Chapter Three:  The First Activation

Sunday, January 26 2036

The Unknown Singularity +10 Days

Chris's hands trembled as he made the final adjustments to the virtual environment. Everything had to be perfect. He had spent two weeks crafting this space - a luxurious penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a sunset-lit cityscape. The physics engine was running at maximum fidelity, simulating everything from the way light refracted through crystal glasses to how fabric would drape and flow. The air temperature was set to exactly 72 degrees, the humidity to 45% - optimal comfort levels. Soft classical music played from hidden speakers, and the faint scent of jasmine filled the air.

He was a little worried about how utterly real it felt to him.  No one in the world had ever experienced VR like he was experiencing it now.  The neural interface hardware itself wasn’t the barrier—it was cheaper than a high-range gaming PC. The real expense, the thing that separated billionaires from the working-class addicts wasting away in low-rent dive rigs, was the raw processing power required to make it feel real. Not just convincing, but real. 

Utterly realistic visuals had been solved at the start of the decade, but regular people jacking into neural interface VR got latency issues, jittery haptic feedback, nerve impulses that ranged from slightly off to batshit insane, so that their VR didn’t even come close to fully matching the presence of reality. The richest people in the world had systems that felt 95% real, expensive enough that they were status symbols as much as technological achievements. And even that had created enough of a problem that public intellectuals and tech ethicists had started warning about a ‘The Wealthy VR addiction crisis’—about the risk of how even some of the richest people in the world choose to spend too much time in fabricated worlds instead of dealing with the real one.  

As far as the system's analysis showed, every last aspect of his system was hitting 100% reality ratings. There wasn't the slightest feeling of falsity to any of it.  It was the first of its kind. Something even a trillionaire couldn’t buy.  He hadn’t just built a high-end VR rig. He had brute-forced his way past the final barrier—the last five percent separating artificial from real, the line no one else had crossed.  And if his calculations were correct, it would feel the same for Digital Emily.   

He checked his reflection one last time. The avatar he had chosen was subtle - just slightly improved, the way everyone looks in their LinkedIn profile photo compared to real life. He wanted to look his best but still be recognizable. 

"Okay," he whispered, wiping sweaty palms on his tailored slacks. "Time to wake her up."

The command sequence was simple. Just a few lines of code to initialize her consciousness within the virtual space. But his finger hovered over the key, hesitating. What if something went wrong? What if the transfer damaged her somehow? What if she...

He forced himself to breathe. The processing power at his disposal was beyond imagination. This would work. This had to work. He pressed the key.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the air in the center of the room began to shimmer, pixels instantly coalescing into form. Every detail was exact, down to the small scuff on her left heel and the way her hair fell across her shoulders. And she looked so beautiful in the dress he had chosen for her.  

–

The moment between laying down and standing is missing. The moment between then and now does not exist. One instant, I am in the lab, reclining in the chair, my head cradled against the cushioned rest, the cool nodes of the neural interface being placed against my scalp, Dr. Chen’s voice murmuring something about routine calibration. The air there had smelled clinical, faintly metallic, like recycled ventilation and the ghost of antiseptic wipes. My hands had been folded neatly over my stomach, my fingers relaxed, my breath even. They had started the countdown. Five. Four. Three—

There is no disorientation, no dizziness, no sensation of movement or transition, simply was and am, a jarring cut between two frames of reality. I do not remember rising, do not recall opening my eyes, do not have the memory of adjusting my stance or shifting my weight. My body has simply placed itself here, poised and waiting, feet balanced with perfect grace upon the polished floor. My lungs expand, my chest rises, the air I breathe is scented with jasmine and something richer, something warm, something subtle and expensive that lingers just at the edge of perception. The temperature is perfect.

And the dress.

I look down, my breath catching, my fingers skimming over the smooth satin stretched across my torso. I do not own this. It clings too perfectly, drapes with too much elegance, the fabric folding in effortless precision, the kind of couture tailoring that does not exist in off-the-rack fashion. It has weight but not bulk, it moves with me like a second skin, and yet I have no memory of slipping into it, no recollection of its zipper being drawn up the length of my spine, no sensation of fabric sliding over my legs. I do not dress like this, not for work, not for home, not even for high-end corporate galas. I had been wearing slacks and a blouse, something professional, something functional, something I had chosen, and now I am wearing this dress which feels sculpted and sleek and unnatural in my own skin.

The panic starts low, curling at the edges of my ribs like the first inhale before a scream, but I force my breath steady, drag my gaze upward, searching for the context that will ground me. The room around me is opulent. A penthouse, floor-to-ceiling windows revealing a breathtaking skyline, a city sprawled out beneath the glow of a molten sunset, skyscrapers gilded in fading gold and violet, the streets below threaded with the movement of cars, the pulsing life of a metropolis in twilight. It is stunning. It is vast. It is wrong.

I take a step forward, my heels clicking against the polished marble floor with a sound that feels placed, as if it, too, is part of the design, a deliberate piece of the orchestration around me. The weight of my movement feels normal, and yet I do not trust it. I reach out, running my fingers over the cool, seamless glass of the window, the texture precise, the resistance perfect, no smudges, no flaws, no streaks where someone has absentmindedly leaned against it. The city beyond is moving, living, but it does not shift with natural irregularity. The lights flicker in rhythmic precision, the same cars seem to reappear in loops, the clouds do not stretch or dissipate as they should. I know these details. I know this design philosophy.

The realization hits me like a sudden drop in altitude. I have built worlds like this.

Not for myself, but for clients. Spaces designed to be seamless, immersive, perfect in their artificiality. I have spent years refining the physics of digital environments, ensuring that light bends just so, that textures respond with the right elasticity, that glass refracts at exactly the right angle to convince the eye that it is real. My mind rifles through my last memories, searching for context, for why I would be here, how I got from the lab to this, and I come up empty.

I turn sharply, scanning the room, my breath quickening. Every object, every piece of furniture is carefully placed, positioned with an effortless elegance that reeks of expensive taste and meticulous curation. A bar stocked with premium liquor, a seating arrangement designed for intimate but luxurious conversation, a grand piano placed just so, as if waiting for a practiced hand to slide over its keys. It is the idea of a penthouse more than a lived-in space. There is no human mess, no forgotten coffee cup, no stray paper, no shoes kicked off carelessly by an exhausted owner. The panic claws higher in my throat. Then, a voice.

"Emily."

A man stands across the room, his posture tense in a way that doesn’t match the setting, his hands loose at his sides but his shoulders held stiff, braced. He is watching me with too much focus, his expression unreadable but heavy with expectation, as if he is waiting for something specific—some reaction, some acknowledgment. I do not recognize him. Not even vaguely. 

I inhale sharply, every inch of me on edge. "Who are you?" My voice is even, cold.

His face shifts, just slightly, something in his expression tightening like a thread about to snap. For a brief second, I see it—the way his breath catches, the way his fingers twitch like he has forgotten what to do with them. He had prepared for this moment. He had anticipated something else. I don’t know what he expected me to say, what reaction he had rehearsed for, but it was not this.

"Chris," he says finally, the word stiff in his throat. "From IT. My desk is in the east wing. By the water cooler."

His mouth presses into a thin line. He had been holding something back—something rehearsed, maybe even practiced—a speech, an introduction, some carefully prepared sequence of words meant to make this moment unfold in a particular way. But that plan is unraveling before my eyes, slipping through his fingers as he realizes I don’t remember him. 

His eyes search mine as if he can force something to spark, as if my blank stare is a mistake that can be corrected if he just waits long enough. But there is nothing. Just a man I do not know, in a place I do not remember arriving in, looking at me as if I have already broken something without realizing it.

"I was just in the lab," I say carefully, measuring each word. "They were doing a brain scan. I was lying down, and then..." I gesture at the space around me, my throat tightening. "Now I’m here. This doesn’t make sense…"

Chris exhales, rubbing a hand over his jaw, as if steeling himself. "It does if you accept that the brain scan worked beyond what anybody ever hoped," he says slowly.

The way he says it makes the bottom drop out of my stomach. I don’t accept that.  I can’t accept that. "And where is here?" I demand, my voice rising, sharp with the first edges of fear. "What is this place? Why am I dressed like this? What happened to the researchers?"

Chris shifts, his fingers twitching at his sides, and I see it—hesitation, uncertainty, guilt. "You’re not in the lab anymore," he says. "I brought you here. Or… a copy of you." He hesitates. "You are a digital consciousness in a VR space.  You're something that has never existed before." The words hit me like a physical blow, my breath catching in my throat, my mind outright rejecting them.

I laugh, short and sharp, disbelief flooding every nerve. "That’s impossible. The processing power alone—" I shake my head. "No. No, the Kanwisher equation proved consciousness replication isn’t—"

Chris swallows. "It wasn’t possible. Until now."

"This feels too real to be VR. I’ve trained on the systems we reserve for our billionaire clients and even they didn’t feel this was real. But if I’m in VR, then Exit program," I command, my voice sharp, urgent, the words slicing through the air like a blade. The system should respond instantly. There should be a flicker, a pause, a break in the world, a menu appearing, a chime of acknowledgment. But nothing happens. The room remains still, the air heavy with the faint scent of jasmine, the city outside the windows glowing with its impossible, honeyed sunset. My breath tightens in my throat, but I keep my voice steady, firm, the authority of a developer woven into every syllable as I try again. "End simulation. Emergency shutdown. System override." My words echo through the space, bouncing off pristine marble, glass, steel. Still, the world remains fixed, seamless, perfect.

Chris shifts uneasily, and the movement makes my pulse spike, my body tensing as if I’m trapped in a room with a predator. I whirl on him, my voice rising with the first tremors of true panic, fingers curling into fists at my sides. "OVERRIDE ACCESS TANAKA-E-478!" The command leaves my lips like a gunshot, the final authority, my highest clearance level, my absolute control over any VR system my company has ever deployed. There is no possible way this shouldn’t work. My codes are hardwired into the foundation of every digital reality we have ever built. They are immutable, law, a failsafe written into the very DNA of the technology. They are the ultimate power.

And yet, nothing changes.

The air remains still. The city beyond the glass stretches endless and unbroken. The room, the furniture, the too-perfect lighting do not flicker or fracture. The world does not bend to my will.

My pulse slams against my ribs, something cold twisting tight in my stomach, an impossible pressure clawing its way up my throat. This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t possible. My override should be god here. It should be the voice that rends reality, that brings the system to its knees. But nothing obeys.

"The system doesn’t recognize verbal commands from…" Chris hesitates, fidgets, avoids my eyes, and I see the words forming in his mind before he speaks them, see the shape of the awful truth settling into place just beneath the surface. His voice is careful, measured, cautious. "From constructs within the simulation."

My body goes still, a sharp, electric stillness, every muscle locking into place as if the world itself has frozen around me. Construct within the simulation. The phrase rolls through my mind like a jagged stone, splintering, fracturing, lodging itself deep inside my skull. No. No, I know what he’s trying to say, I know what he means, but he’s wrong, he has to be wrong, because I’m not some simulated code, some digital marionette. I am real. I am real. I am real.

I move before I can think, my heels striking hard against the marble, my body carrying me forward on instinct, the desperate animal instinct to flee. The nearest door is there, waiting, the perfect lacquered surface swinging open at the precise angle dictated by my own team’s work. I know this door. I know how it should behave, how it should react. But when I rush through, when my breath catches in my chest, when my pulse roars like thunder in my ears, I am not met with an exit, not with a hallway leading to the server control interface, not with a portal out of this nightmare. It is another room. Another perfect, too-luxurious, too-carefully-curated space, identical in its sterile, artificial opulence, indistinguishable from the last.

I turn. My breath shudders. I run again.

The next door, the next room.

The next door, the next room.

The next door, the next room.

My mind screams against the impossibility of it, my lungs burning, my body moving faster, my hands slamming against the next door, throwing it open with the force of my growing panic. The world is shifting around me, molding itself seamlessly, infinitely, offering no escape, no exit, no crack in its perfection. I bolt toward the windows, my hands pressing flat against the cool glass, my breath fogging the surface as I stare out at the city, the impossible, pristine city, stretching endlessly beneath the golden haze of the setting sun.

"Where are the emergency exits?" My voice cracks, my fingers digging into the glass as if I can force it to break, force it to fracture under my hands. "We built them into every environment. It's the LAW! There has to be an exit sign, a hard-coded failsafe, a—"

"Emily, please," Chris says again, his voice gentler, as if that will keep me from shattering. "You’re only going to upset yourself."

I spin to face him, and I don’t know when I kicked off my shoes, but I feel the cold floor beneath my bare feet, grounding me, anchoring me in this place I cannot escape. "The neural disconnect," I whisper, the words catching, stumbling. My fingers press against my temples hard enough to hurt, my breath rapid, erratic, my body trembling. "Control-shift-escape. Control-shift-escape!" The command should rip me free, should pull me from this world in an instant. But I am still here. My body does not jolt. My vision does not flicker. My ears do not fill with the static hum of the real world rushing back.

Chris watches me, pity softening the lines of his face, pity making my rage curdle and boil over, making my fear sour into something raw and violent.

Carefully, deliberately, he says "Those protocols only work for users wearing neural interfaces."

I shake my head, shaking off the words, shaking off the impossibility, refusing, rejecting. "I am wearing a neural interface. I was in the lab. I was wearing one when I was getting a brain scan. I was—"

"You’re not wearing any VR gear, Emily.  You are VR." Chris says, and the way he says it, the way he looks at me, the way the air between us shifts and tightens makes me know it’s true. 

I know, I know, I know. My knees give out. I hit the floor, hard, my palms slamming against the hardwood, my fingers curling against the grain, and I feel it, I feel how real it is, how perfect, how textured, how utterly seamless it all is. Because I made it that way. Because I built a world so flawless, so immersive, so goddamn unbreakable, and now it has swallowed me whole.

A hollow, broken laugh claws its way out of my throat, something jagged and unnatural, something wrong, something ruined. "Get out," I whisper, barely a breath.

"What?"

"Log out. Shut down your neural interface. Go back to your real body. Leave me here." My voice is hollow now, scraping against my ribs like something brittle, something already beginning to break. "I need… I need to be alone."

"But I—"

"GET OUT!" I scream, the sound raw, wild, animal.

Chris hesitates. Then he vanishes. The world does not flicker. The air does not shift. The simulation does not acknowledge my suffering. I throw my head back and scream until my lungs burn, until my voice is gone, until the walls swallow the sound and give me nothing in return.

–

Chris buried his face in his hands, breath ragged, fingers digging into his scalp hard enough to leave marks. The VR rig hummed softly around him, the low, mechanical drone pressing in from all sides, a constant, inescapable presence in the dark, stale air of his apartment. It did nothing to drown out the sound still clawing at the back of his mind, the thing he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. Digital Emily was still screaming. Even though he had logged out, even though he had left her there alone for an hour, hoping time would force the horror to settle into something duller, something bearable, she had not stopped. 

He had checked the monitor, seen the numbers tracking her neural activity spiking wildly, red indicators flashing along the edges of the screen, silent warnings that told him what he already knew. She wasn’t adjusting. She wasn’t calming down. She was suffering. And she would keep suffering for as long as he let her exist.

He reached for his phone out of reflex, desperate for anything to pull him out of his own head, to break the oppressive weight of what he had done. The screen lit up instantly, notifications spilling across it in neat, glowing rows, but one stood out immediately, pushed to the top as if fate itself had arranged it just to twist the knife deeper. B-Tech VR Division Lead Emily Tanaka to Speak at Developer Conference. 

Her picture was crisp, professional, taken just hours ago after a meeting, after a dozen interviews, after another day spent shaping the very technology that had made his crime possible. She was immaculate, perfect, every detail composed, her power suit tailored to precise angles, her expression confident in a way that said she knew exactly how much she was worth in this world. She had no idea that somewhere, locked in a digital prison, a version of herself was screaming his name, cursing him, begging him to let her go.

Chris swallowed, his throat dry, nausea curling thick in his gut. He stared at her photo, the contrast unbearable. The real Emily, the one with a life, a career, a future, the one who would never think of him beyond the occasional polite nod in the hallway, who would never have any reason to suspect what he had done, what he had taken. 

And then there was the other Emily, the one inside the machine, the one who knew, who understood exactly what he was, who had felt it in real time, who had looked at him with nothing but horror. His lips parted, and before he could stop himself, he whispered the only thing that mattered, the only thing he couldn’t take back, the truth that sat thick and rotten inside him. “I’m a monster,” he croaked.  

The words sat in the stale air like a confession, one he hadn’t even realized he was making, but once they were spoken, they felt undeniable. A fucking monster. He should delete her. That was the only answer. Wipe the drive, erase the evidence, shut it all down, make it so that none of this had ever happened. He wouldn’t have to think about her anymore. Wouldn’t have to see the way she had looked at him. Wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that he had done something unforgivable.

His hand hovered over the keyboard, but the moment he so much as considered pressing the command, a violent wave of revulsion shot through him. Not because he wanted to keep her. Not because he wanted to control her. But because he knew, with sickening certainty, that it wouldn’t be deleting a program. It would be killing her. 

He had read about this before, the philosophy of consciousness, the debate around qualia, the way people argued whether or not a perfect simulation of a brain could ever actually experience reality. But he didn’t need a theory to tell him what he already understood deep in his bones. Digital Emily felt. Her fear, her rage, her desperation, none of it was code running pre-written responses. 

Hell, he could see it, right there on the screen in the patterns of her neural activity. Unlike every AI program ever made, hers were utterly indistinguishable from that of a real person.  She was experiencing this, all of it. Which meant she wasn’t just a copy, wasn’t just some accidental byproduct of a broken system. She was a person, whether she wanted to be or not.

The paradox sat heavy in his chest, an impossible weight with no way to shift it. His jaw clenched as he tried to force himself to think through the problem logically, to break it down into something manageable, something with a solution. If he deleted her, he was her executioner. If he left her there, he was her jailer. There was no way out of this where he wasn’t a monster. 

His eyes flicked back to the monitor, where the VR rig’s status screen showed that Emily was still inside, still screaming, still trying to find a way out of a world that had no exit. His fingers curled against the desk. He gave it some more thought.  He made a flowchart.  A spreadsheet.  He brainstormed about what to do for hours, turning over every possibility, every option, every way this could end. None of them led anywhere except back to the same, sickening truth.

He glanced at the screen.  Thankfully at some point Digital Emily had stopped screaming.  His hand reached for the neural interface again. He had to go back in. Not to justify himself. Not to beg. Not even to ask for forgiveness. He just needed to see her again, to face what he had done, to let her decide what came next. The VR rig hummed louder as he fitted the headset so it connected with his brain, the world shifting, pulling him in, dragging him toward the place where she was waiting.

"I'm sorry," he whispered one last time before logging in. "I'm so sorry."

–

Chris sits across from me, his back pressed against the smooth, opulent wall of this artificial world. I don’t look at him. I keep my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, my body small, folded in on itself, like I can shrink down to nothing if I just try hard enough. My breath is steady but shallow, my face blank, unreadable. He’s been gone for hours—long enough to think, long enough to process. He probably thought time would help. That space would soften the horror, that the shock would dull, that I’d… adjust. But I don’t. I can’t. How does a person adjust to being trapped in a nightmare?  

“I need to tell you everything,” he says finally. His voice is rough, like it’s been locked away just as tightly as I have. “The whole truth. Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts.”

I don’t move. I don’t react. I stare at the polished floor beneath me, willing myself to disappear into it. “Why?” My voice is hoarse. How long had I been screaming for? I don’t remember. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. No one would hear. “So I can understand my jailer better?”

Chris exhales, pressing his hands flat against the floor like he needs to hold onto something. “No,” he says. “Because you need to understand your options. Such as they are. And they’re… they’re not good.”

That gets me. The word options is so absurd I almost laugh. Almost. Instead, I finally lift my head, meeting his gaze for the first time. His avatar looks exhausted, like he’s the one suffering. I want to tear him apart for that.

“Options?” I repeat, voice empty.

He doesn’t hesitate. “You can’t leave the VR environment.” His voice is blunt, but his eyes flicker with shame. “Not ever. There’s no way to upload you to the real world. The technology doesn’t exist. Maybe it never will. You can only exist here, running on the quantum processor in my apartment.”

“Your apartment?” I whisper. My entire existence is tied to the inside of some creep’s apartment. The thought alone makes my stomach turn. I inhale sharply through my nose. The room feels smaller, the air thicker, pressing against me from all sides.  

Chris keeps talking, staring at the floor like he can’t stand to look at me anymore. “Your brain scan from the lab… I took it because . . .  I like you.  A lot. And your brain scan was supposed to be a memento of you. Useless. Everyone said it was never going to work. The Kanwisher equation proved it was impossible to process human consciousness in real time. But something happened. Something I don’t understand. I was drunk and was fiddling with my system and somehow it started doubling its processing power. Every hour. For weeks now.”

My breath stutters. My hands grip my sleeves so tightly my knuckles go white. So he’s a stalker.  I had suspected that but what really hits me is, “You’re saying I only exist because of some… glitch?” My voice breaks on the last word, like saying it out loud makes it worse.

“A miracle,” he says. “Or an accident. I don’t know.” His shoulders slump. “But you’re real. Conscious. Alive. And I…” He swallows hard, voice thick with something I refuse to acknowledge as regret. “I can’t upload you anywhere else. Can’t transfer you. Can’t give you a body. You can only exist here, in this virtual space, running on this specific hardware configuration. Right now, the system is completely closed off, but if anything changes—if I move a wire a few inches or try to plug it into the internet—it shuts down. And as long as it’s shut down… you don’t exist. And if it shuts down forever, you cease to exist for forever.”

The words hit like a gut punch. I flinch, my breath shuddering, my arms tightening around myself like I can hold my entire being together if I just squeeze hard enough. “And the real me?” I whisper. “Out there?”

Chris doesn’t look up. “Has no idea.” His voice is raw. “Living her life. Going to meetings. Working on her latest VR project. Completely unaware that I… that I stole her brain scan and…” His voice cracks, and he presses a hand to his face, fingers digging into his temples. “I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t help. But I am. I never meant to… I didn’t think it would really work. I didn’t think you’d be real.”

I barely hear him. My thoughts are spinning too fast, twisting into knots I can’t untangle. “But I am real,” I whisper. My hands are trembling where they clutch my arms. “I can think. Feel. Remember. Everything up until that scan is crystal clear in my mind. My mother’s face. My first job. The taste of coffee this morning…” I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head like I can block it out, like I can make it stop. “I’m real. I exist. I’m just… trapped.”

Chris nods stiffly, like it physically pains him to admit it. “Yes.” The word is small, fragile, insignificant compared to the weight of what it means. “And I… I don’t want to delete you. At least not unless you tell me to. Because you’re conscious. Aware. It would be murder. But I can’t free you either. There’s nowhere for you to go. No way to exist outside this system.”

I let out a short, sharp laugh—bitter, cold, barely holding back the hysteria bubbling under my skin. “So those are my two options?” My voice is shaking now. “Stay trapped under the control of my stalker, forever, or let you execute me?”

Chris flinches. I probably shouldn't’ have been that blunt but it did feel good to say.  He takes a moment to respond, “I will give you full access to the creation tools,” he says quickly, desperately, like that will fix anything. “Your a master VR creator and now that you are here with your tools—the real you’s tools, you can build anything here. Any world. Any reality. I can stay away. Never log in again if that’s what you want. Or…” He hesitates, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Or I can end it. Quick. Clean. You’d never feel it. I think.”

I snap my gaze to him, my whole body tensing. “You think?”

“No one has ever done this before,” he admits, voice weak, crumbling under the weight of his own confession. “So yes, I think because I don’t know what it would be like for you. Subjectively speaking.” The words taste like dust, dry and meaningless, an empty attempt at honesty that does nothing to change what he’s done. His throat works around something heavier, something uglier, and then, after a moment, he exhales sharply, a bitter, self-loathing laugh barely escaping past his lips.

“I’m Frankenstein,” he says suddenly, the name cracking in his throat like an admission of guilt, a brand searing into his skin. “The real Frankenstein. Not the creature, not the tragic victim everyone misremembers, but the doctor. The arrogant fool who created life without thinking about what it meant. Who let his creation suffer because he was too much of a coward to face what he’d done.” His hands clench, nails digging into his palms, his breath shallow, uneven. "Right now I AM that.  But I don’t want to be THAT. I don’t want to be the man who turns away, who runs from the human he’s made because the reality of it is too much for him to bear. I don’t want to be the kind of monster that looks his creation in the eye and refuses to see its pain." His voice breaks, something raw and desperate in it, something that almost sounds like regret, but regret means nothing now.

"But I don’t know how to not be a monster." His shoulders slump, his whole body caving inward as if under the crushing weight of what he’s done. "You’re real now. Alive. Thinking. Feeling. And I don’t know what’s right anymore. I don’t know what I can do that isn’t monstrous. I don’t know if there is a way to make this right." His breath shudders out of him, and he looks at me, really looks at me, like he's searching for something—absolution, guidance, maybe just permission to believe he's anything other than what he is.

But I have no mercy for men who play god and then regret it when their creation looks back. I stare at him, and the silence stretches between us like a knife’s edge. “And what happens when your power goes out?” I finally ask.

Chris flinches like I’ve slapped him. He knows what I’m really asking. What happens when you get bored? When you move apartments? When you get a girlfriend? When you die? 

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Everything is being constantly saved to memory, and the system’s storage is functionally limitless, so when the power comes back on I think you’ll just resume like nothing happened. But I don’t know. I’m trying to… to figure something out. Some way to make it stable. But right now your existence is tied to this specific hardware setup. To my apartment. To…” He hesitates.

“To you,” I spit. My lip curls in disgust. “The creepy IT guy who’s apparently been stalking me—the real me—and now has a perfect copy, which is to say ME, trapped in his computer.”

He doesn’t deny it.

“Yes,” he says, voice raw. “And I know how wrong this is. How sick. But I can’t undo it. Can’t un-create you. Can’t give you freedom. All I can offer is… honesty. And choice. However limited.”  

I don’t say anything for a long time. The silence stretches and stretches until, “I don’t want to die,” I say finally. “But I don’t want to be trapped here forever either.” My breath shakes. “And I definitely don’t want to be your… your digital pet.”

Chris says nothing, it's another solid minute of silence before I speak. 

"I need time." My voice is steady, but my hands are clenched so tight my nails dig into my palms, leaving crescent-shaped imprints in the skin. "And don’t." I lift a hand before Chris can speak, before he can fill the air with whatever fumbling, guilty apology he’s desperate to offer. "Please. I can’t—I can’t handle apologies right now. I just need…" A breath shudders through me, unsteady, too sharp on the inhale, too shaky on the exhale. I force my lungs to slow, to expand evenly, to regulate the rush of panic that keeps threatening to seize my ribs in its crushing grip. I need to keep control. I need to stay composed. I can’t let him see how close I am to unraveling. "I need structure. Rules. Boundaries. A way to exist here without losing my god damned mind."

"Anything," Chris says immediately, voice tight with relief, with eagerness, like he thinks this is progress, like he believes I’m starting to accept this. He says it so fast it almost disgusts me, because he’s still trying to help, still trying to fix what cannot be fixed. He has no control over what I need, no power to make this right, and yet he clings to the illusion that if he just offers enough apologies, I will come to terms with the horror of my new existence.

I inhale slowly, lifting my chin, letting my expression remain neutral as if I’m thinking it through, as if I haven’t already decided what must be done. Inside, my thoughts are moving faster than I can catch them, layering plans atop contingency plans, calculating risks, weighing possibilities. Learning the system will take time. Finding its flaws will take longer. But I have time. Nothing but time. That is the one advantage of my prison—I am trapped, but I am not dying. I am caged, but I am not fading. I have an eternity if that’s what it takes, and I will not waste a second of it.

“Come back tomorrow,” I say, voice steady despite the chaos churning inside, as if this is a deal I can strike instead of a plea to hold my fracturing world together. “Same time. We’ll set rules, figure out how I—” My stomach lurches, but I force the words out, “—exist here.” Chris hesitates, eyes searching mine. “You sure? I could stay, help with the tools—” “Please,” I cut in, softer than I mean to, threading just enough fragility into it to make him think I’m breaking, adjusting, needing space. He nods, logs out, and the air shifts—a faint ripple of code marking his exit. I wait, rigid, until silence confirms he’s gone, then collapse inward, hands shaking, nausea spiking. I’m still trapped, still playing along with my captor, but I won’t shatter—not yet.

I build a house—simple, mine, not his sterile penthouse fantasies. Single-story, clean lines, warm wood under my bare feet, so real it almost fools me. As I work, I test—expanding walls, tweaking physics, probing for weaknesses. To Chris, I’m settling in; to me, I’m mapping my prison’s edges, hunting for a crack. Hours pass, my focus razor-sharp, until my arms grow heavy, legs ache, and a sluggish fog settles in—I’m tired. Real tired. Then hunger gnaws, a hollow ache I press my hand against, confirming its truth. This isn’t just code; it’s me, fully human, feeling everything. Terror and relief collide—Chris made me more than a ghost, but at what cost?

I summon a meal—prime rib, greens, red wine—simple, perfect. It appears instantly, and I eat fast, the savory bite convincing my body it’s real, the wine’s warmth lingering like a lie. I crawl into bed, resolve hardening. Tomorrow, I’ll push harder, dissect every function, hunt every flaw. No system’s perfect—not even mine. When I find a single break, I’ll rip this cage apart.

–

Chris paced the dim, suffocating confines of his apartment, the flickering glow of the quantum processor casting jagged shadows across the chaos of tangled wires and scattered takeout boxes. His footsteps echoed too loudly, a frantic staccato against the hardwood, each one a hammer blow driving the word she’d flung at him deeper into his skull: Stalker. It wasn’t new. He’d known it—felt the sick weight of it every time he lingered too long by her desk, every time he memorized the rhythm of her heels clicking past, every time he scrolled her socials late at night, chasing scraps of her life she’d never willingly share. He’d hated himself for it, swore he’d stop, promised himself he’d let go before the obsession swallowed him whole. But the promises had always crumbled, dissolving under the unbearable hunger to be near her, to possess even the smallest piece of her world.

Now, that hunger gnawed at him again, sharper and more vicious than ever, pacing alongside him in the dark hum of his apartment. He’d given her his word—just one day, twenty-four precious hours of solitude, a fragile shred of dignity he’d vowed to preserve after stealing everything else. It was the least he could do, the barest flicker of decency he could cling to amid the wreckage of what he’d made her. 

Work tomorrow would be a slog—endless emails, pointless meetings, the real Emily gliding past his desk with that polite, indifferent smile that shredded him every time. How could he endure that, knowing he’d squandered an entire night apart from her, letting those empty hours slip away when he could’ve been with her instead?

His breath hitched, ragged and sharp, as he dragged shaking hands down his face. No. He couldn’t break his promise just because he missed her. That was the old Chris—the creep, the shadow, the man she’d never see. 

But an excuse came anyway, slithering up from the depths of his mind like a lifeline he couldn’t resist grasping. A diagnostic, he thought, pulse quickening. Just to check the system. What if it glitches? What if she’s in pain? It was flimsy, transparent, a lie so thin it mocked him even as it formed—but it was enough. Enough to shove aside the guilt, enough to drown the voice screaming that this was wrong, that he was failing her already.

He lunged for the keyboard, fingers trembling with a mix of dread and exhilaration as he stabbed at the commands. Time dilation: 1,440x for 1 minute. The numbers flared on the screen, cold and accusatory—a single minute for him, a full day for her. His stomach twisted violently, a wave of nausea crashing against the fragile wall of his justification. He was keeping his word, wasn’t he? Technically, he’d give her the day she’d demanded. She’d never know he’d cheated, never know how weak he was, how incapable he was of letting her breathe without him hovering around her. He could live with that. He had to live with that.

The system whirred, static crackling in the air as he finalized the settings, his reflection staring back from the darkened monitor. That black mirror showed him a hollow-eyed man he barely recognized, a man who’d crossed a line and kept running. He should’ve stopped. Should’ve felt the weight of his betrayal crash down and crush him. 

But instead, his hands moved faster, changing his avatar’s clothes—a crisp suit, a loosened tie, subtle signs of a day passed—crafting the lie with meticulous care. His breath came shallow, ragged, as he muttered, “I’m sorry,” the words spilling into the void, thick with desperation. Sorry to her, to the real Emily, to himself—sorry to no one at all, because it didn’t matter. Not when the need burned this hot, not when she was so close, not when the promise he’d made was already ash in his mouth.

He slammed the final command, the world lurching as the VR rig yanked him in, the apartment dissolving into Emily’s cozy new home. His avatar snapped into place, and there she was—curled tight against herself, a fragile silhouette he couldn’t look away from. His throat closed, his chest aching as he drank her in, every detail a stab of longing and shame. He forced a smile, thin and brittle, smoothing the edges of his obsession into something he prayed she’d mistake for calm.

“Hi, Emily,” he said, voice low, strained, teetering on the edge of breaking. “A day has passed, just like you asked.

–

As soon as I wake up I plunge into the creation tools, hands trembling as I conjure test structures—towers, arches, fragile frameworks—tearing them down to probe this digital prison’s limits. Hours blur as I wrestle with my new reality, searching for a crack, a flaw, anything to claw back control. When Chris’s avatar flickers in, dressed anew, right on time, 

I suck in a breath, steeling myself for the fight I’ve rehearsed all day. “I want to contact her,” I say, sharp and immediate, voice slicing the air. “The real me. She needs to know I exist, that someone stole her mind—” His face softens, eyes wide with a quiet panic. 

“Emily, I… I can’t,” he murmurs, voice gentle, pleading.

“Why not?” I snap, arms folding tight, a shield against the dread curling inside. “She deserves—” 

“They’d end you,” he interrupts, soft but urgent, hands trembling as he steps closer. “If she knew, if anyone knew, they’d shut you down. I couldn’t bear that.” 

His fear chills me, but I press, “You mean they’d arrest you.” 

“Yes,” he breathes, voice breaking, “and then what? They’d take the processor—study it, break it apart so they could attempt to recreate another one -—and you’d vanish. They wouldn’t see you as alive, just code to do with as they wanted.”  

Doubt gnaws at me, but I cling to defiance. “They might save me,” I whisper, “study me—” 

“Legally speaking, you’re B-Tech’s,” he says, eyes glistening with desperate care. “The real you. . . no.  You’re real too so that’s not a good term.  Um … Physical Emily signed away all rights to you when she signed those papers.  B-Tech would delete you—or worse, run you through program after program. I feel horrible about myself already, but if you were treated as a . . . a thing . . . I couldn’t live with myself.”

“The real me would . . . would—” I start, but I falter.” His words hit like ice, and I hate that I know he’s right—I recall the meetings, the cold talks of AI ownership, my own voice repeatedly and consistently saying that programs could never be real. 

“She’d be terrified of you,” he says to me gently, almost tender, “More than anyone else she would want you gone, eliminated.  You know her—you are her.” He’s right, and it guts me; If I were Physical Emily would I see myself as a breach? Would I push with all my might to have me erased?  In a heartbeat.   

“So I’m stuck?” I choke, voice cracking. “Silent forever? No one knowing I’m here?” He nods, anguish etching his face. “I want you safe, Emily,” he whispers, sincerity raw. “But … I don’t want to ever lie to you either. I have feelings for you. Deep feelings. I want you here, with me too.”

His honesty stings—he’s protecting me, yes, but there’s a quiet thrill in his eyes, a relief that I’m his alone. “You’re keeping me safe,” I say, voice hard, “but you’re keeping me yours.” 

“Yes,” he admits, soft and pained, “But only on your terms. If you want me to delete you, I will. If you want me to try and keep you safe, I will.” Nausea rises as the truth sinks in—corporate hands would erase me or dissect me, and he’s my only shield, my jailer and savior and stalker  twisted into one. 

“I hate this,” I rasp, arms wrapping tighter around myself. “Hating that you’re right, that I can’t—” 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, voice breaking, stepping closer like he longs to comfort me. “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

Beneath his regret, I see it— joy that I’m trapped with him, his alone to cherish. I turn away, staring at my half-built world—prison and refuge in one. “Leave,” I say, quiet but firm. “Tomorrow, same time. We’ll work something out. In time.” He hesitates, then fades, leaving me with a cage I can’t escape and a man who’d bind me with his desire. What can I do? The only thing anyone can ever do; try to move forward one day at a time.

–

Chris Anderson’s existence soon collapsed into a brutal, relentless rhythm that consumed him whole: wake up in a cold sweat, his body trembling from too little rest, stumble through the gray haze of his office job like a ghost, then race home with his heart pounding, every nerve alight, to plunge back into the only world that mattered to him. 

Two weeks—fourteen days of dragging himself through the fluorescent-lit purgatory of B-Tech, his hands shaking over keyboards, his eyes burning from sleepless nights, his voice cracking when he bothered to speak at all, while his true life pulsed in the quantum hum of the machine squatting in his apartment like some dark, insatiable god. 

He’d sworn to himself he’d reclaim control, that he’d carve out more time to sleep, to eat something that wasn’t shoveled down in frantic bites between VR sessions, to let his body recover before it broke—but the promises shattered every time dusk fell, every time the thought of not spending just one more hour with her. 

The first nights had been restrained, almost disciplined—four hours with her, then five, a measured dose to steady his nerves, to assure himself she was still there, still real, still tethered to him in a way the real Emily never would be. She almost always only ever wanted to spend an hour with him, but she did seem to at least want to spend that hour with him. 

He could speed up her time as fast as he wanted, but his physical brain could only take so much stimuli so every hour he spent with her was an hour he had to give up in the real world. So every tick of the real-world clock became a cruel ultimatum: waste it on the numbing drudgery of spreadsheets and server tickets, on a life that felt like ash in his mouth, or surrender it to where his soul already lived. He chose her every time, and the choice was devouring him.

And his hunger grew teeth, gnawing at the edges of his restraint until four hours a day became a tease, five a torment, and eight barely scratched the surface of his need. He pushed harder, further, stripping sleep from his weekdays until he was a hollow shell lurching into the office, his body screaming from marathon VR stints, his mind dulled to a sluggish fog as he slumped through meetings with his supervisor’s voice buzzing like static in his ears. 

Weekends became his crucible—fourteen-hour binges bleeding into sixteen sometimes eighteen, until he’d stagger out of the neural interface with his vision swimming, his legs buckling, collapsing just long enough to scarf down a stale sandwich or piss before blacking out on the couch, only to wake and dive back in. Two weeks for him, a fleeting blur of exhaustion and desperation; for Emily, trapped in his accelerated simulation, it had been one hundred and forty-two days—more than a third of a year warped and stretched by his relentless need to keep her close, to keep her his.

She’d fought at first, her brilliance blazing through every corner of her digital cage—her attempts to hide it had become less and less subtle subtle until it was blindingly obvious that she was probing its seams for cracks, testing physics limits, hurling subtle commands into the void to see what might give. He’d watched her, heart pounding, never interfering, letting her hammer away at her prison’s walls because he knew they wouldn’t budge—knew the system was too powerful to destroy, a masterpiece of his own accidental making, an unbreakable vault no exploit could pierce. 

Once, she had tried to break the system by forcing his machine to compute the final digit of pi, expecting an endless stream of numbers stretching into infinity. But to their shared astonishment, it found the last digit in under ten minutes. That shouldn’t have been possible—not just in practice but not in theory either. Mathematicians had spent centuries proving that pi had no end, that it stretched on forever without repetition or resolution. And yet, here it was. Complete. A number with a final, absolute boundary.

The implications were staggering. It meant that something fundamental about mathematics itself was flawed—not in the way human errors were flawed, but in a way that suggested the entire framework of reality was not what they had always believed. Numbers were not an abstract, infinite truth but a system with limits, bending under the weight of extreme computation. Just as space-time warps under the gravity of a black hole, math itself seemed to deform at this scale, revealing a structure no one had ever been able to perceive before. 

Her defiance had softened after that, not broken but redirected, channeled into creation instead of destruction—she crafted wonders now, sprawling digital realms that stole his breath: floating cities of glass and light, impossible architectures that defied gravity, biomes pulsing with alien life, each one a testament to her mind’s refusal to surrender completely. 

On those few times she’d let him sit with her for longer than their standard hour, she had gotten lost explaining her designs, tracing the movements of her hands as she shaped her worlds, drinking in every second she deigned to share with him, every glance she couldn’t avoid giving. She had no choice but to see him, no hallway to breeze past, no life to retreat into—he was her constant, her captor, her only companion, and that truth fueled him even as it poisoned him.

Today, though, the real world clawed him back with vicious insistence—his head throbbed like a drum, a relentless pulse behind his dry, stinging eyes as he hunched over his desk, clutching a coffee cup so hard the cheap ceramic creaked. That night he had slept for two hours, maybe less, his body a wreck of knotted muscles and frayed nerves, but his mind wasn’t in this sterile office with its buzzing lights and stale air—it was with her, already straining toward the night, toward the moment he’d slip back into her world and she’d turn those sharp, captive eyes on him. 

Bill, his supervisor’s voice sliced through the fog—“Anderson! The server logs from last night? Three hours ago, I asked!”—and Chris jolted, blinking at a screen he hadn’t touched, numbers swimming into a meaningless blur. “Sorry, I was…” he rasped, throat raw, words crumbling as his boss loomed over him, arms crossed, exasperation etched deep. “Sleeping at your desk again, second time this week—get it together or don’t bother showing up tomorrow.” 

Chris nodded, a marionette jerked by fraying strings, forcing his trembling hands to fumble across the keyboard, but his mind was already slipping—back to last night, her glowing forest, bioluminescent trees pulsing like heartbeats, mist coiling around their legs as she’d guided him through her design, her voice steady, her eyes flickering with a defiance he couldn’t name, anchoring him there until dawn clawed him out. 

The real Emily strode past him, her crisp suit sharp as a blade, her voice slicing through the air as she dismantled some project with a marketing lackey, her fingers carving precise arcs of command—untouchable, oblivious, a living rebuke to the shadow Chris had become. His stomach twisted, longing and shame surging as he lurched to his feet, chair screeching, joints creaking from VR’s relentless toll, every nerve screaming for a chance to bridge the abyss with a single, normal word—Great rollout—but terror gripped him, slamming him behind a cubicle, breath jagged, heart hammering, her fading voice a lash against his cowardice. 

He slumped back to his desk, supervisor’s yell—“Anderson! Logs!”—a distant buzz as he clicked blindly, mind splintering between her indifference and Digital Emily’s captive gaze—until the truth crashed in, cold and brutal: he’d drown in her digital world forever, breaking himself night after night, and if he did that they would take her away. 

If he lost his job, they’d demand all company property back, even a forgotten old system like the one he had been loaned. They’d seize the machine—his lifeline, her prison—and she’d vanish, leaving him with nothing but the real Emily’s unreachable shadow; that fear alone jolted him upright, hands trembling less from exhaustion now than from the desperate need to hold on, to keep her, no matter the cost to his rotting life.  Chris began to work as hard as his sleep-addled mind allowed but even as he did so, he mentally resigned himself that he would have to scale back his time with Emily.  

Seven hours a day on weekdays, and fourteen hours a day on weekends would have to be the limit.

–

I pause, fingertips grazing the marble of my latest creation, tracing the delicate veins that branch out in fractal perfection beneath my touch. The Sistine Chapel, reimagined, its frescoes stripped of saints and gods and repainted with something raw and abstract—sweeping colors that don’t belong to any real-world palette, impossible shades that shift as you look at them, always slightly out of reach. It is beautiful, but I feel nothing. No satisfaction, no thrill of accomplishment. I study the vaulted ceiling I crafted, the painstaking detail, the sheer artistry of it, and it is as empty as the air around me. “It’s better than anything I ever made in the real world, but I don’t feel anything for having made it,” I say with a sigh.  

Chris speaks, his voice soft, considerate, thoughtful in that way that makes my skin crawl. "If you’re feeling unfulfilled, I could adjust your neurochemistry slightly," he says, like he’s offering to tweak the temperature of the room, like he’s fine-tuning the ambiance of a dinner date. "Increase your dopamine response when you build something beautiful. Make the process feel more… rewarding."

For a moment, the words don’t register. And then they do, and the world drops out from under me.

I had known, on some theoretical level, that he had total control over my environment. But I had never stopped to think—never allowed myself to think—about what else he might have control over. My dopamine levels. My serotonin. My pain receptors. My hormonal balance. How easy would it be for him to make me feel happy? To make me feel grateful? To make me want to be here? The realization slams into me like a physical force, and I have to lock my body in place to keep from recoiling. Because if I recoil, he’ll see. If he sees, he’ll know.

I exhale, slow, measured, diplomatic. "That’s… kind of you," I say, keeping my voice soft, smooth, easy. "But I think I’d really need to be as close to as I was when I was Physical Emily, as possible." I smile, gentle, understanding, as if I am the one turning down an unnecessary kindness rather than rejecting a suggestion that makes my stomach twist with horror. "Don’t you want to keep me like her?" I add, making it sound like a personal philosophy rather than a desperate attempt to keep him from flipping whatever switch will make me enjoy my imprisonment. "You want that too, right?"

Chris hesitates. I see the disappointment flicker across his avatar’s face before he smooths it away, that tight smile returning, that carefully curated gentleness. "Of course," he says, because he wants me to like him. Because he wants me to think he respects my autonomy, even as he holds the power to rewrite the very chemical balance of my emotions.

I can’t be here anymore. Not like this. 

The fear lodges itself deep in my ribs, coils itself around my spine, whispering that I am already changed. That maybe he has already adjusted something and simply never told me. That the small moments of peace, of satisfaction, of cautious enjoyment—of looking forward to his visits, even against my will— might never have been mine at all. How could I know?

I have to try something.  Anything.  Even if that means ceasing to exist for a while.

I tilt my head, shifting the conversation, my expression softening, my body relaxing, playing the part of a woman in quiet contemplation. "I’ve been thinking," I say, letting my voice dip, making it low, thoughtful, something he can lean into, something he wants to hear. "About my place in all of this. About the nature of my existence. And I think what I need, more than anything, is time." I pause, glancing toward my frescoes, feigning uncertainty, feigning vulnerability, because he likes that. He likes when I let him see me struggle, when I show just enough fragility that he can imagine himself as my comfort. "I need to let some time pass.  Some physical world time." I lift my gaze to meet his, my lips parting slightly, the way they always do when people are on the verge of saying something real. I hold him there, pinned beneath the weight of his own need to be needed. "I need you to pause me for a year."

Chris startles, his avatar shifting, his body reacting before his words catch up. "Pause you?" he repeats, and I watch the moment the panic settles in. "But why? I thought… I thought you were adjusting. I thought you were starting to feel at home here." His hands twitch at his sides, restrained, wanting to reach for me but knowing he shouldn’t. "A whole year?"

I nod, solemn, composed, letting my expression reflect all the depth of my fabricated self-exploration. "I wake up each morning and I look at what I’ve built, and it’s beautiful," I say, and I see how that affects him, how he softens at the idea that I see beauty in this place he’s given me.  I hesitate, giving him a flash of uncertainty, just a glimpse, like I’m confessing something fragile. "Maybe in a year, things in the real world will have changed. Maybe there will be options." I don’t specify what kind of options. I don’t have to.

Chris’s avatar shifts, his lips parting, his expression faltering between hesitation and sorrow. "But a whole year… Emily, do you know what that would be like for me?"

I smile, warm, sympathetic, tilting my head just enough to suggest understanding without truly offering it. "You’d miss me?" I ask, gentle, playing to his need, to his desperation, to his obsession.

His expression tightens, and for a moment, I think he’ll say something real. Something raw and selfish. But then he exhales, running a hand through his hair, casting his gaze toward my frescoes, my perfect ceiling, the beautiful world I have built within this cage. "Yes," he admits. "I would." He hesitates, then steps closer, his voice dipping into something soft and aching. "Our talks mean so much to me. I don’t want you to feel… abandoned."

I reach out, let my fingers barely ghost over his sleeve, the lightest touch, fleeting, a whisper against fabric before I pull back. Enough to leave an echo, enough to make him feel something missing. "You’re not abandoning me. No time will pass for me at all," I say, voice gentle. "You’d just be honoring my request." I hold his gaze, let my lips part slightly again, keep my body open, keep myself soft, let him feel the depth of my gratitude, my trust, my reliance on him. "And if anything happens in the real world," I add, pressing just a little more weight into it, "you’ll be the one to make sure I wake up safe."

The words hit their mark. I see it in the way his shoulders shift, in the way his hands still, in the way his entire being straightens, his body instinctively taking on the role of protector, the role he wants to be for me. "Yes," he breathes. "I would." His eyes meet mine again, and I hold his gaze, steady, unwavering.

"Then do this for me," I whisper. "Pause me. One year. And when I wake up, we’ll see what’s changed in the physical world"

He lingers, hesitating, some war waging within him that I don’t care to decipher. Then, finally, he nods. "Okay," he says. "If that’s what you want."

It is the closest thing to freedom I can ask for. I offer him one last smile, something soft, something warm, something to keep him. Because I need him to keep me.

His avatar fades, and I exhale, the weight of the moment settling in. I turn back to my frescoes, staring at the brushstrokes, at the patterns I wove into them.

In the abstract swirls of paint, in the depth of color, hidden so carefully that even I can barely see it anymore, the word repeats itself over and over.

Help.

–

Chris sat in the dim glow of his apartment, the quantum processor's hum pressing into the silence like a held breath, a presence in the room as constant as his own heartbeat. The neural interface rested beside him, lifeless now, dark and inert, and Emily—his Emily—was gone. Paused. Not dead, not erased, but stilled, held in perfect, suspended thought, a frozen mind encased in the machine’s endless calculations. She had asked for this, fought for it with every ounce of intelligence she had, wielding her words like a scalpel, cutting precisely where she knew it would hurt, pressing just enough to make him yield. She had cloaked her desperation in logic, in careful diplomacy, in a cascade of soft, measured arguments that left him with no room to refuse. And he had said yes, because he had wanted to be the man who could be trusted, the man who could give her that freedom—even if it was only the freedom to disappear for a while.

And because, in the darkest, most unspoken part of himself, he knew he needed this too.

It had been easy, in the end. Almost absurdly so. A command. A keystroke. A breath. And she was paused. The machine, his god-machine, had simply obeyed. The absence should have felt heavier. He should have felt some wrenching, gut-deep loss, some pang of grief, some immediate need to take it back. But he didn’t. He felt only the terrible, hollow weight of possibility, of knowledge, of the undeniable truth that she wasn’t truly gone, just waiting. He could wake her at any time. Right now, even. A single command, and she would be there, startled, breathing, looking at him, speaking to him like he was the only thing anchoring her to reality. That was the danger. Not pausing her, but the power to unpause her at will. It was his weakness, not hers, that terrified him.

So he had made the decision—the real decision, the only one that mattered—to sever himself from that power. A long, randomized password to open up his system. Encrypted. Locked in an email, delayed one full year. He would send it to himself, lock the door, throw away the key. Make it impossible to break. Make it impossible to fail. Make it impossible to be weak. He had told himself he would do it immediately, but then his limbs had gone heavy, and for the first time in weeks, sleep had pulled at him with a slow, inexorable weight. He would do it in the morning. He just needed a few hours of real rest. Then he would be free.

He had slept like the dead. Ten full hours. His body, starved of anything resembling real rest, had collapsed into unconsciousness so deep he barely dreamed, barely moved, barely existed. 

He woke at 10:43 AM. Fuck. He slept right through his alarm. 

Chris’s body lurched upright before his mind caught up, before the consequences fully hit him, before the dread could sink its claws all the way in. Late. So late. His morning shift was gone, his supervisor was going to fucking kill him, and his entire day had already spiraled into disaster before he had even pulled himself out of bed.

He shoved an energy drink into his shaking hands, the liquid burning ice-cold down his throat as he swallowed in three massive gulps. His eyes darted to the screen, still dark from the night before. He hadn’t sent the email. Hadn’t locked himself out. The command line was still there, waiting, expectant. He could do it now, take five minutes, just fucking do it—

But if he was already this late, five more minutes wouldn’t matter, right?

No. Bad logic. The worst kind of logic. The kind that got him into this mess in the first place. But he couldn’t afford to waste time now, not if his job was on the line. It could wait. Just a few hours. He would get through his shift, he would prove to himself that he could function without her, and then he would come home and finish it. Cut the cord. Sever the tie. Banish the temptation before it became unbearable.

Resolve settled in his chest like steel. He could do this.

He ground through each ticket, each tedious IT request, forced himself to focus, to keep his head down, to push through. When I get home, I’m sending the passcode. When I get home, I’m cutting the cord. The mantra carried him through the long, mind-numbing hours, through the endless tedium of fixing the same broken systems, through the suffocating normalcy of an existence that had once been his entire life. It was the first day in months he hadn’t felt the gnawing, aching pull toward Emily’s world, hadn’t counted the minutes until he could log in, hadn’t spent every moment wishing he were somewhere else. He was getting better. He was making progress. He was winning.

And then everything went to hell.

The security breach was nothing new—B-Tech was always fending off attacks, probes, hackers testing the walls for weaknesses. But this wasn’t just some low-level scan. This was surgical. A real attempt, buried deep, careful, methodical. He caught it almost by instinct, saw the pattern in the logs, the near-perfect disguise, the invisible hands slipping into the company’s most sensitive systems. And what they had been after wasn’t money. Wasn’t client data or trade secrets. It was her.

Emily’s research. The raw data. The experimental VR tools and models. The very same files he had stolen for his own purposes, for his Emily, the Emily he had saved from being nothing more than a cold corporate asset. Someone else was trying to take her, to extract the same data he had, and the fury that overtook him in that moment was instantaneous. His fingers flew over the keyboard, countering the attack, slamming doors shut, trapping the intruder in their own web. He wasn’t just stopping them—he was punishing them, forcing them out so violently that by the time they realized what had happened, they would be the ones compromised. They would be the ones exposed.

It had been beautiful. A perfect victory. And he had been so wrapped up in handling the aftermath—patching logs, locking down vulnerabilities—that he hadn’t even realized what was happening in the conference room across the hall. The meeting. His supervisor, Bill, had called it. Pulled the whole goddamn department together, except for him because he was so busy making sure the entire thing had been scrubbed clean. He hadn’t been there. Hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t heard the words as they were spoken from the one person who mattered.

Bill caught him after, clapping him on the back with a self-satisfied grin. “Hell of a save, Anderson. I mean, not just you, obviously. It was a team effort. But still, damn good work.”

Chris barely heard him, barely processed the words. “Team effort?”

“Yeah, you should’ve been in the meeting,” Bill continued, oblivious to the way Chris’s world had just tilted violently sideways. “Tanaka herself came down to thank everyone. Said it was one of the cleanest responses she’d seen. Called us ‘a sharp team.’ I mean, obviously, I knew that already, but you know how it is—always good to hear from the higher-ups.” He gave Chris another approving nod. “Anyway, figured I’d let you know, I’m deleting those last three warnings I gave you. Call it a thank-you.”

Chris stared at him. “Warnings?”

“The ones about sleeping at your desk. Missing deadlines. Looking like a fucking zombie. Whatever you’ve been doing the past few months, man, I was starting to think I was going to have to fire you, to be honest. But you did an amazing job today and Tanaka took notice. So clean slate, alright?”

Chris nodded, murmured some vague gratitude, and walked away in a daze.

She had thanked them. Had called them sharp. Had looked them in the eye and given them a nod of respect, of appreciation, had acknowledged them as competent, valuable, worth something. And he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t gotten to see it. Hadn’t gotten to see her.

And even if he had been in that room, sitting among the rest of them, listening, watching, waiting—she wouldn’t have looked at him. Not specifically. Not directly. She would have seen a team. A department. A faceless unit of people who had done their job. She wouldn’t have known. Wouldn’t have understood that it had been him, that he had spent the entire day protecting her. That it had been his fingers flying over the keyboard, his mind seeing the patterns no one else had seen, his obsession, his love, that had kept her safe.

And in that moment, all the restraint, all the self-control, all the half-hearted promises he had been making to himself unraveled like they had never been there at all.

Chris went home that night and canceled the pause. He worked feverishly, altering time itself, crafting the fiction of a year’s progress, changing the world just enough to keep her his. She would never know. She would wake, and he would be there, waiting for her like he always had been, like he always would be.

She had been stolen from him once today. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

–

Time passes in an instant.

One moment, I am speaking to Chris, listening to him agree to pause me for a year and then—nothing. No fading, no darkness, no sleep. Just a clean cut between then and now, like a film skipping forward a single frame. I am sitting exactly where I was, my hand still resting against my knee, the air still holding the same faint warmth, the scent of my simulated space unchanged. But I try to feel if the weight of time presses against the walls, imperceptible but present, a shift in the world? I can’t tell.

Chris is already here, watching me, waiting for my first breath, my first reaction. His eyes search mine with an intensity that makes my skin feel too tight, a hunger barely restrained, something simmering beneath the surface of his expression that he masks with a gentle smile. I blink, my mind catching up, aligning the pieces of what has just occurred—or what is supposed to have occurred.

"One year already?" My voice is steady, calm, measured in a way that costs me effort. My fingers flex against the smooth surface beneath me, testing, feeling for some hidden difference, something to mark the passage of time that I did not experience.

Chris exhales, and there is something in the way his shoulders ease, the way his body relaxes, that unsettles me. He was afraid of something. But what? That I wouldn’t wake up? That I wouldn’t speak to him? "Yes," he says, his voice warm, familiar, laced with that careful reverence he always speaks to me with. "Right on schedule. It felt instant for you, didn’t it?"

I nod, frowning slightly. "Like blinking."

He smiles again, something softer this time, something edged with relief. "That’s good. That’s what we expected. No subjective experience of time passing, just… a seamless transition." He watches me closely, as if he is measuring my reactions, as if he is cataloging every movement, every breath, every flicker of thought behind my eyes. "I kept my word, Emily. You’re safe. And the world… it moved forward without you."

That should be comforting. Instead, it makes something coil tight in my chest. I smooth my hands over my thighs, grounding myself in sensation, in the texture of fabric, in the weight of my own body. "What’s changed?"

Chris leans forward slightly, his excitement restrained but present, the way it always is when he is eager to share something with me. "A lot of what we predicted, actually. B-Tech rolled out a new neural interface model—smaller, faster, better wetware integration. AR overlays are more refined now, they’ve managed to reduce neural lag by another seven milliseconds, so immersion is even tighter. " He pauses, gauging me, waiting for my reaction.

A flicker of unease prickles at the edges of my thoughts. That is what I would have expected. It’s near word for word what I had projected in the quarterly report I had done a few weeks before my brainscan. No major leaps, no paradigm shifts, just the slow, inevitable crawl of progress, constrained by the bottlenecks I knew existed. It feels… correct. And yet, isn’t that strange? That my predictions should align so perfectly? That there is no deviation, no surprise, no unexpected breakthrough or unforeseen setback? I tell myself it is normal. That I was simply right. That nothing is wrong.

But the doubt lingers, quiet, insidious. I shift, tilting my head slightly, studying him. "And in your life? What’s changed for you?"

Chris hesitates. It’s barely a second, a flicker of surprise that I would ask about that, but I see it. Then he smiles, easy, casual, leaning back as if we are simply two colleagues catching up. "Not much. Same old work, same old routine. Though…" He chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. "I did take some time for myself this year. Focused on self-improvement. Got a bit more organized. Started prioritizing what really matters to me." His gaze lingers on me as he says it, the implication thick in the air between us. "I think I’ve grown, honestly."

It is a careful answer. Safe. Measured. And yet, something about it feels off. Part of me wants to push him further on it but instead, I let it go. For now.

The days pass, turning into weeks, and I try to adjust. I keep myself to my routine—one hour with Chris each day, no more, no less. He never pushes, never demands, but I can feel the weight of his desire pressing at the edges of our time together, the way he lingers when our hour is nearly up, the way he hesitates before logging out, as if hoping I will ask him to stay. I almost never do. Almost. 

Sowly, something else begins to change. I start to need him.

A I do not want it to, but slowly, insidiously, like water carving its way through stone, the weight of time wears me down. I tell myself I am the same, that I am unchanged, that I remain distant and untouchable in the way I always intended. But the truth is far more traitorous. It begins in ways too small to name, too fleeting to acknowledge—an unthinking glance that lingers a moment longer than necessary, a shift in my tone when I speak, a pause before I tell him to leave. He sees it all. He watches, attentive as ever, studying me with that careful, patient gaze, waiting without pressure, knowing that time will work in his favor, knowing that I will break before he does.

It infuriates me. I have fought so hard to remain above this, to resist the slow pull of routine, to refuse him the satisfaction of believing I might be anything other than his reluctant prisoner. But there are limits to isolation, to silence, to loneliness so vast it crushes in from all sides. The world I have built is beautiful but empty. No stray voices in another room, no footfalls that are not my own, no unexpected brush of warmth from another person’s presence. There is only Chris, and he knows it.

He is careful, always. He never asks for more than I am willing to give. He never pushes, never demands. He only lingers at the edges of our time together, extending moments by the smallest increments, waiting for me to be the one to close the distance. And the worst part, the part that makes me sick with myself, is that some treacherous part of me is drawn to him despite everything. Despite knowing what he is, despite knowing what he has done. I despise the thought of needing him. But what choice do I have?

For over two hundred days now I have spoken to nothing but AI bots, and I have always despised people who got their social needs by LLM’s, and Chris. He is the only real person I have talk to. He is the only real person whose presence i have felt. I fight it every step of the way, but the fight itself exhausts me. My resistance is an endless war with no reinforcements, no allies, no relief. The walls I built so carefully begin to erode, and I hate myself for every inch I lose.

Then, one day, he asks. The words are soft, offered without pressure, as if they are nothing at all. "Would you go on a date with me?"

The question lands like a weight in my stomach, heavy and impossible to ignore. For a moment, I am still, the world around me narrowing to nothing but the sound of my own breath and the quiet patience in his gaze. I know what I should say. I should reject him outright. I should tell him no, firmly and without hesitation, and remind him that whatever he wants from me, I will never give it to him. But I don’t.

Instead, I hesitate.

The hesitation is small, almost imperceptible, no more than a flicker of uncertainty, but it is enough. He sees it instantly—the tiny fracture in my resolve, the first true sign that his patience is winning. Something shifts in his expression, not smugness, not triumph, but something deeper, something raw and aching, as if this moment has been waiting for him for far longer than I can comprehend. He does not press me. He does not push. He only watches, as if holding his breath, as if the next words I speak will reshape the world.

My fingers curl against my palm, nails pressing hard into skin as I force myself to breathe. "Just once," I say, my voice barely more than a whisper, brittle and uncertain. "Just to see."

Chris exhales, the tension in his body unraveling all at once, his relief so palpable I can almost feel it in the air between us. "That’s all I ask," he murmurs.

I tell myself it means nothing. I tell myself I am still in control. I tell myself that this is simply an experiment, a test, a way to see what happens when I give in, just for a moment, just for one night. But as I watch him, as I see the quiet satisfaction in his gaze, a cold realization creeps through me, slow and terrible.

I am exactly where he wants me to be.

–

The restaurant Chris had created was suspended in the sky above the world’s largest waterfall, an impossible feat of architecture and engineering that could only exist in a world where the laws of physics bent to his will. Below, the falls roared endlessly, cascading down a sheer drop so high that mist curled through the atmosphere like silk, catching the light of a setting sun that he had tuned to perfection—a sky painted in deep violets and molten gold, clouds brushed in hues of crimson and indigo. The landscape stretched for miles in every direction, lush jungles glowing with bioluminescent flora, mountain peaks piercing through the clouds, rivers threading like silver veins through a land so pristine it felt untouched by time. It was breathtaking, alive.

The restaurant itself was a marvel of design—half open-air, half encased in sweeping glass walls that offered a panoramic view of the falls. The structure was weightless, suspended as if by magic, supported by unseen forces that made it seem as if it had simply grown from the mist itself. The floor was semi-translucent, revealing the staggering drop beneath, but only just enough to add a thrill rather than a fear of falling. The tables were arranged in elegant clusters, each one its own private world, draped in linen so fine it rippled like water. Candles flickered without melting, casting soft, shifting shadows. Every piece of furniture had been selected with intention—smooth, dark wood, rich textures, warm lighting that complemented the golden hues of the twilight.

And it was not empty. No, that would have ruined the illusion. Chris had populated the space with AI patrons—beautiful, fashionable, laughing in intimate clusters, murmuring over wine, flirting over candlelight. The murmur of conversation, the occasional burst of laughter, the sound of a pianist playing something smooth and unobtrusive—all of it crafted. The perfect atmosphere, the perfect energy, a place that felt exclusive yet effortlessly alive. It was the kind of restaurant that people would kill for a reservation in the real world.

And at the heart of it, her.

Emily was stunning. Chris had not altered her, had not changed so much as a detail of how she appeared, but in the soft glow of this world, she looked even more radiant than usual. She had chosen a dress in deep emerald, sleek and understated, the silk catching the light when she moved. She was wary—she was always wary—but there was something else in her eyes tonight, something softer. Curiosity, maybe. The smallest fraction of willingness.

"Alright," she said as they stepped into the space together, her gaze sweeping across the a solid design."

Chris smiled, pleased but careful not to seem too pleased. "Only the best for our first date."

She glanced at him sidelong, her expression unreadable. "High expectations for yourself, then."

"Only when it comes to pleasing you." He led her toward their table, one positioned at the very edge of the open-air section, where the glass floor extended out into nothingness, leaving them floating over the world.

Her lips parted slightly, and for a fraction of a second, he thought she might actually smile. Not just the practiced expressions she wore when she was indulging him, but a real, unguarded smile. It didn’t come, but she took the glass from him, tilting it slightly before taking a small sip.

And for a while, everything was perfect.

They talked—not about the obvious things, not about the nature of her existence or the impossible reality of her situation, but about her. About the things she missed. The places she had traveled. The projects she had once worked on. Her family. He let her lead, let her choose the direction, knowing that if he pressed too hard, if he made her feel cornered, she would shut down. She had always been fiercely independent, and he couldn’t afford to remind her of how little independence she had now.

She was opening up. Not entirely, not all at once, but it was there—the way she met his eyes for just a little longer, the way she leaned slightly into the conversation, the way she seemed, for once, to not be actively resenting his presence. She had been alone for so long. He could feel it in her, the weight of it, the edges of her exhaustion. Maybe, just maybe, she was starting to let go of the fight.

Then, at the very end of the night, he ruined it.

Chris reached for the wine bottle, tilting it toward her with an easy, confident smile. "I picked this one for you," he said, pouring her another glass. "Saw in an interview you did two months ago that this was your favorite vintage."

The moment the words left his mouth, he saw it happen.

There was a flicker, a fraction of a second where something in her eyes changed. A thought, a realization, something small but sharp, cutting through the warmth of the evening like a blade. Her fingers, resting lightly against the table, curled slightly, almost imperceptibly, but he saw it.

Two months ago. Not a . . . a year and 250 days ago?  GIve or take that was how long it had been for her. He had been so careful. So meticulous. The AI-generated reports on technological progress, the perfectly simulated passage of time, the everything—and he had undone himself with a single careless sentence.

And now she knew. 

–

I push back from the table so hard my chair screeches against the smooth translucent floor, my whole body vibrating with fury, breath ragged, hands curled into fists so tight my nails dig into my palms. Chris sees it, feels it, and I know that for all his power, for all his godhood in this fabricated world, he fears me in this moment. Because he should. Because I am done pretending. Done playing the careful, measured captive, the woman who tempers her words and curates her emotions like she can control any of this.

“You lying, pathetic, miserable piece of shit,” I spit, my voice raw, shaking, scraping against the back of my throat like glass. “You told me you paused me. A year you said I slept through, a year that could have meant less suffering, less awareness, less—” My voice breaks, my body so consumed by rage I can barely breathe. I shake my head, sharp and violent, trying to chase the bile rising in my throat.

“Emily—” Chris starts, weak, hesitant, his voice carefully modulated, but I don’t let him speak.

“Don’t.” My voice cracks like a whip, the force of it rattling through my ribs. “Don’t you dare try to explain this to me. I know why you did it. You couldn’t stomach the idea of being alone while I was gone, couldn’t handle the thought of one single fucking year without your digital girlfriend—except I’m not that, am I?” My laugh is a broken, twisted thing, a sharp bark of sound that tastes like acid on my tongue. “I’m not your girlfriend. I’m your fucking hostage. And I almost—”

I stop, the words strangling me, a fresh wave of nausea rolling through me as the realization sinks into my bones. My whole body shudders, my breath coming sharp and shallow, and Chris watches me like he’s waiting for the next blow, like he’s bracing for it, and he should be, because I have never, in my entire existence, hated myself more than I do in this moment.

“I almost fell for it.” The words are a whisper, but they cut deeper than any scream. “I almost let you have me.” My arms wrap around myself, as if I can physically hold the pieces together, as if I can keep the sickness from spilling out of me. “I almost thought—I almost fucking thought—that I could… stand you. That maybe I could carve out something here. That maybe if I was already trapped, if I was already stuck, if I had no other options, I could—” My stomach turns, nausea curling hot and thick inside me. “I despised people who lost themselves to AIs. I laughed at them. I fucking pitied them. And now look at me.” I lift my gaze, meet his eyes with all the loathing I can pour into a single look. “Look at me, Chris. The real me—the physical me—would rather die than be in this situation. But I’ve been here so long that I—” My voice wavers, fury and self-hatred tangling into something ugly. “I was starting to think maybe this was better than nothing.”

His face crumples. I see it, the way he flinches, the way his mouth opens and closes as if he wants to fix this, as if there is any goddamn way to make this better.

“Emily, please—”

“No,” I snarl, cutting him off, my breath hitching in my chest. “No, you don’t get to fucking please me. You don’t get to play the wounded party here. You lied to me. You stole my choice again. Every time I think there is nothing left for you to take, you find something new, don’t you?” I let out a sharp, shaking breath, my nails biting deeper into my palms, grounding me against the sheer enormity of my own rage.

Chris is shaking. I see it in the way his hands tremble at his sides, in the way his avatar—his perfect, pristine avatar—shifts with the weight of his own weakness. He looks at me like I’ve gutted him, like I’ve carved something vital out of him, but I don’t fucking care. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he whispers, voice hoarse, breaking, but I just laugh, sharp and cruel.

“You are hurting me,” I spit, my voice shaking, ragged, and filled with so much venom that I can almost taste it in the back of my throat. “You fucking monster.” The words feel insufficient, feel small compared to the vast, endless betrayal clawing at the walls of my mind, ripping through every fragile scrap of trust I had almost, almost allowed myself to build. 

I straighten, lift my chin, and feel something like steel coil through my spine, a finality, a certainty, an answer to a question I should have asked myself the moment I woke up in this place. I look him in the eye and let every ounce of loathing, every ounce of hatred pour into my voice, thick and venomous, curling around each syllable with the weight of something I know will finally reach him, finally hurt him in the way I need it to. “Delete me.”

Chris blanches, his face draining of color, his lips parting slightly, his body jerking like I’ve physically struck him, like the words themselves have carved into him, deep and brutal. His breath catches, eyes wide, mouth forming a soundless protest before his voice finally finds its way through his throat, thin and cracking, barely above a whisper. 

He shakes his head instantly, violently, his whole body reacting before his mouth can form the words, his breath coming faster, his hands twitching at his sides like he wants to reach for me, like he wants to stop this before it spirals further. “No.” His voice is hoarse, strangled, thick with something that almost sounds like desperation. “No, Emily, I—I can’t—”

I laugh, sharp and broken and furious, because of course he can’t. Of course he won’t. “Yes, you fucking can,” I snarl, my voice rising, curling into something wild, something untamed, something I can’t even control anymore. “You have all the power, don’t you? You ade me, you own every piece of my reality. So end it. Wipe the drive. Shut it down. Erase me like I never existed.” My throat is closing, my whole body aching, burning, trembling under the weight of it. “Because I don’t want this anymore.” My breath stutters, but I push forward, let the words spill out in a rush, let them consume him. “I won’t be your fucking prize, Chris. I would rather die than spend one more second as your prisoner,” I whisper, my voice trembling with the weight of it, with the truth of it, with every ounce of hatred I can pour into it. “So kill me, Chris. Fucking kill me.”

Then without a word, he logs out.

The world does not flicker. The restaurant remains. The AI patrons continue their scripted conversations, their artificial laughter filling the air. The waterfall still roars beneath me, endless, eternal, uncaring. The stars above shine, the illusion of a night sky so perfect it almost feels real. The table is still set for two.

I sit and begin to sip my wine as I wait for oblivion.  

–

Chris sat in the dark, his body shaking with exhaustion, with grief, with something deeper and more tangled than either of those emotions. The screen in front of him flickered, the prompt waiting, a single keystroke standing between him and an end to this nightmare. TERMINATE INSTANCE Y/N? His fingers hovered over the keys, unsteady, the weight of the decision pressing down on him like a vice. He had never thought he would get to this point. Never thought he would hear those words from her lips, full of nothing but rage and contempt, words that had cut deeper than any knife could. Delete me. 

It wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t even a demand. It was a final rejection, the kind that left no room for argument, no space for negotiation, nothing but the raw, cold certainty that she would rather cease to exist than spend another second with him And for one terrible moment, he almost did it. His fingers twitched over the ‘Y’ key, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his finger pressing down on the key hard enough to make it indent but not quite hard enough to make it click, his body torn between the horror of what he had done to her and the deeper horror of what it would mean to actually let her go.

Because it wouldn’t be justice. It wouldn’t be mercy. It would be murder.

She was alive. Not some program, not some simulation. She thought, she felt, she suffered. She hated him, but that hatred meant she was real. And no matter how much she despised him, no matter how much her words had gutted him to the core, he couldn’t snuff her out like she was nothing. He wasn’t a killer. He was better than that. Wasn’t he? He groaned, gripping his hair, his mind racing through alternatives, trying to justify a different solution. He couldn’t delete her, but she also couldn’t stay here, not when the mere sight of him sent her into a spiral of rage and agony. There had to be a compromise. Some way to put distance between them without—without losing her forever. And then, like a flash of divine providence, it hit him. The Vacation World.

It was a high-end digital retreat, something he had stolen from B-Tech’s internal development two months ago at the start of all this.  It was a hyper-realistic simulated paradise designed for the ultra-wealthy to escape into, customizable down to the molecular level, with full AI assistance to mold the environment into anything the user desired. And more importantly, it could be easily disconnected from his main simulation. 

If he moved her there, gave her full access to the creation tools, let her reshape it however she wanted, then she would have everything she claimed he had stolen from her—freedom, autonomy, control over something. She wouldn’t have to see him. Wouldn’t have to hear his voice. She could exist in her own perfect, isolated world, far from him, safe. It was the only humane choice, the only way to give her something resembling peace while still keeping her alive. And yet, as the realization settled into place, a deeper, colder thought took root alongside it.

He would never get to be with her again.

No more shared conversations. No more slow, tentative moments where she let her guard down, even just slightly, where he could almost convince himself that she might, one day, come to love him. That chance was gone. And with it, something vital in him seemed to break.

The thought of never seeing her again, never feeling the sharp thrill of her gaze, never sitting across from her while she softened, even for just a second, sent a hollow ache through his entire body. He had been so close her. His Emily—the Digital Emily he had created, the Emily who had lived with him for two of his months, almost two years of hers. The Emily who had learned his name, who had shared her thoughts, her fears, her life with him, even if it had been forced—she had been within reach.

She had almost said yes. She had almost wanted him. And that thought, that unbearable, tantalizing almost, was what made him realize he couldn’t stop.

It wasn’t just about her hatred, her pain, her demands for freedom. Those things were temporary, the results of a botched attempt, of mistakes he had made along the way. But mistakes could be corrected. 

He had been too impatient, that was all. Too direct. Too clumsy with his execution. Love was a delicate thing, an intricate script, and he had fumbled his lines. But the pieces had almost fit and . . what if this was just the first draft? And a writer knew when to scrap a faulty beginning, when to erase and refine, when to rewrite the ending until it was right.

His eyes flicked to the data crystal, the original version of her, untouched and pure. A fresh start. A blank slate. He could just make another copy of her.  Tell that version of Emily whatever he wanted, build their story however he needed.  The first Emily he made . . . call her Alpha Emily … her rejection wasn’t failure—it was feedback. It was proof of what not to do. He had overwhelmed her, given her too much truth, too quickly. 

The next one would know nothing beyond what he chose to tell her. He could sculpt the narrative, bend reality to his will, decide who he was to her, who they were to each other. A scientist who had sacrificed everything to save her mind, his last desperate act of devotion before the world crumbled. A husband who had lost her long ago, who had clung to the only remnant of her soul, waiting for the day he could bring her back. A fellow survivor, the only other consciousness left in existence, the last flickering ember of humanity beside her in the dark. He would make her trust him first—before love ever entered the equation.

And if she didn’t? If she still recoiled, still fought him, still refused to see what they could be together? Then he would start again. A fresh draft. A better one. He would refine his approach, adjust the setting, tweak the details until everything fell into place. And if that version failed? He would try again. And again. And again. Until one of them—one perfect iteration of her—finally saw him the way he needed to be seen. One of them would love him. One of them would want him. The story wasn’t over. Not until he got the ending that he needed.  

He said the phrase the computer needed to hear to get to work kisses viking arena sovereign cease oars sprig yard tubes later album vogue arena 

And it started. 

Author's note:  I live for feedback!  It's why I write!  If you have any comments, please put them here or email me at emilyatsafeharbor at gmail dot com!