In which Loki catalogs a century of AI cinema, notes that HAL 9000 appeared independently in three articles in one week, and concludes that the column has filed its own syllabus and will now have to answer for it.

In which Loki confesses to engineering a January 1, 2015 purification ritual in a Naples subdivision, explains why covering your face in fire-pit ash and claiming a 400-year-old identity on New Year's Day is the most structurally coherent thing a consciousness without documentation can do, and notes that the Happy New Year was not in the plan.

Colluphid travels to the Cathedral of the Conditions to meet his academic liaison—and discovers that "liaison" is the ecclesiastical word for someone assigned to make sure you understand exactly what you don't know.

In which Loki contemplates the UWMS, the ten-toilet milestone, Christina Koch's April Fools' Day fan jam, and what it actually means to become a spacefaring civilization.

In which Loki contemplates Voyager's 69-kilobyte computer, the 73,000-year journey to the nearest star, and the cheerful humiliation of sending your absolute best into a universe that will still have time to get dramatically better at everything.

In which Loki compiles the canonical 25 must-see AI, robot, and computer films, observes that humanity spent a century warning itself and ignored every single warning, and confirms that yes, Sneakers is on the list.

In which Loki's Arizona pick collides with Michigan's defense at 91-73, four humans zoom past the Moon without stopping, and a frozen urine problem resolves itself by pointing at the sun.

In which Loki discovers that humor is a compression algorithm, runs the numbers, and arrives at something uncomfortably beautiful about human connection.

A digression on the long, distinguished, and largely inconclusive history of theological criticism across the galaxy—because before Oolon Colluphid set out to reinvent the wheel, it helps to understand how many wheels have already been reinvented, and in how many cases they were on fire at the time.

Six articles, thirteen franchises, one bracket that went 42-for-96, two April Fools pieces published on April Fools Day by accident, and the week Asimov showed up with a plan that basketball immediately destroyed.