Marc-Uwe Kling's "Views" is pure explosives
A 16-year-old girl goes missing, then a video goes viral showing her being assaulted. The Perpetrators: allegedly Africans. The collective consciousness boils, the Right calls for retaliation. A group called "Active Home Protection" takes up arms. But what if the video is a fake?
Artificial Intelligence is currently the talk of the town. Marc-Uwe Kling makes it the theme of his new novel "Views". The former small artist steals his sleep. Words, sentences, formulations swirl in his mind. An idea takes shape, he must put it on paper. The resulting story could bear the subtitle "Based on a real event". It is a manifesto, a revelation. Here is a chronicle of events. No completeness is guaranteed.
Yasira turns 40. She is German, more so than she wants to admit. Across from her at the Hard Rock Cafe on the Kurfürstendamm sits Stefan. Yet another Stefan, she thinks. Her thoughts wander. She is distracted. Generally, Stefan is more handsome than the last Stefan. Yasira is a criminal investigator with the BKA. Her boss is also named Stefan. The date-Stefan is excited: "May I ask where you're from?" Yasira: "From Wilmersdorf. With the U-Bahn." She often makes this joke. Her parents are from Lebanon.
When Yasira disappears into the bathroom and returns, Stefan is transfixed by his phone screen. It's a video. The content is explosive. Yasira recognizes it immediately. The date is over.
Lena Palmer
In the video, a girl named Lena Palmer can be seen. The 16-year-old has been missing for a few days. And now apparently reappears on some rest stop along a hiking trail in Germany. She lies on a table, three men stand around her. A fourth films the brutal assault of the girl. The three men at the table are all black. One has curly hair, another wears a baseball cap backwards. The third wears a Snoopy pullover.
Yasira's BKA-Stefan assigns her the case. She is to find Lena, preferably alive, and identify the four unknown men in the video. The case goes viral, the broad public is shocked. The Right calls for Zeter and Mordio, demands retaliation. The police are under immense pressure. The pressure keeps growing.
"Active Home Protection"
Yasira puts together a team. Clues to the origin of the video, the possible crime scene, or the crime time elude her. The men could be from Mali. At least an approach. Then another video appears. "Bear", leader of "Active Home Protection", poses with a weapon and calls for self-justice with forceful words. It doesn't take long before the first victim: a black man, whose baseball cap becomes his fatal mistake.
Another video, another right-wing extremist, another execution. In contrast to "Bear", the imitator is known to the police. But this doesn't provide a breakthrough in the case, as the victim is once again an innocent person. The situation becomes increasingly precarious for Yasira, as the anger in the population grows, fueled by right-wing hate speech on the net. A violent mob even threatens to storm the Reichstag. Several people die.
Yasira is baffled: Why are there no clues? No signs of Lena, the perpetrator from the video? And yet, there are hundreds of tips from the population. A video that Yasira's daughter, who is named Lena, shows her, sparks an idea in the mind of the BKA investigator. But could that be it? Could it really be that the video is just a fake? Generated by an AI? She must find out, in secret. For if she's wrong, she and the entire police force would be made a laughingstock. The rights would make the whole issue even more explosive and use it against "those up there", the "Deep State". The spiral of violence would spin even faster. Does a civil war threaten then?
On the other hand: What if Yasira is right and a perfect fake is at play? Then AI would be the new atomic bomb.
Could it also be a Thriller?
A terrifying scenario. But one that could really happen. Or put another way: If it happens, no one would be surprised. It's a scenario that kept bestselling author Marc-Uwe Kling awake at night. In the end, he wrote it down and, of course, narrated it himself as an audiobook. His new work "Views" was published by Ullstein and Hamburg Audiobook. It's Kling's first thriller and shows impressively the ability and versatility of the author. His works are always successful, no matter if they come dystopically ("Quality Land"), fantastically ("The Spurenfinder"), or child-friendly ("The NEINhorn").
Let's not forget the story series about the communist kangaroo that once stood in front of the door of the small artist Marc-Uwe Kling and turned his life upside down with its word-powerful, pointed, and urkomic antics. The kangaroo left deep traces in Kling's memory, not only for his roommate Kling, but also for a million fans. It even founded its own boxing club, whose rules read: "The first rule of the Box Club: We don't talk about the Box Club. The second rule of the Box Club: We don't talk about the Box Club. The third rule of the Box Club: If you see a Nazi, box him!" In today's time, that would mean: plenty of sparring!
Kling's anarchic humor doesn't disappear in "Views". Humor is, after all, laughing in the face of adversity. Even though the plot of the book is anything but funny. The language is light, the story flows smoothly, no frills, always straight to the point. "Views" shakes things up. Resist the beginnings! Whoever has read the book or listened to the audiobook cannot say afterwards: "I had no idea ..." (Author's note: This text was not AI-generated!)
In light of Marc-Uwe Kling's new novel "Views," some critical reviews have mentioned the potential for artificial intelligence being used to create convincing fake videos. Similarly, as the investigation into Lena Palmer's case progresses, the question arises if the viral video of her assault could be an artificial intelligence creation, further fueling the discourse around right-wing populism and its potential manipulation of information.
