Or at least, the ending as it stands today. Most of the people involved in this story wind up either dead, maimed, spending months in a mental hospital, languishing in jail, or gone underground. It's a tragedy from almost any angle, especially because, at the outset, most of these people were idealists committed to doing as much good as possible in a world they saw as beset by existential threats. In spite of those aims, or perhaps in pursuit of them, over the course of this story their lives will devolve into senseless violence.
And by the time we reach the present, six people will be killed, two others presumed dead by suicide, and at least two in hiding. Countless friends and family members will find themselves bereft. I feel it's only fair to warn you that, in this story, justice and redemption have so far proven hard to come by.
How did so much go so wrong? When did it begin to fall apart? The responses you receive depend on the prompts you compose. Tweak the prompt, and you may produce an entirely different story: of a charismatic, deranged leader spreading a carefully engineered mania to followers seeking purpose in life.
Try again, and you could get the tale of a vulnerable minority , driven to act at the extremes of their convictions by a society that rejects them. But just like the outputs produced by our current AI oracles, some of these narratives turn out to be rife with hallucinations: plausible- sounding visions of reality, but fabricated to fill the need for a greater meaning. The trouble, as I went along, was separating the truth from the delirium. I wasn't always sure that I could. To be honest, I'm still not.
But here we are, and a story has to start somewhere. Someone had dialed from Westminster Woods, a wilderness camp and retreat center about 8 miles away. The caller reported that a group of several people had driven up and blocked the camp's entrance and exit with their vehicles. They'd gotten out and begun some kind of demonstration, clad in black robes and masks. The camp was hosting two groups of visitors that day.
