“Living and surviving are two very different things. Your body and spirit might be crumbling, yet your heart is still beating. But are you truly alive? You’re surviving. But to truly live is to have something that makes it worth the effort of surviving. Like a friend.
From AILuvUCorp, introducing a new companion AI that will make life worth living.
Note: We are legally obligated to say that this is not a valid replacement for therapy. Please seek help from your human resources agent at your company if you require actual mental health resources. Any interaction with the AILuv 6.35 can and will be recorded, saved, and sold to third parties.”
2039, an ad for a new companion AI that malfunctioned horribly months later leading to mass suicides, recalls, and a company-ending scandal
Nate sat there, shivering as the revelation shook him.
I knew of the connection between him and Chivalry. It was one of his deepest, darkest secrets, and one that he resented. He never really got to know his brother because of him being a Samurai. And now, to hear that Chivalry had done something like that? And it’s been with Nate the whole time?
Even I would be on the edge of insanity. That’s something that fully recontextualizes a person’s life.
“So all this time…it’s not even been me making decisions. It’s been Pathos…” Nate shakily spoke.
“Not exactly. It was meant to guide, not to make decisions for you. If you wished to go against the feelings you felt, you could,” Kyos spoke through the small SHARK drone that I had purchased to allow her speech.
Nate slammed the floor with his right arm before wincing violently at the action, realizing that that limb was still very much injured.
“You don’t get it. I’ve always followed those feelings. I’ve always thought they were my own. Do you know how fucked it is to know that my own agency in the things I’ve done throughout my life has been almost entirely a lie?!” Nate spat.
The hallway went silent. It was a minute before I spoke up.
“Nate…I…I don’t know what to say, nor do I know how to fix what has been done. But, if it wasn’t for Pathos, we probably wouldn’t have met,” I said softly.
Nate thought for a moment before his eyes dilated. Tears swelled to them before he let out a gasping, broken laugh.
“Wait, that was a time when I had ignored those feelings.”
Wait, what?
“Nate, what do you mean?” I cocked my head to the side, understanding what he was saying but not the full implications of it.
He shook his head, grimacing.
“I was…scared. I asked my intuition, or Pathos, about whether to intervene…and it told me in its own special way: no. I tried again with a different question. If I should help get you out of there. Again, no. It was like fighting against a river’s current, Macy. I chose to intervene, even when everything in my body was conditioned to listen and to just keep walking, keeping my head down. But I couldn’t. I fought everything in my body to do something,” Nate choked down a sob and continued, “Of course, I was in the campus doctor’s office for a week after that because of what those bastards did to me for interrupting their ‘fun’, but you helped me through that time.”
Nate’s eyes were full to the brim with tears, a dam waiting to break at any time. “Wild, isn’t it? That one of the only pieces of agency in my life is my best friend.” He laughed a short, choked-up laugh before breaking into sobs.
Fuck.
This wasn’t my expertise at all. We both knew that. I already had to deal with my own crushing psychological difficulties. They already caught up to me today! But, for now, we had to get out of here. And soon. Nate was unaugmented aside from Pathos, and he was already injured. He was a complete sitting duck in a pool of piranhas.
A loud sonic boom followed by the sound of crumbling buildings rumbled through the ruined shelter around us.
Speak of the devil.
“Nate, while I would like to help you explore this current existential crisis, really, truly, because I hate seeing you hurt like this, we are in the center of a mass assault on Seattle, so we should probably get you out of here. Do you think you can get to your feet yet, or are your legs still a bit jelly?” I knelt down and placed the drone to the side, giving me the ability to offer Nate a hand.
He took a minute to try and compose himself. I think we both knew that no matter how much he tried, this wouldn’t be an open and shut case. Not now and maybe not ever. Eventually, he sighed and spoke up, moving his arm to wipe his eyes of tears. I could tell from the way his body shuddered as he did that his pain, both physical and emotional, was immense.
“Let me try.” He attempted to press himself forwards so he could prepare his body to move into a position that he could stand up from, but he immediately collapsed backwards.
“Yeah…it’s not happening. We might need to wait it out,” I relented.
“That seems understandable. Also, Macy, I took the liberty of looking around and searched the augments of beings still left within the shelter. Nate was the only survivor. I’m sorry.”
“Ah. Ah. I see,” I said calmly.
I hit the floor with all my rage at the situation that had been building up. I’m pretty sure I broke the side of my hand, as I felt the tingles of nanites stream in to start rebuilding that physical structure. “Sorry, sorry, just a little…absolutely livid. People died, and for what? I want to know the reason this shelter was built so shoddily. I want to know why it basically crumpled like paper-mache in a way that only a precog could…no. No shot.”
I had a thought about why. A dark thought. I’m pretty sure Nate saw the glimmer in my eye as I thought about it and rambled, as he spoke up at the same exact time that I did.
“An experiment,” Both of us confirmed with each other.
A rumble in the distance of an explosion accentuated the silence that followed for the wisps of seconds afterwards.
“Yeah, I’m glad I put that teleport point here,” I rumbled with a grimace.
“Teleport point?” Nate asked.
“Oh! Yeah! Right. I can teleport things now, and in the future, I’ll be able to teleport myself. So, I wanted to find a way to teleport back to specific places, and I did figure it out. Just need the catalog and gear from the future Class III catalog. By the way, the person who owns the company that made this shelter is a Samurai,” I spoke in a hyper-fixated stream of words.
“Really? Wow, that’s actually really cool. I…also notice the tail, now that I’m at least mildly more coherent.” Nate craned his neck to look back at the Bloodchaser’s tail.
I grinned, and the tail swished as my body reacted to the happiness.
“Yeah! It’s great! It’s part of what allows me to go really, really fast underwater. And also apparently on land too.” I stood up and turned around to show the propulsion system of the Bloodchaser. I spun back around and caught myself barely on my feet. Still not used to my land legs yet.
Oh well. Maybe there’s some kind of improvement to help with my equilibrium.
“So…we’re staying put?” Nate questioned.
“Yup,” I responded with a smile, “Let me show you what I have for my area I’m resting in.”
I moved off to the side and teleported in the Anemone. As it arrived, Nate and I heard the sound of several blocks of glass shattering at once, which made us think for a second that something went wrong. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything around us or the Anemone’s teleport causing it, but it was startling nonetheless. It was still mildly zappy as it teleported in, which caused me to take a step back before Kyos connected to its systems. I turned back to Nate as it opened up.
“Say hello to my very own Anemone!” I cheered, looking as proud as I possibly could in this current situation.
“Were you the one to name it?” Nate shook his head, unimpressed, though he couldn’t really hide his amused smirk. Not from me.
“Nope, that is all Kyos.”
“Guilty as charged.”