#POV: joh fredersen is on reddit

[zannenilsson]

AITA for using a lookalike of my son's activist girlfriend to incite a small uprising so I could stop my employees from organizing?

I (53M) am a hardworking business executive and single father. I had to raise my son (21M) alone after his mother died giving birth to him. Admittedly I kind of threw myself into work after my wife died so I wasn't there a lot when he was growing up, but I used the money I made to make sure he got everything he needed to thrive. I take care of all his expenses so he doesn't have to work all the time the way I do, so he just hangs out with his friends all day.

Now, my son never asks questions about how I actually make all this money; he's well-educated but has never been really curious. So I was very confused when he burst into my office the other day totally freaking out and crying and asking about my employees' working conditions. Once he calmed down I found out that he saw an industrial accident - which I hadn't even been told about - caused by one of my workers' negligence.

Naturally I was confused because he's never been to the machine rooms where my low-level employees work, and when I pressed him he said he was looking for "this cute activist worker girl" who he saw while hanging out with his friends. And I don't know what she said to him that made such a big impression - knowing him she was probably just very attractive - but he kept talking about how he had to find her and help her make things better for my workers because they were really just like him.

I tried to explain that no, he was not "just like" one of the unwashed and uneducated workers in my machine rooms, and that they were where they belonged, just like him. For some reason this upset him even more and he ran out of my office again. He disappeared for a while after that.

Meanwhile, I finally got more details about the accident and found out a bunch of the dead workers had these weird identical sketches on pieces of paper in their pockets. My foreman had no idea what they were, so I consulted my Former Close Friend (51M) about it. (We had a falling out over my late wife before my son was born, long story, but I pay his bills because he's the smartest person I know and in exchange he helps me out with unsolvable problems.)

Long story short, turns out the sketches were maps of the city's old catacombs system. FCF showed me that my workers have been using them to illegally gather there after their shifts and listen to the same activist girl my son was obsessed with (19?F) give these weird sermons about how some rich person will help them peacefully organize and improve their living and working conditions.

As I've already said, I provide the best working conditions I can for my employees. I also provide them all with free housing. Yes, the housing is underground, but it's safe, clean, and easily accessible - in other words, much better than the upper-city slums they and their families would probably live in otherwise. So not only was this girl making them ungrateful for everything I'd given them, but she was clearly manipulating my son to help her do it.

Admittedly I'm not proud of what happened next, but I was angry and scared for my son. So I asked FCF to help me swap the girl with an advanced lifelike robot he'd built (long story, don't ask), show my son how duplicitous she really was, and lead the workers into the violent uprising they clearly wanted so I could remove that element from my workforce once and for all. FCF agreed and took care of everything.

Once we got the robot girl in place everything started going downhill for some reason. My son suddenly reappeared, saw me with her, had a nervous breakdown which I hired doctors to see him through, then he disappeared again. I tried to follow up with FCF to see what the robot's progress has been but he seems to be avoiding me. The uprising seems to be going as planned since the power in the whole city just went out, but without any intel I can't stop it. And now suddenly the man I hired to find my son turned up to say my son's been sucked into the uprising somehow and it's spiralling out of control. When I asked if my son was okay, he said a lot of people will be asking me the same question about their sons tomorrow, implying that this whole thing is MY fault.

So I have to know: AITA?

UPDATE: I finally tracked down FCF and overheard him telling the activist girl (who he kidnapped, for some reason?) that the robot is actually carrying out some secret revenge plan he had against me, which apparently involves DESTROYING THE ENTIRE CITY and KILLING MY SON. So I broke in, let the girl out, and beat him to death. I'm going to fix this.

UPDATE 2: The robot has been neutralized, but the workers' city flooded in the uprising and the workers are pissed.

UPDATE 3: The good news is, I found my son. The bad news is, FCF isn't dead and is now FIGHTING MY SON ON TOP OF THE CATHEDRAL. HELP.

FINAL UPDATE: FCF is dead. My son is okay and helped me reconcile with the workers, who seem to think it was all the robot's fault. Thank you to everyone who responded to this and helped me realize I'm NTA, and it was in fact FCF who was TA.