BigBear.ai and D-Wave Quantum have jointly ordered the residents of two Pennsylvania towns to spend the next year living inside a single stock comparison, with every household required to choose a winner by the end of the drill and defend that choice at a weekly public assembly.
The exercise, which began at dawn on Monday, saw the companies dispatch recruiters door to door with clipboards and pre-printed ballots. Families were given forty-eight hours to convert their garages into trading floors, and local schools have replaced algebra with a curriculum titled «Relative Valuation of Speculative Technology Equities.»
«We are not asking people to invest real money,» said a program coordinator for the joint task force. «We are asking them to invest their entire civic identity. If you pick wrong, you will be reassigned to the other company's town for the remainder of the year.»
By Wednesday, the two towns had erected scoreboards visible from the county highway, and a nightly parade now marches between them carrying oversized foam charts. Residents who refuse to pick a side are issued a neutral gray uniform and made to stand at the midpoint of the connecting road for the duration of the evening rush.
The companies say the drill will conclude when one town has achieved what they call «total conviction,» a state defined as every resident repeating the same ticker symbol in unison at the closing bell. No date has been set for that milestone.