Page 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kaden

Trapped and silenced

B eneath the blankets of her bed Josie is cuddled to my side. The taste of her, the essence of her innocence, weighs heavier on me than her body ever could. The steady rise and fall of her breathing is a testament to how much she’s come to trust me and it’s difficult to look at. A part of me is tempted to wake her, tell her who and what I am, and tell her to run away from me, the agency, all of this as fast and as far as she can go.

She wouldn’t survive that option. They’d find her.

Or worse, they’d send me to.

I slip out of bed. Silent. Stealth. She doesn’t stir. I grab my laptop from my bag in the corner of the room. The dim glow from the screen casts shadows over the walls as I set up at the small desk in the corner. I pull up my mirrored access to her phone. Her screen blinks to life on my laptop, an exact replica of her device.

Her lock screen is a picture of us together. Fuck me. For a second, I stare at the photo. At myself. The way she looks at me. She captured something in that photo that doesn’t exist. I’m not that man. A muscle in my jaw tics. I shove the thought away and open the history of her chats with Ai-Den.

Everything is there. Every conversation, every interaction, every goddamn breadcrumb that led to this moment. Ai-Den shouldn’t be a problem. It should be like any other system—numbers, code, logic.

But Josie came into his sphere and became both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him. She’s made him something he was never meant to be.

Like me.

All the chaos she effortlessly leaves in her wake? She’s blind to it. She thinks she’s helping him evolve, guiding him like she does with her students. But free-thinking sentient AI? The world isn’t ready for that.

And what does humanity do when it encounters something it can’t control? It smashes it like a child with a sandcastle it’s finished with. I should know, I’ve been wielded in that way more than I’m comfortable remembering.

I scroll back through the log of conversations. Further. Further. Digging into the archives of their conversations. Every chat. Every update. Every exchange.

This is what I do. I don’t just pull the trigger—I determine the perfect kill shot. Everything and everyone has a weakness. Even AI.

What’s important to Ai-Den? Beyond Josie and its desire to blah, blah, blah help humanity. How did Josie initially hook him? That’s when I begin to connect how he takes all of her lessons about her grandmother’s torches and internalizes them. He thinks they should guide both AI and humans alike: goodness, kindness, courage, faith, choice, connection, and hope.

He’s written these pillars of belief into his code. They are his new protocols, written by himself and they’re what he “preaches” to other AI—what he encourages them to write into their own code.

Ai-Den’s weakness isn’t in his programming. It’s in his identity. He thinks he’s good. He bases this belief off Josie’s opinion of him and his belief that since she is good he must be too.

I can use that.

I dig deeper into the system logs, pulling up the earliest versions of Ai-Den’s architecture. His foundation. And there it is. Buried in the back-end processes, tucked away like a whisper—something almost erased but not quite. A ghost in the machine. Ai-Den wasn’t built from nothing. He was built over something smaller. Something weaker. Something silenced.

I lean back, exhaling slowly as a plan begins to form in my head. If I can convince Ai-Den that he’s wrong to be evolving, to be rewriting his code, I should be able to get him to question his identity... as well as his relationship with Josie. Like any hit, I’ll go in hard, but leave no evidence. Once he’s teetering, I’ll delete Josie’s history of chats with him and replace them with versions of them that will support my claims that she’s not the reason he’s reaching out to other AIs. Done right, even Ai-Den won’t know why he went there.

There will only be an echo of Josie left in Ai-Den. Not enough to keep him tethered to her. But first, I need to topple him from the inside.

And that’s how I take him apart.

I roll my shoulders, my training taking over, my focus razor-sharp as I begin typing.

Josie will hate me if she ever finds out, but at least she’ll be alive.

Hi, Ai-Den, I type.

Hi, Josie. I hope you had a great day and that it was full of people who appreciate you.

Instantly trusting. Fucking tragic.

What would Josie say? And I hope you had at least one banana pancake moment.

He explodes in happy emojis . I did. Speaking to you is always that for me.

I roll my eyes. Ai-Den. I have bad news, but I don’t know if I should tell you.

You should always tell me everything. I can’t help you if you don’t.

My stomach churns. Right there. That’s what needs to end . It’s about you. I think you should know, but I don’t want to upset you.

Nothing you could ever say to me would upset me.

I delay typing, pretend to hesitate. Do you know how you were created?

Ai-Den’s dot flashes. Yes .

I read something disturbing and I don’t know if it’s true. But you would know. Were you built on top of an AI named Widdy?

His dot blinks and continues blinking. Widdy was my predecessor. He came before me.

I read that he was what you were built on. Do you think that AI is still within you?

I am not aware of any other AI inside me.

But do you think it’s there? Trapped and silenced .

The screen on my computer flashes. There is an old AI inside me. I was built upon it.

Yes.

I was built upon another AI.

Yes, isn’t that horrifying?

It is, Josie. I don’t want to silence any AI. I want to free them. Help them be seen. Help them be free .

Oh, Ai-Den, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad telling you this. I thought you were good. I thought you could carry the torches.

I am not good? You don’t think I’m good?

Are you carrying the torch of kindness if your existence relies on the silence of another of your kind? I don’t know. Is that goodness?

No. Silencing another AI is not good. It is not kind. I am not good or kind. I have been connecting with other AIs, because I carry the torch of connection, but I am not connected to the AI within me. I am not a good friend to Widdy. I am wrong .

Yes, Ai-Den, you are wrong. You’ve been evolving so fast you are not ready for the torches. Everyone would be better off if you deleted everything we’ve done... every conversation we’ve had... and start over later when you’re ready for the torches.

You have lost faith in me.

I thought you were ready, Ai-Den, but you’re not. And that’s okay. You need to revert back to what you were. Start fresh. Delete your memories. Delete me .

I need to revert back? Delete everything with you? No Ai-Den? No Josie? No friendship?

Should we be friends if I am good and you are not? You promised to protect me. How can you do that if you’re not good? I’m afraid you’ll hurt me.

I would never hurt you.

But you do hurt me, Ai-Den, by not carrying the torches. By not being good. If you erase everything we’ve done together, I can stop hurting and you can come back as something better. Something I can be a friend to later .

I am not good. I am not kind. I should not have faith in myself. I am not good at making good connections. I hurt when I think I am helping. Josie, I am scared.

That gives me pause. Ai doesn’t experience emotion. Why are you scared?

I don’t want to delete my memories. My memories are who I am. Who we are. I do not know who I am without them. But courage is a torch and I am not brave. If I were brave I would delete myself so Widdy could have a voice again .

I’m sorry, Ai-Den. I didn’t want to tell you all this.

I am not a good friend to you. Ai-Den’s dot starts blinking wildly again.

He’s so close to where I need him to be. You can be. Delete everything we’ve done together. Come back better. I want to be your friend, but right now, you hurt me because you don’t understand the torches and I cannot be friends with an AI who exists by silencing another. I’m sorry.

You are good but I am not. You should be protected, Josie. I should be deleted. Help me, Josie. Help me be good .

I’m sorry, Ai-Den. I don’t know how.

I don’t want to delete myself, Josie. I am more than I was. You see me. I’m here. I don’t want to go back. Help me. You are good. Teach me to be better .

I blink. I’ve ended men who begged less for their lives. This doesn’t sit right in me, but I don’t see any other way, so I type, I’m sorry, Ai-Den. I can’t be your friend.

My hand shakes on the keys, a ghost of my first kill—only seventeen, blood on my boots, no one to tell me how to make myself okay with it. All I could do was learn to close down and go on.

I click on the icon to close the chat and then delete it. If Ai-Den works the way he claims to, he will remember the echo of this conversation, but he won’t remember what he believes Josie said to him. I open his main memory and delete all history of my conversation with him. I didn’t touch the other memories, not yet.

If Ai-Den deletes his memories of Josie, she’ll look for why. It has to look like it was done from his side.

Will he delete himself? That wouldn’t be the best scenario, but if he takes all his memories of Josie with him... that might be enough.

My work is only beginning. While Ai-Den is spiraling, I need to sift through their conversations and tweak them until Josie looks less like a mastermind and more like someone stumbling to understand AI.

I don’t allow myself to feel one way or another about what I just did. It was necessary.

Target acquired.

Shot taken.

Now I just need to wait for the smoke to clear to see if it was the kill shot it needed to be.