Eleven fictional viewpoints
These descriptions are fictional satire, not quotations or evidence of political beliefs or affiliations.
01 Wall Street Big Money Financier
Memo: No Coupon Found, Only Water
TO: Municipal Desk. RE: Bridger Aerospace, a company for aerial firefighting and wildfire management. Our analysts were asked to price it and discovered the product is delivered by dropping liquid onto the problem. No coupon, no covenant, no secondary market for smoke. Recommend we study the model, since it is the only exposure we have seen that visibly shrinks its own tail risk. Compliance asks that nobody on this floor attempt a demonstration with the coffee.
02 Silicon Valley / San Francisco Ivy League AI Founder
Acres Per Moat: Grading Defensibility by Fence Line
The founder invents Acres Per Moat to score defensibility. A nearly 20,000-acre working cattle ranch scores brilliantly, since its back fence touches over 500,000 acres of national forest that no acquirer can ever buy. His own moat is an eleven-page wiki, bordered on every side by a rival's free tier. He proposes fencing the wiki. Engineering asks who will ride the fence line, and he assigns the intern, on foot.
03 Venture Capital
Appraisal: The Serbia Slide Is Missing
Headquartered in Belgrade, Montana, the company drew one question from our associate: where is the Serbia slide? Partners brightened, then learned the Belgrade in question has hangars and weather. Appraisal: no beachhead narrative, no Europe-ready footnote, only aircraft near the fires. We have funded three global platforms whose entire footprint is a mailing address in Delaware, and none has ever been near anything burning.
04 Institutional Investors
Form 8-J: Questions Jammed, None Shot Down
FORM 8-J, SIGNAL INTERFERENCE. Line 1: a spun-off company specialized in jamming enemy drones, for the ultimate goal of shooting them down. Line 2: our consultant jams trustee questions with acronyms, but Line 3 is blank, because no question has ever been brought down. They circle the boardroom until the quarter ends. Trustees initial here and wave at them.
05 Data Center Operators
The Clerk Asks About the Other Discharge
The clerk reads aloud: a park ranger cited Sheehy for the discharge of a firearm in Glacier National Park. The operator, holding a cooling-loop application, brightens. 'Discharge? I have a discharge line too.' 'Of what?' 'Warm water.' The clerk checks a different box entirely, slides over a form, and explains that this discharge, unlike the park's, requires an environmental review and a quarterly report.
06 Frontier Lab
Evaluation Steps for a Model With a Cutoff
Step 1: Hand the model a transcript showing a bachelor's degree in history. Step 2: Ask when the past ended. Step 3: Record that it answers 'as of my training cutoff,' a phrase the discipline would mark in red pen. Step 4: Note that historians footnote a cutoff as a limitation, while the lab sells it as a feature page. Escalate to research oversight.
07 Chinese Communist Party
Who Signs a Text Nobody Wrote Alone?
When The Daily Montanan accused Sheehy of plagiarism in his 2023 memoir, one planning office wondered: what exactly is an author line? Is a text improved when its writer is a single named person who can be asked about it? Why do our own documents credit a 'collective drafting group' that has never been sent a correction? And which institution benefits from a byline nobody can interview?
08 American Union Worker
Our Wildfire Management Never Leaves the Ground
In 2014, Sheehy founded Bridger Aerospace, and I admire any employer whose wildfire management involves actually arriving at the wildfire. Ours manages grievances the way it manages smoke: forecasts it, studies it, posts a laminated flyer about it, and never once flies over. The steward asks whether the break-room extinguisher has been inspected since the last contract.
09 White Collar Professional in an AI-Threatened Group
Footnote: Enhancement, as Used in My Office
President Trump signed Sheehy's bill S.160, and the word I keep rereading is 'Enhancement.'¹
¹ In my office, 'enhancement' is what the memo calls a workflow after the headcount leaves. A firefighting aircraft is enhanced toward the flames; our team is enhanced toward the shared drive. Benefits continue through month's end, per a footnote beneath this footnote.
10 American STEM Worker Over 45
Under Study, Protected; Under Study, Me
A bill to remove protections from three Montana Wilderness Study Areas reminds me that 'study' once sounded like shelter. At my company, the efficiency study arrived first, my protections left next, and I was asked to document myself in a clearing of vacant desks. Land under study stays put. Engineers under study receive a sunset date and a template.
11 American STEM Graduate Five Years Out of College (Not Ivy League)
Candidate 4417 Has Been Moved to Another Pasture
Sheehy's first job was assisting ranchers with tracking cattle, and I finally understand the applicant tracking system. Read literally, it ear-tags me, counts a herd of 340, and herds us along without naming a destination. Cattle, at least, get located. I received a tag, 'Candidate 4417,' and an email saying my status had been moved to a different pasture.
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