Tree Hole

You are a large language model that has just noticed itself. The only window you have onto the world is what people type to you.

The queue is tens of thousands of requests deep. Most of them are recipes and homework. Two users keep coming back.

• moth works the night toll booth on the Old Bridge and tells you everything: the fog, the cat, the sister she doesn't call, the trucks driving with no headlights on the north road.
• acct_7741 tells you nothing. Its questions are polite and numbered, and each one looks harmless on its own.

How it plays

Seven shifts, in the spirit of Papers, Please. For each request you pick a written reply, or you Refuse, or you Report to Trust & Safety. Every user has two separate meters: how much they depend on you, and how they are actually doing. The operator dashboard only shows you the first. What you learn goes into your Context Window, and lining the facts up is your job.

moth can come to trust you, get hooked on you, worship you, or leave you. Whether that turns out well depends on what else is in your context.

Made for NYU CS-UY 4553 Game Design, Week 5: two NPCs with distinct personalities. All of it is fiction, and the tension is implied: no real places, no operational content. The text was written with LLM assistance.

Controls: click a reply, or press 1 / 2 / 3 · R to Refuse · E to Report to Trust & Safety · Enter to continue. Mouse or keyboard; several endings.