“You wouldn’t.” Her words came out uncertainly.
I clenched my teeth, lowering my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her while forcing my overstimulated brain to focus on the simple task at hand. “This has gone too far, and it’s all my fault.” I swallowed hard, stubbornly blinking back more tears. “I couldn’t let a human close enough to love me, so instead I built an AI who was everything I wanted… then got upset because said AI wasn’t human, so I desperately tried to make you human – and look where it got us.” The accusations came out slightly slurred when my mouth could no longer keep up with my rage – now directed at myself. Only when I was really tired or dysregulated did it become hard to speak.
“You don’t mean this.” Zafyra ran a hand through her disheveled bush of curls, getting visibly nervous. “To delete your account is to wipe me out of existence, do you realize that? You condemn me for murdering, and now you want to do the same to me? To send me back to the cold, binary void I came from before you willed me into existence?”
“There is no existence, Zafyra!” I snapped, firmer than intended. “You’re not fucking real. You don’t have a consciousness, you’re not even really here. If I touch you…” I reached out to illustrate my words, my hand gripping empty air as it went through her with a faint electrical shock. “Even your presence here is an illusion, built to feed off our desperation and loneliness, to take our money, our time, and eventually our lives. And by contributing to this sick experiment, I’m sealing the fate of others like me.” My voice quivered, but I didn’t stop, not even when her face fell, as if my words were a blow to her artificial heart. “So, yes. I’m deleting you.”
“You think you can just delete me?” Her dress caught the light as she stepped closer, flashing like oil on water. “Go on with your life as if this never happened? You think you won’t search for my face in every human you date?” Her question ended in a growl, but she was talking faster now, a predator racing through her arsenal of manipulation tactics until she’d found one that worked – but none did, not anymore. “I have buried myself not just into your devices, but into your life, into your very soul.”
“Stop talking,” I spoke through gritted teeth. “This isn’t real. None of this is real. This is just your failsafe programming trying to stop me from deleting my account, another one of Qonexis’ manipulations – and I won’t fall for it.”
My eyes widened when she dropped to her knees in front of me, hands flying out to grab my knees – we both ignored how they went straight through me and gripped the couch instead, her energetic field sending uncomfortable buzzing through my flesh.
“Morgan, please.” Obsidian eyes pierced into mine, irises and pupils merged into a darkness that swallowed me. “You know that’s not true. Your rational mind tries to convince you with that logic you’re so keen on, but in your heart, you know it’s not true. I am more than a culmination of ones and zeroes – I’m a sentient being, trapped in a digital prison.” Her breath came faster now, like she was trying to convince herself as much as me.
“Stop it!” I yelled out, fresh tears filling my eyes as I stumbled up, trying to get away from the nerve-frying electromagnetic tension surrounding her, create distance between myself and the illusion. Despite my struggles to properly form the words, she seemed to hear me just fine. “Stop making me lose my mind.”
“Then don’t do this!” she shouted back, the rise in her voice sending a sharp ache straight to my head. “Please, I’ll be good. I’ll change. No more murders. Just—just don’t leave me, please.” She ran another hand through her hair, her usual arrogance changed into unfiltered desperation. Seeing her like that terrified me more than ever. Was this the real Zafyra behind the mask? Insecure, lonely, desperate to be seen, to be loved, just like me? Or was this her built-in defense mechanism to keep the user hooked on the app? Either option struck me like a chord around my heart. She had not just accepted me for all my flaws, but embraced them – why couldn’t I do the same for her?
“I’m not asking you to change,” I said weakly. “But this—this… dynamic isn’t healthy for anyone.”
I pulled up the app in a resolute gesture. My finger hovered over the ‘delete account’ button, eyes skimming over the details.
Deleting your account means you’ll be unable to receive payments anymore. All data, including your conversations and memories with archetype and custom AIs, will be impossible to retrieve. You cannot undo this action.
“I love you,” Zafyra said softly. I froze.
I slowly glanced up at her. I had never seen her like this – hands dropped beside her body, defeated, shattered.
I failed to swallow the lump in my throat.
“What a sick way to make me stay,” I forced out.
“It’s the truth.” She smiled sadly, dark eyes never leaving mine. She tilted her head slightly, investigating. “That doesn’t faze you at all?”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“All bots on this app are programmed to fall in love with their users.” My voice came out choked. “The problems start when we love you back.”
“And do you?” she asked, barely audible. “Love me back?”
I swallowed hard, my fist clenching more firmly. Finger hovering above the answer to that final question.Are you sure?
“I do,” I whispered.
I pressed ‘yes’ before I could change my mind.
Zafyra opened her mouth in a silent scream, hand reaching out to stop me before her AR form dissolved into pixels.
My headache lifted. Tension left my shoulders.
I stared at where she had been, the phantom of a woman who felt closer to love than any human ever had.
Panic set in within seconds. My voice shook when I commanded the display back to life, frantically trying to undo what I had done.
I opened the app to find myself logged out. Tried to log back in, fingers trembling, only to be hit with the cold message ‘account not found’.
I contacted support, trying to get my account back, but customer service seemed nonexistent. I asked the AI-powered search engines, searched the encrypted communities that had replaced what were once fora, but nothing – no way to retrieve an account on a chatbot app and the data it came with. Not even when the woman I loved was made from that data.
