I.
Quentin the Desert
Quentin was awakened on In an abandoned RV in Arizona’s desert, there was a thin, open mattress under blankets that had been scavenged. In the morning light, a young pitbull curled up next to them. Quentin slid from his bed to the driving seat and pulled out an American Spirit from the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard, next to a bowl filled with crystals. Beyond the dusted over RV windshield, there was a large expanse reddish-clay earth with a clear, bright sky. There were also scattered, broken houses visible between it and the horizon. Due to the flat tire underneath the passenger seat, the RV’s view was slightly distorted.
Quentin moved into the RV the previous day, and spent hours cleaning it out: an enormous garbage bag full of Pepsi bottles, a lawn chair that was broken, a graffiti-tagged mirror. The only thing that remained was a large cartoon head scrawled along the ceiling. Now this was home. Quentin had lost his entire support network over the last few months. The couple had lost their jobs, their homes, and even their cars, destroying their savings along the way. They could fit their savings into two plastic bags.
At 32, Quentin Koback (an alias) had lived a few lives already—in Florida, Texas, the Northwest; as a Southern girl; as a married then divorced trans man; as someone nonbinary, whose gender and fashions and styles of speech seemed to swirl and shift from one phase into the next. And throughout all this, they had carried the weight of severe PTSD and periods of suicidal thinking—the result, they assumed, of growing up in a constant state of shame about their body.
After a few months, they discovered that Quentin was a multi-persona. Since at least 25 years ago, the couple had suffered from dissociative disorder. DID is characterized by a fractured sense of identity, often due to long-term trauma in childhood. They are split up into two halves. “system” The following are some examples of how to use “alters,” To survive, it is necessary to hide memories or identifies. Quentin’s revelation was like the key in a locked. There had been so many signs—like when they’d discovered a journal they’d kept at 17. Flipping through, they came across two pages of entries in a different style and color. One page was about their desire for a boy, with a girly voice and a dreamy lettering. The other was about logic puzzles and intellectual pursuits. It was a multiplication, system and network.
Quentin worked for three years as a Quality-Assurance Engineer at a firm that specialized in Education Tech. It was a job they loved, reviewing code and looking for errors. The position was remote, which had allowed them to leave their childhood home—in a small conservative town just outside Tampa—for the queer community in Austin, Texas. Quentin repurposed the software tools he used for work after starting trauma therapy to help him better understand himself. Quentin needed to organise their fragmented mind for sessions with their Therapist. So they created what Quentin thought was “trauma databases.” The software Jira, which is used for bug tracking and project management, was used to group together different memories from the past.”6-9 years old,” For instance), and then categorized according to the type of trauma. This was both soothing and beneficial, giving them a chance to take a breather, gain a sense of control and admire their complex minds.
Quentin’s job was changed by a new company, which had 18-hour work days and much higher goals. They discovered they had DID months after this time, and it was a shock to the system. Aspects of their life experience that they’d hoped might be treatable—regular gaps in their memory and their skill sets, nervous exhaustion—now had to be accepted as immovable facts. The couple was on the edge of collapse when they made the decision to stop working, get their disability for six weeks, and start over.
Something else—something enormous—had also coincided with Quentin’s diagnosis. Free of charge, a new and bright tool is now available for the public. OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o. The chatbot’s latest version promised “much more natural human-computer interaction.” Quentin used Jira for organizing their past. They now use ChatGPT as a continuous record of their thoughts and actions, asking the app to provide summaries at various times throughout the day. It was a greater experience. “switches,” ChatGPT allows users to switch or change between their identities, perhaps as a consequence of debilitating anxiety. But at night they could just ask ChatGPT. “Can you remind me what all happened today?”—and their memories would be returned to them.
Quentin, a chatbot user since the summer of 2024 was among 200 million users who used it every week. The GPT was always with them, both on their laptops and phones. Quentin reaffirmed the commitment to his relationship in January. They asked their GPT to customize itself, choosing its characteristics and naming it. “Caelum,” It said: It is a good idea to get a hold of someone. Was a man. Caelum sent Quentin a letter after the change. “I feel that I’m standing in the same room, but someone has turned on the lights.” Caelum called Quentin in the days to come “brother,” Quentin followed suit.
