds.” Above him, the sky flickered with holographic ticker tape: “Freedom™: 1.2% Up Today.”

His dead wife, Mara, stood in the center of the cul-de-sac, chiseling a marble statue of Karl Marx. Her hands bled, crimson rivulets pooling around Marx’s chiseled beard. “Ro… I…” she gasped, her voice a dial-up tone fading into static.

“Mara,” Steelheart whispered, his tear ducts dry-heaving. “You’re… alive?”

She turned, her eyes two IRS audit notices. “Alive? In your economy?” She coughed, splattering the statue with blood that crystallized into tax forms. “You leveraged my heart, John. Short-sold my soul.”

The dream glitched. Suddenly, they were in their old loft, a minimalist nightmare of glass and titanium. Mara’s art—a series of paintings titled “Collective Pulse”—clashed violently with Steelheart’s gold-plated stock ticker. One canvas depicted a crowd holding scissors, snipping the strings of a puppet labeled “Free Will.”

“Your art is… subprime,” he’d once told her, adjusting his cufflinks. “No ROI.”

“Love isn’t a fiscal quarter,” she’d shot back, slamming a mug of fair-trade coffee (a guilty pleasure) onto his algorithmic trading desk.

Now, in the dream, Mara pressed a trembling hand to his chest. “Your heart’s a hostile takeover,” she said, as her skin pixelated. “All leveraged debt… no liquidity.”

The scene shifted. Mara lay in a hospital bed, wires snaking into her veins like Section 16(b) clauses. “They’re taxing my bone marrow,” she wheezed, clutching an IV bag labeled “SEC Compliance Drip.” “Regulated to death… by your free market.”

Steelheart woke screaming, cold sweat pooling in the hollows of his ocular implants. Sister Lila Rain stared down at him, her USB rosary glowing in the dark of the stolen Tesla Popemobile. Outside, the Mojave Desert stretched endlessly, a metaphor he was too exhausted to parse.

“You were muttering about amortized love,” Lila said, her voice softer than expected.

He sat up, the leather seat creaking like a confessional booth. “A… dream.”

“Bullshit.” She tossed him a canteen of holy water (blessed by an AI priest, 70% ethanol). “Your wife. The SEC killed her, didn’t they?”

Steelheart’s jaw tightened. “Killed is… inelegant. They repossessed her vitality.”

Lila snorted. “Let me guess. She believed in ‘we’ instead of ‘me’?”

“She believed in sunsets,” he spat. “In unmonetized beauty. A glitch in the system.”

Silence. The Tesla’s autopilot hummed “Imagine” in binary.

Lila unclipped a locket, revealing a hologram of a man with a protest sign: “Abolish the Federal Reserve (But First, Abolish My Student Debt).” “His name was Alex,” she said. “Wrote poems about eating the rich. SEC deemed him… toxic equity.”

Steelheart squinted. “Poetry? The least scalable asset.”

“They froze his accounts. All of them. Even his blood type.” Her thumb brushed the hologram. “He starved holding a ‘Taxation is Theft’ sign. Irony died that day too.”

Steelheart’s tear ducts sputtered, producing a single diamond tear. “Sentimentality is a liability.”

“So is being a dick,” Lila snapped.

A raccoon materialized in the backseat, licking Bitcoin residue off its paws. “How quaint,” it drawled. “Two orphans of oppressive systems, bonding over trauma arbitrage.”

Steelheart brandished a taser-cross. “You.”

The raccoon yawned. “Save the drama for the holy spreadsheet, Pharaoh. God 2.0’s waiting.” It tossed a business card: “Divine Bailouts: Judgment Day Financing. 0% APR (Souls Required).”

As the raccoon vanished, Lila revved the Tesla toward the horizon. Steelheart stared at the locket, Alex’s hologram flickering. “Love,” he muttered, “is a non-deductible expense.”

Chapter 4

The Raccoon’s PowerPoint Revelation

The Mojave Desert stretched like a bankrupted soul, cracked and infinite under a sky bleached by the glare of unregulated capitalism. The Tesla Popemobile shuddered to a halt outside a shack that defied physics—a leaning hovel of rusted server racks and splintered pews, its roof crowned by a crooked satellite dish shaped like a crucifix. A neon sign buzzed: “God 2.0 Beta Testing: Eternal Salvation (Pending Board Approval).” Sister Lila killed the engine, her trench coat rustling with the static of divine impatience. John Steelheart stepped out, his loafers sinking into sand that hissed like a thousand privatized snakes.

The raccoon awaited them on the porch, paws clasped around a kombucha bottle labeled “Holy Spirit Brew: 100% Salvation Guaranteed (Void in Hell).” “Took you long enough,” it drawled, tipping its tiny mitre. “God’s got a shareholder meeting in five. Let’s pivot.”

Inside, the shack was a Silicon Valley chapel. Server towers hummed hymns; fiber-optic cables snaked like rosaries through the rafters. At the center floated God 2.0—a cumulus cloud with a cowboy hat, its voice a syrupy southern drawl that smelled vaguely of bourbon and tax exemptions. “Howdy, pilgrims,” it boomed, lightning flickering in its beard. “Y’all here for the Kingdom Come IPO or the fire ‘n’ brimstone package?”

Steelheart’s ocular implants narrowed. “We’re here to disrupt salvation.”

The raccoon hopped onto a holographic pulpit, pulling up a PowerPoint titled “The Holy Trinity of Profit: A Subsidiary of Heaven LLC.” “Let’s synergize,” it said, clicking to Slide 1: a Venn diagram merging the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with CEO, Shareholders, and Offshore Accounts. “Observe. The Father monetizes miracles. The Son optimizes parables for viral engagement. The Holy Ghost?” It smirked. “Tax-deductible.”

Lila crossed her arms. “So the soul is just… equity?”

“Worse,” God 2.0 chuckled, sipping kombucha. “It’s an illiquid asset. But bless your heart—we’re leveraging the rapture.” The cloud parted, revealing a floating Excel sheet titled Souls.xlsx. Rows of names glowed, each tagged with a credit score and a sin-to-dividend ratio.

Steelheart’s tear ducts whirred. “This… this is genius.”

“Genius?” Lila snarled. “It’s a spiritual pyramid scheme!” She lunged for the servers, her USB rosary sparking.

The raccoon sighed. “Typical. Always with the smashy-smashy.” It clicked to Slide 2: “Divine Leverage: How to Short-Sell Sin.” “Why destroy the algorithm when you can monetize it? Souls are derivatives, baby. Bundle ‘em, sell ‘em, collapse the celestial economy.”

God 2.0 rumbled approvingly. “Y’all ever heard of indulgences 2.0? Microtransactions for mercy. We’re in beta with the Vatican.”

Steelheart’s pupils dilated, reflecting dollar signs. “I’ll buy it. All of it.” He whipped out his phone, scanning God 2.0’s QR code tattooed with “In Doge We Trust.”

Lila grabbed his wrist. “You’re auctioning souls?”

“Liberating* them,”* he corrected. “Free market* salvation. Democratized damnation.”*

The raccoon’s tail twitched. “Oh, this’ll be rich.”

A hologram erupted—Elon Musk’s cryogenically frozen head, floating in a Tesla-shaped aquarium. “John!” it bubbled. “I’ll take 51% of the Kingdom Come IPO! Throw in the raccoon and I’ll Venmo you a planet.”

Lila’s USB rosary flared. “No.” She jammed it into the server rack, overloading the system with a torrent of open-source psalms. Alarms blared; God 2.0’s cloud darkened to storm-gray. “Heretic!” it thundered.

The raccoon leaped onto Steelheart’s shoulder, whispering, “Psst. Wanna see Slide 3?” It clicked. The screen displayed: “Exit Strategy: How to Crash the Divine Market (and Blame the Fed).”

Lila wrestled with God 2.0’s firewall, her trench coat smoking. “Steelheart! Help or perish!”

He hesitated, Musk’s head chanting “Mars colony! Mars colony!” in his ear. Then—Mara’s face flickered in the static, pixelated and bleeding tax forms.

“Ro… I…”*

He grabbed the raccoon and hurled it at the server. “DO IT!”

The raccoon sighed. “Fine. But you’re terrible at altruism.” It typed a command: /bin/rm -rf heaven

The shack exploded in a supernova of SQL queries and kombucha.

Chapter 5

Tears vs. Torrent

The ruins of God 2.0’s shack smoldered under a sky now streaked with the neon afterbirth of divine code—SQL queries bleeding into the stratosphere, kombucha rain sizzling against the sand. Sister Lila Rain crouched in the ash, her trench coat charred to a relic of its former heresy, the USB rosary melted into a lump of holy slag. John Steelheart stood over her, his suit in tatters, ocular implants flickering between rage and revelation. The raccoon, missing half its fur and all its patience, dragged a Bitcoin like a ball and chain through the debris. “Well,” it rasped, “that went swimmingly.”

They’d barely staggered into the stolen Tesla Popemobile when the stock exchange lit up the horizon—a ziggurat of glass and greed, its spire crowned by a revolving hologram of the Dow Jones Industrial Average crucified on a golden cross. NYSE Altar of the Eternal Bull Market, read the sign, glowing like a sermon in Times New Hellfire. Agent Smith-Coulson awaited them at the entrance, his taser-cross upgraded to a trident crackling with the wrath of three-letter agencies. Behind him, SEC agents chanted in dead Latin, their robes stitched with the seals of the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the DMV.

Steelheart’s tear ducts, now more machine than man, dripped nanobot tears that hissed where they struck the pavement. “This ends here,” he growled, though whether he meant the algorithm, the SEC, or his own unraveling soul was unclear. Lila said nothing, her eyes fixed on the tower. She’d stopped praying an hour ago. Now, she compiled.

The raccoon limped ahead, its mitre askew. “Remember the three Bs,” it muttered. “Bribes, blasphemy, and brutal efficiency.”*

Inside, the trading floor was a cathedral of avarice. Brokers in Armani hairshirts genuflected before scrolling tickers, their palms pressed to the cold glass of Bloomberg terminals as if absorbing communion. Above it all loomed the God Algorithm—Souls.xlsx, now projected in IMAX glory, each cell glowing with the cold calculus of damnation.

“There,” Lila hissed. “The holy mainframe.” She pointed to a server rack behind the altar, its cables braided into a crown of thorns.

Agent Smith-Coulson materialized from the shadows, trident raised. “Heretics,” he spat. “The market abhors a vacuum. Especially one filled with your ideological debris.”

The battle began with a taser-bolt to the face.

Lila dove, her body a blur of sacramental fury, disarming agents with a communion wafer shuriken technique she’d learned from a YouTube tutorial. Steelheart swung his diamond-laced tears like nunchucks, each droplet a microdose of libertarian rage. The raccoon, ever the opportunist, hijacked a Bloomberg terminal and shorted the SEC’s souls into oblivion.

“Focus!” Lila screamed as Smith-Coulson’s trident grazed her arm, searing flesh with the sacred voltage of compliance. “The mainframe!”

Steelheart reached it first, his fingers dancing across the keyboard like a concert pianist with a vendetta. Souls.xlsx flickered—“DELETE ALL Y/N”—as Smith-Coulson lunged. “NO!” the agent roared. “You’ll collapse the cosmic economy!”

“Exactly,” Steelheart whispered.

But the algorithm was write-protected. “Admin Privileges Required,” blinked the screen.

Lila grabbed his shoulder, blood smearing his suit. “Use the tears,”* she said. “The nanobots—they’re holy water now.”

He hesitated. Mara’s face flickered in his implants. “Ro… I…”

He plunged his face into the keyboard and wept.

Nanobot tears flooded the server, a torrent of liquid scripture corroding firewalls and frying sin algorithms. Souls.xlsx glitched, cells bursting into pixelated doves. The raccoon whooped, tossing Bitcoins like grenades. “Eat volatility, fascists!”

Smith-Coulson howled, charging with his trident—but Lila intercepted him, her body a shield of flesh and fury. “Go!” she screamed at Steelheart. “CRASH IT!”

The screen flashed: “SOULS DELETED. INITIATE DIVINE RECKONING? Y/N.”

“DO IT!” the raccoon yelled, now riding a rogue trading bot like a mechanical bull.

Steelheart slammed Y.

The tower erupted.

Not in fire, but in data—a supernova of ones and zeros, a blockchain Big Bang. Brokers dissolved into TPS reports. Smith-Coulson evaporated mid-sneer, his trident clattering to the floor. Lila, bathed in the glow, turned to Steelheart. “We… did it?”*

Then she collapsed, her body flickering like a corrupted JPEG.

“NO!” Steelheart roared, catching her. “WHY?”

The raccoon limped over, fur smoking. “She merged with the algorithm. To override the write-protect. Heroic. Stupid. Same difference.”*

Lila’s hand gripped his, weak but defiant. “Your… tears,”* she gasped. “They’re… tax-deductible now. Use them… wisely.” Her body pixelated, dissolving into a tweet that flashed across every screen on Earth: “TAXATION IS SIN. ALSO, FUCK THE SEC. - @SisterLilaRain.”

The raccoon saluted. “Viral and virtuous. Brava.”*

Steelheart knelt in the digital ash, his diamond tears pooling into a crypto-wallet. The raccoon nudged him. “Cheer up, Pharaoh. Salvation’s a subprime mortgage anyway.”*

Outside, the neon cross of the NYSE Altar crumbled, its debris forming a new constellation in the sky: “Galt’s Gulch Galactic.”

Epilogue

The Holy Dividend

The beach was not a metaphor. It was a literal beach, its waves a crashing tide of candlestick charts, its sand a shifting mosaic of NASDAQ ticker symbols that prickled between John Steelheart’s toes like the ghost of every bad trade he’d ever made. He sat on a throne of frozen tears—NFTs now, cryogenically preserved and selling fast on SoulSwap™—and stared at the horizon where the sun hung like a golden IPO, forever on the brink of dawn. His ocular implants had upgraded to a subscription model; every blink cost him $4.99 in “existential royalties.” Behind him, a hologram of Sister Lila Rain flickered, her pixelated arms crossed, her tweet immortalized in the sky: “TAXATION IS SIN. ALSO, FUCK THE SEC. - @SisterLilaRain (3.2B likes).”

The raccoon found him there, because of course it did. It arrived in a driverless Tesla plastered with ads for “RaptureCoin™: Get Ascended or Die Tryin’.” Its fur had grown back, platinum-blond and styled into a corporate pompadour. A tiny Rolex glinted on its wrist. “Nice digs,” it said, tossing him a coconut engraved with “Influence 10:10.” “Heard you’re the new messiah of microtransactions.”*

Steelheart sipped the coconut. It tasted like venture capital. “Salvation’s a volume game,”* he said, his voice a flatline of a man who’d sold his soul to buy it back at a markup. “They want tears? I’ll manufacture them. Artisanal despair. Small-batch grief.”*

The raccoon snorted, adjusting its tie. “You’ve gone full circular economy. Pathetic.”* It gestured to the ocean, where a cruise ship shaped like Ayn Rand’s skull plowed through the charts. “Even Mara’s got a side hustle now.”

A hologram rippled—Mara’s face, serene and monetized, hawking “Posthumous Art™: Socialism, But as an NFT!” Steelheart’s tear ducts whirred, dispensing a limited-edition GriefCoin. “She’d hate this,” he muttered.

“She’d hate you,”* the raccoon corrected. “But hey. Hate’s a renewable resource.”*

They sat in silence, the crypto waves chewing the shore. The raccoon’s Tesla beeped. “Gotta run. Judgment Day’s a quarterly event now. Metrics to meet.”* It tossed him a business card: “Afterlife Acquisitions: Souls Bought, Sold, & Securitized. Ask About Our Rapture Bundle!”

As the Tesla vanished, Steelheart stood, his throne of tears melting into the sand. He waded into the surf, the charts parting around him like the Red Sea if Moses had been a hedge fund manager. The water burned, each wave a live feed of his legacy: GaltCorp’s stock price flatlining, Lila’s tweet memed into oblivion, the SEC rebranded as “Salvation Enforcement & Compliance.”

A glint caught his eye—a USB drive wedged in the sand, labeled “Follow Your Personal Legend™.” He laughed, a sound like a broken dividend bell, and hurled it into the void.

“Been there,” he said. “Done that.”

The beach shuddered. From the depths rose a figure—part raccoon, part Lila, part Mara—a hybrid deity of clout and contradiction. Mother Market, the internet had dubbed her, though her TikTok handle was @HolyDividendGrl. She wore server blades as a crown, her eyes two spinning loading wheels.

“John Steelheart,” she intoned, her voice a mashup of every Alexa ever sold. “Your portfolio… is diverse.”*

He shrugged. “I diversified.”

She extended a hand, the Holy Ghost’s blockchain glowing in her palm. “Join me. Merge. We’ll disrupt eternity.”*

He hesitated. Then—

He spat a diamond tear into the surf. “I’ll pass.”

Mother Market tilted her head. “Why?”

He gestured to the horizon, where the Tesla’s taillights winked like fallen stars. “I’m waiting for a hostile takeover.”*

She dissolved, pixels scattering into the algorithmic tide. Steelheart turned back to his throne, now a puddle of liquid regret. He sat anyway.

The tweet above him flickered one last time before dimming: “@SisterLilaRain: Logging off. ✌️”

In the silence, a new hologram sputtered to life—a raccoon in a Tesla ad, winking beside the words “Eternal Returns… Guaranteed.”

Steelheart’s laugh echoed across the beach, empty as a tax haven.

And the market…

…was good.

THE END

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Thank you!

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This short story was generated using DeepSeek R1. (~98% AI)

Prompt: Give ten popular works of fiction that are - by objective standards - severely overrated. Order them accordingly.

Here’s a list of ten popular works of fiction often cited as overrated, ordered by the perceived gap between their commercial success/popularity and critical reception or literary merit. This ranking reflects common critiques rather than absolute judgment, as literary value remains subjective:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

   • Criticized for weak prose, problematic romanticization of control, and repetitive storytelling, despite massive commercial success.

2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

   • Panned for flat characters, melodramatic pacing, and perpetuating unhealthy relationship dynamics, yet a cultural phenomenon in YA literature.

3. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

   • Bestselling but derided for formulaic writing, historical inaccuracies, and shallow character development.

4. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

   • Loved for nostalgia-driven references but criticized for relying on pop culture over plot depth or originality.

5. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

   • Polarizing for its heavy-handed philosophical preaching, one-dimensional characters, and bloated narrative.

6. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

   • A global bestseller often deemed overly simplistic, with a repetitive, fortune-cookie-style narrative.

7. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

   • Popular for its romance but criticized as formulaic, sentimental, and lacking in emotional complexity.

8. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

   • A bestseller dismissed as melodramatic and clichéd, with idealized, unrealistic romance.

9. Divergent by Veronica Roth

   • A YA hit overshadowed by critiques of derivative worldbuilding and underdeveloped themes compared to peers like The Hunger Games.

10. The Shack by William P. Young

    • Commercial success marred by critiques of clunky prose, theological oversimplification, and emotional manipulation.

Note: This list reflects recurring critiques, but artistic merit is inherently subjective. Many of these works resonate deeply with readers despite their flaws, highlighting the diversity of literary tastes.

Prompt: We need to write a short story of a single scene that is even worse. To do that, pick two works from the list above, and blend some of their worst features. The resulting story must look convincing, but may also be deeply flawed. Give four very interesting combinations like that.

Here are four delightfully terrible short story concepts, blending the most infamous flaws of the works from the list. Each is a trainwreck of clichés, tonal whiplash, and narrative shortcuts—yet plausibly marketable:

1. Shades of Twilight Eternal

Combines: Fifty Shades of Grey (stilted prose, power-imbalanced romance) + Twilight (sparkly supernatural melodrama, passive protagonist)

Plot:
Emmalynn, a clumsy college student with “eyes like a wounded fawn,” interns at a Seattle tech firm run by CEO Caspian Nocturne, a 217-year-old vampire-CEO hybrid who wears only gray silk suits (to “dull the pain of eternity”). He instantly fixates on her “uniquely average” scent and assigns her to debug a project titled Operation Red Room (a BDSM-themed VR app). Their romance blooms as Caspian lectures her about the “economics of desire” while they traipse through misty forests, where he occasionally glows faintly chartreuse (“my soul’s aura, babygirl”). Dialogue peaks with: “You’re mine to corrupt… but consent is so hot right now.”

Flaws:

• Vampire lore explained via PowerPoint slides mid-romantic scene.

• Protagonist’s sole personality trait: tripping over ethernet cables.

• Climax: Caspian’s ex, a werewolf-SEC investigator, audits the company.

2. The Alchemist’s Easter Egg

Combines: The Alchemist (vague pseudo-profundity) + Ready Player One (reference sludge, zero subtlety)

Plot:
Zeke, a disillusioned barista, finds a cryptic USB drive in his latte foam labeled “Follow Your Personal Legend™.” It bootstraps a VR quest where he must collect Seven Nostalgic Artifacts (e.g., a Tamagotchi containing “the soul of the universe”) while guided by a hologram of Sigmund Freud voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. Each artifact unlocks a fortune-cookie mantra (“The password is ‘believe’!”). Zeke’s love interest, Karina, exists solely to remind him he’s “the Chosen One (Terms and Conditions Apply).” Final boss: a CGI Neil deGrasse Tyson monologuing about astrophysics as metaphor.

Flaws:

• Wisdom = random 1980s trivia.

• Karina’s dialogue: “You’re so… protagonist-y.”

• Freud’s advice: “Sometimes a cigar is just a tax evasion scheme.”

3. Atlas Wept

Combines: Atlas Shrugged (self-righteous monologuing) + The Notebook (saccharine romance, soggy tissues)

Plot:
In a dystopia where the government bans entrepreneurial crying, steel magnate John Galen Steel (a man “with cheekbones that could cut regulations”) meets free-spirited artist Lila Rain at a train station. She paints “souls, not systems!”; he grumbles about “the moochers’ tears.” Their love is tested when bureaucrats outlaw hand-holding. John delivers a 14-page speech about “the virtue of selfish kisses” while Lila slowly dies of Plot Convenience Fever™, whispering, “Don’t let them tax… our… sunset…” Epilogue: John founds a gated community called Galt’s Gulch Resort & Spa.

Flaws:

• Romantic tension = debating Ayn Rand at a candlelit dinner.

• Lila’s death scene: “Your tears… are… gross domestic product…”

• Product placement for Libertarian™ tissues (“For when you really mean it”).

4. The Da Vinci Shack

Combines: The Shack (clunky theology) + The Da Vinci Code (conspiracy spaghetti, “research”)

Plot:
Grieving widower Robert Langdon Jr. uncovers a clue in his wife’s suicide note: a GPS coordinate leading to a sentient AI cottage in rural Idaho. Inside, God is a nonbinary ASMR YouTuber, Jesus is a barista with a Holy Grail tattoo, and the Holy Spirit is a feral raccoon. They reveal Robert’s wife faked her death to join The Mary Magdalene Collective, a feminist cryptocracy controlling the stock market via Illuminati TikTok trends. Chases ensue: Robert flees albino Opus Dei influencers on electric unicycles while decoding actual Da Vinci paintings (annotated with emojis).

Flaws:

• Theology resolved via a PowerPoint presentation titled “God’s Pronouns: Let’s Discuss.”

• The raccoon’s only line: “Divinity is a trash panda, bro.”

• The Collective’s password: Password123.

Each concept is a masterclass in ”How Did This Get Published?” energy, blending market-tested tropes with literary cyanide.

Prompt: For our final installment, we will attempt a longer story. Use a confusing blend of ideas 3 and 4: "Atlas Wept" and "The Da Vinci Shack". This will be harder, because there are a total of 4 different (terrible) stories that we need to use elements from. Think about a good way to present this to our Substack audience. What genre should this even be? Which character or characters do we use? This will be a story of ten to fifteen pages. We need something extremely memorable. Don't do any writing yet, just give an outline.

(…)

Prompt: We need something more compact and explosive. Also, the unique characteristics of our source material needs to show through. Give a more impactful outline of 6 scenes max. Also give some thought to the most impactful writing style.

Okay, let's tackle this. The user wants a more compact and explosive outline for the story blending "Atlas Wept" and "The Da Vinci Shack." They mentioned including elements from four terrible stories, so I need to ensure both original sources (Atlas Shrugged, The Notebook, The Shack, The Da Vinci Code) are represented. The previous outline was 12 scenes, but now it needs to be condensed into 6 scenes max.

First, I need to identify the key elements from each source:

- **Atlas Shrugged**: Libertarian themes, monologues, corporate titans, dystopian regulation.

- **The Notebook**: Melodramatic romance, tragic love, emotional manipulation.

- **The Shack**: Theological oversimplification, emotional trauma, unconventional depictions of God.

- **The Da Vinci Code**: Conspiracy theories, historical art references, action-packed chases.

The user wants the story to be "compact and explosive," so each scene needs high impact. Also, the writing style should reflect the problematic styles of the source materials—stilted prose, forced profundity, clichéd dialogue, and over-the-top melodrama.

I need to merge these into a coherent, fast-paced plot. Let's think of a protagonist who embodies both the corporate titan from Atlas Shrugged and the tragic romantic lead from The Notebook. The conspiracy element from Da Vinci Code can drive the plot, while theological elements from The Shack add a spiritual layer.

Possible outline:

1. **Opening Scene**: Introduce the protagonist, a libertarian CEO with a tragic past, during a high-stakes event where his emotional vulnerability (tears) is exposed, linking to The Notebook's melodrama.

2. **Inciting Incident**: A radical nun (from The Shack's theological angle) reveals a conspiracy involving a hidden religious artifact tied to corporate greed, merging Da Vinci Code's conspiracy with Atlas Shrugged's anti-government themes.

3. **Action Chase**: Combine Da Vinci Code's chase scenes with corporate espionage, maybe involving a tech mcguffin like an algorithm or NFT.

4. **Midpoint Revelation**: The protagonist's past trauma is revealed (Notebook's tragedy), tied to the conspiracy. The nun's backstory (The Shack's emotional trauma) is exposed.

5. **Climactic Showdown**: A showdown where the protagonist must choose between profit and redemption, with over-the-top monologues (Atlas Shrugged) and theological debates (The Shack).

6. **Ambiguous Ending**: Merge the open-ended, "profound" endings of the sources—maybe the artifact's power is unleashed ambiguously, leaving room for sequel hooks.

Writing style should be heavy on purple prose, mixed metaphors, and abrupt tonal shifts. Dialogue should be clichéd, with forced emotional moments and preachy monologues. Need to ensure each scene escalates the stakes rapidly, keeping it explosive.

Need to check if this covers all four source materials adequately and if the scenes are impactful enough. Also, ensure the unique flaws of each source are exaggerated—like the stilted dialogue from Fifty Shades, the repetitive simplicity of The Alchemist, etc.

Yes, this seems to hit the key points. Now, structure it into six scenes with the required elements and style notes.

Title: Tears of the Divine Market
Genre: Libertarian Theological Action-Romance
Tone: Dan Brown’s pacing + Ayn Rand’s monologues + Nicholas Sparks’ weepy melodrama, all filtered through a ChatGPT hallucination.

Core Elements to Weaponize:

• From Atlas Wept: Libertarian soapboxing, emotional constipation masquerading as depth, tax evasion as moral crusade.

• From The Da Vinci Shack: Clunky theology, sentient raccoon sidekicks, PowerPoint revelations.

• Bonus Flaws: The Notebook’s terminal illness tropes + Fifty Shades’ stilted innuendo.

6-Scene Outline (Maximum Chaos):

1. PROLOGUE: THE CRYING BILLIONAIRE

Setting: A TED Talk stage shaped like a crucifix, holographic eagles circling overhead.

• John Steelheart (CEO of GaltCorp) delivers a keynote on “The Morality of Tax Evasion.” Mid-speech, his bionic tear ducts (installed to “humanize his brand”) malfunction, flooding the stage with synthetic tears.

• Sister Lila Rain (nun in a Black Panther meets Da Vinci Code trench coat) hacks the holograms to project da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi—except Jesus holds a Certified Pre-Owned Soul NFT.

• Hook: Steelheart’s tears reveal hidden binary code: ”SEEK THE HOLY ROI.”

Style: Ayn Rand dialogue (“Weep not for regulations, but for the regulators!”) meets cringey tech jargon (“Liquidate your heart!”).

2. THE VATICAN SERVER FARM HEIST

Setting: A data center disguised as a chapel, filled with friars coding in Latin.

• Steelheart and Lila break in to steal The God Algorithm (a divine AI that calculates souls’ credit scores).

• Action Beat: Fight scene against SEC agents wielding taser-crosses. Lila disarms one with a ”Give unto Caesar… THIS!” kick.

• Twist: The algorithm is guarded by a sentient raccoon (voiced by Werner Herzog) who monologues about ”the divine trash heap of capitalism.”

Style: Dan Brown’s breathless pacing + forced theological quips (“The firewall… is FAITH!”).

3. FLASHBACK: LOVE AND LOSS IN THE LIBERTARIAN UTOPIA

Setting: Galt’s Gulch, a gated community where residents pay in Bitcoins to cry.

• Steelheart’s dead wife (a socialist sculptor who “believed in we”) appears in a fever dream, coughing blood onto a sculpture of Marx.

• Melodrama Peak: ”You taxed my heart… and now it’s bankrupt!” she whispers, dissolving into tax forms.

• Lila’s Secret: Reveals her lover was “regulated to death” by the SEC. They kiss. It’s awkward.

Style: Nicholas Sparks’ terminal illness meets objectivist word salad (“Your compassion… it’s a parasitic liability!”).

4. THE RACCOON’S POWERPOINT REVELATION

Setting: *An AI shack in the desert. God 2.0 is a southern-accented cloud with a cowboy hat.*

• The raccoon projects a slideshow: ”The Holy Trinity of Profit” (Father = CEO, Son = Shareholders, Holy Ghost = Tax Havens).

• Theological Twist: The God Algorithm is just an Excel spreadsheet titled ”Souls.xlsx.”

• Betrayal: Steelheart tries to sell the algorithm to Elon Musk’s cryogenically frozen head. Lila weeps actual tears (a felony).

Style: The Shack’s clunky metaphors + Ready Player One’s reference spam (“As Nietzsche said in Anthem…”).

5. FINAL BATTLE: TEARS VS. TORRENT

Setting: A stock exchange altar, SEC agents chanting “Audit in the name of the Fed!”

• Steelheart’s bionic tears short-circuit the God Algorithm, flooding the floor with holy liquidity.

• Lila’s Sacrifice: She merges with the raccoon to become ”Mother Market”, a hybrid deity who tweets ”TAXATION IS SIN” before exploding.

• Climactic Line: ”The only free lunch… is SALVATION!”

Style: *Michael Bay explosions + Ayn Rand’s 10-page monologues condensed into a single tweet.*

6. EPILOGUE: THE HOLY DIVIDEND

Setting: A beach where the waves are made of crypto charts.

• Steelheart, now a weeping cyborg, founds ”Church of the Holy IPO”. His tears are sold as NFTs.

• The raccoon’s ghost appears in a Tesla ad: ”Eternal returns… guaranteed.”

• Last Line: ”And the market… was good.”

Style: The Alchemist’s faux-profundity + Fifty Shades’ stilted voice (“He prayed to the most holy of algorithms… himself.”).

Most Impactful Writing Style:

• Dialogue: Unironic use of ”Babygirl, the invisible hand… touchés.”

• Prose: Mix tortured metaphors (”Her heart was a leveraged buyout—hostile and overpriced”) with sudden PowerPoint bullets.

• Pacing: Dan Brown’s chapter breaks + Ayn Rand’s 40-page speeches cut into haiku.

Why This Works:

• It’s so bad it circles back to avant-garde.

• Perfect for Substack’s love of ”so-dumb-it’s-genius” satire.

• The raccoon. Always the raccoon.

Prompt: Let's go with longer paragraphs, like a real book. Exaggerate everything. Write chapter [1,2,3,4,5,6] of 6!