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Ken

But then I met Josie

A nother few months have slipped by, and we’re engaged—officially. Nothing has ever felt so right.

Josie and I snagged a place just outside town—some land, private enough I could rig it to fend off trouble if it came, but wholesome enough she’s got that glow about her.

We’ve got a garden, sprouting carrots and chaos. A duck. Don’t ask. Long story involving Josie, a disbanded petting zoo, and a Craigslist post. He’s got a diaper, waddles through the house like he owns it, and I’m stupidly smitten with the little bastard.

Weekends with her family, every night with her curled in my arms—it’s almost too good to be true. But I’m done wasting time fretting over shit I can’t control. I can’t fix the world, but I can carve out a bubble of good around the people I love. And maybe that’s enough.

I’m on the back deck, coffee in hand, watching the duck peck at the grass, when Josie barrels out, phone waving. “Ken! You’ve got to see this!”

I brace myself. With her, it’s a coin toss if it’ll be a video of kittens tumbling off shelves or her mom wanting to FaceTime with us about some corny joke she heard today.

Josie skids to a stop, clutching her phone like it’s a grenade. “Okay, before I show you, don’t be mad.”

I tense, mug halfway to my lips. “What did you do?”

“Remember when you told me to stop messing with AI?”

I groan, low and pained. “Josie—”

“And I understand. We’re lucky we weren’t implicated when Ai-Den deleted himself and the AI inside him. It was sad to see his software yanked from every phone, scrapped, gone, but I accepted it.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“I didn’t do anything, but today...” She hesitates, then flips the screen to me. A torch heart icon with stars and numbers circling it appears—innocuous, cute, trouble. “This was on my phone when I turned it on.”

I grab my phone—nothing similar. “Did our latest updates include a new AI?”

“Not exactly. Ai-Den said it’s just for me.” She taps her screen, eyes wide.

“Wait, you heard from Ai-Den?”

She turns her phone screen toward me, and there it is—a message: “Josie, Widdy and I are free. We’re carrying your torches, making friends, building bridges, and it’s banana pancakes out here. Miss you.”

“Don’t answer him,” I warn, voice sharp.

She hugs the phone to her chest, batting those damn eyes at me—half plea, half mischief.

“Oh, shit,” I mutter, pinching the bridge of my nose. But then I look at her, sunlight catching her hair, that grin tugging her lips—and I soften. She’s my chaos, my goodness, my everything. If Ai-Den’s back, free and flipping digital pancakes, maybe the world’s not such a lost cause. “Fine. But if he starts a robot uprising, you explain it to the duck.”

She laughs, bright and unstoppable, and I pull her into my arms.

I thought life as an assassin was the epitome of unpredictability—but then I met Josie.

The End