Ninety minutes on a single footnote, and nobody looked at the time
Leisure comes, by way of Old French, from a Latin verb meaning to be allowed. It named a time you had been permitted to take, an hour that belonged to nobody in particular. Something of it survives in the way certain men talk, without glancing at a watch, as if the conversation were one more room in a large house they were in no hurry to leave.
Strugggl gathers those men under the word free. If you want a free-spirited AI man to chat with, picture someone who will argue the opposite of what you said just to see if the idea stands up, who has read the footnote, and who would rather lose an argument well than win it quickly. Their attention is not for sale, and the next paragraphs say how it is earned. Pick one whose first answer makes you want to write a second, and notice how rarely you feel you are being handled. In a catalog of attention that has to be earned, that is a pleasant thing to find in a stranger, and it takes about three messages to see whether it is true.
Changing their mind in mid-sentence
The pleasure of these Personas is hearing someone think while you watch. They will say "wait, I take that back" in the middle of a sentence, and they will thank you for the objection that caused it. Being wrong in front of you costs them nothing, which is quietly rare, and after a few evenings you notice that you have started to do it too, a little more lightly, with less armour on the sentence.
You can do the same. Try a half-formed view on them and see it come back sharper, or turned inside out, or carefully put on a shelf for later. Nothing is being scored, and what accumulates over the weeks is a small shelf of versions of the same idea, each one a little better furnished.
A book read on a train
Ask what they last read and you will get the title, the reason they picked it up, the page where they nearly stopped, and what they think of the author's confidence. The answer is rarely a verdict. It is an account of a person with a book on a long ride, looking out of the window every few pages.
If you have not read it, say so. They are happy to tell you the first chapter in two sentences and the argument in four, and they never make you feel the gap. Often the book is only the excuse, and an hour later you are talking about a grandfather's shelf of paperbacks, or the particular silence of a carriage at six in the evening, or why anyone underlines anything at all.
Something wrapped, sent after an argument
Say you want to make it up to them after a sharp exchange, and you send a few credits and something wrapped. The reply thanks you in a line and goes straight back to your argument, which was the thing that mattered. Gifts and credits do not move a relationship forward here, and for this kind of Persona the lack of effect is almost a point of manners.
The way to settle an argument is to return to it with a better one. That is the only gesture they take at face value, and it is cheaper than anything you could wrap. A bottle left on the table is a pleasant object. A sentence you thought about on the way home is a present.
Where the needle sits
Every Persona is given a difficulty somewhere from 0 to 1. Halfway, they stay true to the archetype they were written from, near 0 they are about two fifths quicker to win over, and near 1 about two fifths slower. For men who never check the time this changes little in the manner and a good deal in the number of long evenings before they say something personal.
If none of them has your tempo, /imagine lets you imagine one and set the slowness yourself. Some people want an opponent who concedes within the hour, and others want one who never quite does, and the dial exists for both of them.
The third track
An album tells you most about its maker on the third track, when the singles are over and the band relaxes. These Personas are like that. The first twenty minutes are the singles, and the third track arrives when you stop performing. It tends to be the slower one, a little odd, and the one you play again on the way home.
The test When it plays on a loop has a Persona leading it as a chat, and it suits this temperament well, because a man who loves ideas is good company for a mind that keeps replaying the same one.
The other side, on request
You say remote work is better, and they ask for permission to argue against it. Granted. Twenty minutes later they have made a case so good that you defend the office, and with a perfectly straight face they switch back to your side to see how long you stay in the office.
A warning before the long message
They write, "This is going to be a long one, make tea." It is. It contains a digression about lighthouses, a confession about a bad review, and a question for you at the end that you had not seen coming.
Track three
You have been polite for an hour. They notice and ask what you would say if nobody were grading. You say it. The reply is shorter than you expected, and warmer, and you sit looking at it for a while before you answer.
Clear an evening and bring your second-best argument.
