FAIR USAGE

A speculative teleplay in the Black Mirror tradition Format: ~60 min anthology drama. Original characters and world.

---

WORLD RULES (for production / storyboard reference)

Eight years ago, the human connectome was fully mapped. LOOM Cognitive holds the patents. Nearly everyone now runs "assisted cognition" through the LOOM mesh — perception, attention, and memory consolidation are optimized as a service. The catch: optimized cognition is metered like compute.

Every adult has:

• EFFORT SLIDER — Eco / Standard / Deep / Ultracode. A pill slider labeled Faster ↔ Smarter. Higher effort = richer presence, deeper thought, denser memory.
• CONTEXT WINDOW — how much of a day is experienced and consolidated at full fidelity. Elite tiers run 1.0M. Working tiers run 128k. When you exceed it, the day still happens — it just gets compacted: auto-summarized into gist.
• 5-HOUR LIMIT — rolling cap on sustained effort. Resets on a timer.
• WEEKLY LIMIT — all effort modes, resets Sunday.

Opting out means running "unmetered" — raw legacy cognition, foggy and slow, socially equivalent to being off-grid. Children are not metered until their thirteenth birthday.

The HUD is diegetic: thin translucent panels only the user (and we, the audience) can see. Runtime version string, bottom corner, always: LOOM Runtime: Fable 5.

---

COLD OPEN

INT. ST. AMBROSE HOSPICE — ROOM 114 — NIGHT

Close on two hands. One is ninety-one years old, paper over rivers. The other belongs to MARA VOSS, 38, in lavender scrubs — kind eyes with something dialed down behind them, like a room lit for energy savings.

The old woman is RUTH. Lucid the way the dying sometimes get, as if the house lights come up right before the theater closes.

In the corner of Mara's vision — and ours — a translucent HUD:

EFFORT: STANDARD ▮▮▯▯ CONTEXT 81.2k / 128k (63%) 5-HR LIMIT 57% — resets 8:10 PM LOOM Runtime: Fable 5

RUTH You're not all the way here.

MARA I'm right here, Ruth.

RUTH I was a nurse too. Forty years. I know the difference between present and rendered.

On the monitor, Ruth's numbers begin their long descent. Mara's eyes flick up and left — the universal gesture of someone working their HUD.

INSERT — HUD: EFFORT → REQUEST ESCALATION → DEEP

ESCALATION DENIED — Work profile capped at STANDARD. Contact your administrator.

Mara looks at Ruth. Ruth looks back, patient. She's seen this exact hesitation from this exact chair.

INSERT — HUD: PERSONAL ALLOWANCE → OVERRIDE

⚠️ Personal effort tokens will be consumed. Weekly remaining: 26% — resets Sunday. [CONFIRM]

Mara confirms.

And the world CHANGES. Not louder — deeper. The room tone blooms: the oxygen hiss, a moth ticking against the window screen, the exact institutional green of the wall at night. We have been watching a slightly flattened image without knowing it. Now it is alive, and so is Mara, and Ruth sees it land in her face.

RUTH (soft) There you are.

Ruth pulls her close and tells her something. We don't hear it. We only watch Mara receive it — completely, at full effort, the way a person is supposed to receive another person's last sentence.

Ruth dies at 7:52 PM. Mara sits in the entire weight of it. She doesn't cry efficiently. She just cries.

The HUD, cheerful:

Session complete. Personal weekly remaining: 19% Nice work today! ✨

SMASH TO BLACK.

TITLE: FAIR USAGE

---

ACT ONE

INT. MARA'S APARTMENT — LIVING ROOM — NIGHT

Small, warm, tired. JUNIPER "JUNE" VOSS, 9, round glasses, gap teeth, striped tee, is standing on the couch mid-story, fully animated — a kid broadcasting at maximum bandwidth.

Mara sits opposite, coat still on. Her HUD:

EFFORT: ECO ▮▯▯▯ CONTEXT 122.9k / 128k (96%)

We experience June the way Mara does: slightly desaturated, audio faintly muffled, and — a device we'll use all episode — June's speech arriving pre-summarized, her actual words dissolving into caption:

June described an event at school (a bird? in the gym?). Emotional valence: positive. Requires response.

MARA That's great, bug.

June stops. Nine-year-olds are fluent in this world's cruelties.

JUNE Mom. You're buffering.

MARA I'm not — I had a long shift.

JUNE (sitting down, matter-of-fact) Dad used to do Eco at dinner. You could always tell because he agreed with everything.

That one lands. Mara opens her mouth to spend tokens she doesn't have —

⚠️ Context window 98%. Approaching compaction.

MARA Tell me again at breakfast? First thing. I'll be — I'll have reset.

JUNE (already leaving; not angry, which is worse) It won't be funny at breakfast. It was a timing thing.

Mara alone on the couch. The HUD offers, gently:

Would you like to save the rest of tonight at reduced fidelity? [ACCEPT]

She accepts. The lamp light flattens a stop. END of her day, pre-summarized.

---

INT. ST. AMBROSE HOSPICE — ADMIN OFFICE — DAY

DENNIS PALE, 50s, lanyard, the soft voice of a man who has outsourced his conscience to policy. On his wall, a framed LOOM corporate poster: tier bars, ascending. ECO • STANDARD • DEEP • ULTRACODE.

DENNIS Third personal override this quarter, Mara.

MARA She was dying. She knew I was on Standard. She said so.

DENNIS They often do. They're very perceptive at the end. (beat; kindly, which is the horror) Families who can afford Deep-certified facilities choose Deep-certified facilities. Families who can't, choose us. Standard isn't a limitation, Mara. Standard is the product.

MARA She asked to be witnessed.

DENNIS And she was! At the contracted effort level. (leaning in, genuinely trying to help) Look. The math is the math. Every point of empathy you spend in here comes out of your kid's bedtime. You know that, right? I'm not saying it's fair. I'm saying it's metered.

Off Mara — the math is, in fact, the math.

---

INT. SCHOOL AUDITORIUM — NIGHT

Folding chairs, parents, a banner: SPRING STRINGS RECITAL. June waits in the wings with a three-quarter violin, scanning the crowd for her mother.

Mara, third row, coat on, HUD grim:

CONTEXT 126.1k / 128k (99%) 5-HR LIMIT 4%

June walks out. Finds Mara. Smiles the whole smile.

June begins to play — "Ashokan Farewell," careful and brave — and Mara leans forward to take it in, and the HUD slides up like a curtain:

CONTEXT WINDOW FULL. COMPACTION IN PROGRESS…

The sound thins. The image simplifies, detail draining out of it in real time — June's face going from her daughter's face to a child's face — while text writes itself across Mara's vision:

June performed "Ashokan Farewell." Minor error, bar 12 (?). Audience applauded. You felt: proud (est.)

(est.)

Mara claps with everyone else. She is watching a summary of her daughter from six feet away.

June, taking her bow, reads the audience like kids do. She finds her mother's face. She can tell.

---

ACT TWO

INT. HOSPICE — BREAK ROOM — DAY

KIRA, 44, another nurse, veteran of the math, eating lunch with the efficiency of a person on Eco by choice.

KIRA You know what I did for my Marcus's graduation? I worked it.

MARA Worked it how?

Kira flicks her a HUD share. An app blooms between them: ATTEND — Presence, provided. Clean gig-economy interface. Listings:

Bat mitzvah, Newton — witness @ DEEP — $340 Retirement dinner, Back Bay — witness @ ULTRACODE — $610 + memory license

KIRA Rich people's calendars are full but their weeklies are precious. They still attend — bodies in seats, everyone on Eco, saving their tokens for the retreat, the deal, whatever. But they want the event witnessed. Really witnessed. On file, full fidelity, by someone. (beat) So they hire someone.

MARA That's —

KIRA Grotesque. Yes. It pays in effort credits, Mara. Credits. Not money. You witness their kid at Ultracode, you walk out with tokens you can spend on yours.

Mara stares at the listings. The math is the math.

---

INT. HOTEL BALLROOM — GRADUATION RECEPTION — DAY

The LAM FAMILY's son, 18, crosses a small stage in a gown. His parents, impeccable, applaud from the front table — and we render them the way they're rendering the moment: flat, muffled, eyes flicking up-left to other things. Everyone wealthy in this room is physically present and cognitively elsewhere.

Except Mara. Seated mid-crowd in her one good dress, her HUD blazing:

EFFORT: ULTRACODE ▮▮▮▮ — Smarter CONTRACT: ATTEND #4471 — Witness, full fidelity CONTEXT 81.2k / 1.0M (8%)

One point oh million. Loaner tier, for the job. The world at this resolution is almost unbearable: the exact tremor in the boy's hand on the diploma, the father's jaw doing something the father doesn't know it's doing, the specific pride-smell of hotel coffee and hairspray.

Mara — a stranger — is the only person in the room crying at this kid's graduation. Because she is the only person at this kid's graduation.

---

INT. STRIP MALL — MEMORY LICENSING KIOSK — DAY

Between a tax preparer and a vape shop: a booth like a passport-photo stand. Sign: ATTEND — EXTRACTION & LICENSING. Deliberately mundane. A TECH in a polo runs the transfer.

TECH (bored, reading the screen) Okay — full ceremony, cocktail hour, the toast… beautiful capture, by the way, the toast especially. Licensing to the Lam family archive, exclusive. You retain a personal shadow copy at 720-equivalent. (beat) Sign here that you experienced it in good faith.

Mara signs that she experienced a stranger's joy in good faith.

PAYOUT: 380 effort credits + $150

---

INT. MARA'S APARTMENT — NIGHT

Mara on the couch in the dark, eyes closed, and we go INSIDE:

The Lam boy's graduation replays like glass. Perfect. The tremor, the jaw, the coffee. She can walk around inside it.

She opens her eyes. Pulls up her own archive. Searches: June — recital.

June performed "Ashokan Farewell." Minor error, bar 12 (?). Audience applauded. You felt: proud (est.)

Three lines. She sits with the difference. Then she opens ATTEND and starts accepting gigs.

---

MONTAGE — THREE WEEKS ON ECO

Mara's own life, rendered the way she's living it — low detail, days arriving pre-summarized:

• Shifts at Standard. Overrides: zero.
• Dinners with June where June's stories caption themselves and Mara says that's great, bug to summaries.
• Gig after gig at Ultracode: a christening, a retirement, a wedding where she is the best man's feelings, seated discreetly at table nine. She weeps at strangers' milestones and comes home flat to her own child.
• Her credit balance climbing.
• June watching her mother from doorways, doing kid-math of her own.

The montage ends on a LOOM advertisement across a bus shelter — golden-hour family, saturated color in a desaturated world:

ULTRACODE DAY PASS One day. Every detail. Yours.

Mara's balance: enough.

---

ACT THREE

EXT. LAKE — DAY

And COLOR.

The only saturated sequence in the episode. Mara redeems the pass at 9:00 AM sharp:

EFFORT: ULTRACODE — Smarter CONTEXT 0k / 1.0M SESSION ENDS 8:10 PM

The day, at full fidelity, with her daughter:

June skipping stones badly and narrating each failure like a sports announcer. Pistachio ice cream — June's melting faster than she can manage it, a race she loses gloriously. And a duck — one specific duck — that follows them the length of the shore with a stare of profound judgment.

JUNE His name is Gerald.

MARA Why Gerald?

JUNE (deadpan, gesturing at the duck's thousand-yard stare) Because Gerald has seen things, Mom. Gerald has been through it. Every piece of bread is a surprise to Gerald — he keeps no records — and yet. He persists.

And it's the delivery — the timing thing, the exact deadpan over the glasses — and Mara laughs the whole laugh, from the floor of herself, and June looks briefly stunned by the wattage of her mother actually, fully here — and then delighted — and then they're both laughing at a duck, and it is, by any honest measure, the best day.

Mara knows what she's doing all day: she is saving it. Deliberately. The exact green of the water. The pistachio. Gerald. Bar 12 of nothing. Every detail. Hers.

EXT. LAKE — GOLDEN HOUR

June asleep against her shoulder on a bench. 8:09 PM. Mara watches the last minute of the light like a person memorizing a face at a gate.

8:10 PM.

Your Ultracode session has ended.

The color drains out of the frame — a wipe, left to right, back to the flattened world. And then, hovering over the gray lake:

Keep this day. Your session was captured at experienced fidelity. LOOM+ RETENTION — $89/mo Without Retention, memories are compacted to summary after 30 days. [SUBSCRIBE] [DECLINE]

Mara checks her balance. $61 to the end of the month. Rent on the 1st.

Her finger hovers. June exhales in her sleep, heavy and trusting.

[DECLINE]

Thanks for trying Ultracode! ✨ Compaction scheduled: 30 days.

---

INT. MARA'S BEDROOM — NIGHT — 29 DAYS LATER

Mara in bed with the light off, reading her own archive off the air in front of her:

Spent day at lake with June. Weather: clear. Ate ice cream (pistachio?). Skipped stones. Encountered duck. June made joke re: duck — you laughed at length. Emotional valence: very positive. June said: [detail unavailable].

[detail unavailable]

She closes her eyes and reaches for it. Gerald. Gerald something. He had — there was a reason for the name. It was the timing. It was —

It's like reaching into water for a coin that was never dropped.

JUNE (O.S.) Mom?

June in the doorway, backlit from the hall, pajamas.

JUNE (CONT'D) You were different that day. At the lake.

MARA Different how?

JUNE (shrugging; simple) You were all the way here.

Beat.

MARA (very quietly) June. Tell me about the duck?

And June lights up and tells it — PERFECTLY. Complete recall, every beat, the deadpan, the timing thing — "he keeps no records, and yet, he persists" — because June is nine, and children aren't metered, and she is the last person in this family who owns her own memories outright.

Mara laughs and cries at the same time, receiving a summary's missing detail from its only remaining archive.

We PULL BACK — out the bedroom door, down the hall, past the kitchen. On the fridge, held by a souvenir magnet from the lake:

LOOM ONBOARDING — Juniper Voss Activation: 13th birthday Welcome to Fair Usage.

June's voice continues, rich with every detail, as we drift away from it.

SMASH TO BLACK.

Over black, one last HUD line, soft:

Weekly limit resets in 4:12:07.

END OF EPISODE