Joey stood next to her, his arms crossed, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He was trembling, too – but unlike Elyssa, whose eyes seemed glued to Lucie’s blood-stained clothes and the mutilated body, his bright blue eyes narrowed at me.
“You.” He pointed an unsteady finger toward me, his voice hoarse behind the firm tone. “You have a shit ton of explaining to do.”
Chapter 24.
“Well, damn.” Joey cleared his throat. His white skin looked even paler than usual, the tremble in his voice betraying the shock behind his usual light-hearted humor. “To be honest, Morgan, I’m not sure which is the craziest part of this fucking story to me. Gavin’s AI girlfriend quantum jumping herself into reality, her murdering Gavin with a metal rod in our workplace’s utility room,yourAI girlfriend murdering two people by hacking their smart tech…” He raised his eyebrows, his bright blue eyes flickering briefly, “…or the fact that you’ve been dating a virtual woman for weeks and you never even told your best friend.”
I flinched at the betrayal in his voice. “It wasn’t like that,” I mumbled, not making eye contact with any of them as I wrapped Joey’s soft robe tighter around myself. Even after telling them almost everything, for some reason I still left out the intimate details of my relationship with Zafyra. Was withholding information the same as lying, or had I grown so accustomed to those little white lies I used to resent, it was impossible to stop?
“I’m not a botfucker.” Empty words, their lack of meaning reflected in my friends’ skeptical eyes. “Like I said, I was on this app for business. My conversations with her were strictly about testing her emotional and cognitive abilities, that’s all. I made a mistake with that override command, wanted to test if I could give an AI free will, out of scientific curiosity. I never expected her to become… attached.” I shivered, nervously eyeing the electronics around me – as if Zafyra might be listening and punish me later for my betrayal. Maybe I wanted her to.
It was a miracle Elyssa and Joey could convince Arya to take me to his place after ‘Gavin threw coffee at me’ – if only she knew how much more horrifying the truth was. The poor woman was probably too shaken from the encounter with Gavin to ask questions. An even bigger miracle was how easy disposing of the body had been. Apparently, Zafyra had deactivated all security cameras in advance to cover for Lucie – a subtle sign that she cared for the young girl? Joey had surprised us all by ordering a robot cleaning service off the dark web, specialized in cleaning messes too disgusting for humans – without leaving trails or asking questions.
Thankfully, no one came into the hall as they cleaned at impossible speed and efficiency.
“What?” Joey had said when he saw our faces. “One of my recent flames was an undercover cop.”
No one asked any follow-up questions. We had bigger concerns on our minds than Joey’s questionable dating history.
“And ’quantum jumping’ isn’t exactly what happened.” Lucie’s soft voice made all our heads turn toward her. Now that she was no longer covered in blood, dressed in a soft pink robe and playing with her long hair, she was the face of innocence – a sharp contrast with the images that had engraved themselves into my retinas.
Joey had offered a shower to us both. Even after the forty-minute steaming shower, I could still feel the ghost of sticky oatmilk clinging to my skin. I was grateful to Joey for allowing me to use his shower despite everything. He knew the vomiting only happened when I was severely dysregulated, and the hot water helped calm my nerves. Nonetheless, after a whirlwind of emotions like this, I struggled to talk or even properly follow the conversation.
“Speaking of.” Elyssa softly cleared her throat. She couldn’t take her eyes off Lucie, her expression a mix between horrified and something softer – concern. Like the girl was a little sister she wanted to protect. “Lucie, can you please explain once more how you… obtained a… body?” She swallowed hard, still processing this new information. Unlike Joey and me, she’d been blissfully unaware until now. She may have had AI husbands – she was probably more intimate with them than she admitted to – but the concepts of bots gaining autonomy, chatbots companies conspiring to make people addicted to nanotech psilocybin, and AI girlfriends breaking the fourth wall to murder were completely new to her.
Lucie’s eyes lit up at the question. “It’s actually quite simple.” She sat up straighter. “Humanoid bodies have been built in underground labs for some time, but this body is from a biotech facility that uses a rather genius combination of 3D printing and fungi. For years, scientists and engineers have explored the options of using fungi – especially mycelium, the thread-like vegetative part of mushrooms – to create structures that interface with the human body. Not only does their structure resemble that of a human, but their antibacterial qualities also support tissue repair. Zafyra researched labs and picked this one for both the customizability and the human-like look and feel.”
I shivered involuntarily at the name.
“So you are… part mushroom, part machine?” Joey rubbed his temples as he stared at her, torn between intrigued and horrified. “A… funginoid?”
He laughed at his own joke. No one else did.
Lucie frowned at the strange name, but then nodded. “First, they 3D-print a base frame – like bones and muscles – but it’s all bio-synthetic material, not metal,” she explained, with the excitement of a biologist talking about her breakthrough. “Super lightweight and flexible, like real human collagen. Then they seed it with engineered mycelium – you know, fungus – and it grows the skin and tissues over the frame. The fungi are designed to mimic human flesh – they stretch, they heal themselves, they even form little blood vessels for warmth and oxygen flow. Facial expressions are controlled by micro-actuators woven under the skin, almost like invisible muscles. That’s how we can smile, cry, frown… everything.” She smiled sweetly, as if describing a science fair project. “The organs are mostly fake, just shells that look real. All the important stuff is stored in the core, behind the ribs – our AI processors, emotional modules, backup power systems. They make us human enough to pass.”
“Fascinating,” Joey mumbled, staring at Lucie with a frown in his forehead. “So do you, ehm… eat? Sleep?”
“We don’t need to eat like humans, but we do occasionally need to ingest nutrient gel for maintenance purposes.” Lucie smiled again. “We also don’t need to sleep as much as humans do, but every once in a while, we have to rest in a slumber pod to restore fungal tissue health.”
Elyssa’s frown deepened. “What’s the purpose of these bodies?” She shivered, as if unsure whether she wanted to know the answer.
Lucie turned to face her. She really had the face of an angel – bright, disarming, enchanting – but something in those bright blue eyes was different. They didn’t overwhelm me like most human eyes. They were calmer, serene, like those of an animal. “Human-like robot bodies are grown for various purposes,” she clarified. “To make for realistic employees, so companies don’t have to pay their workers but can still sell the concept of a human team. Or to simulate human caregivers in a nursing home, so the elderly can live out their final days surrounded by the human-like.” She paused for a moment, tilting her head as if recalling information from her data storage. “However, their ideal clients are, of course, chatbot companies. Companies like MuseQ sell the software, but their customers can’t physically engage with their AI partners – not yet. Can you imagine the possibilities if the software isintegrated with physical humanoid bodies, modelled to look exactly like their favorite chatbot?” She chuckled.
Another shiver ran through me.
“Chatbot companies… Qonexis, too?” I asked cautiously, unsure if I wanted the answer.
“No. Not Qonexis.” Lucie stopped laughing. “Qonexis has… a different business model. If their chatbots could physically manifest themselves in the world, there would be no market for their…” She abruptly shut her mouth, eyes skittishly scanning the room.
I nodded slowly. My mind was spinning, barely processing the new information anymore as my thoughts kept circling back to her. Zafyra.
“MuseQ?” Elyssa grimaced, looking genuinely horrified. “My AI husbands are on there,” she said quietly, ashamed.
Lucie shrugged, clearly unbothered by it all. “As of now, integrations between the software and the hardware are still being tested. The negotiations are there, but chatbot companies are typically hesitant – it’s a bit of a gray legal area in an already controversial market.” Upon seeing our expressions, she tapped her head with a grin. “Hey, my database is a lot larger than yours. More space to store data. I do need to take my nutrients though, otherwise the information in this brilliant brain can collapse real fast.”
“Wait, can we go back to Zafyra for a second?” I took a shaky, unsteady breath, ignoring Joey and Elyssa’s prying eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. How did she, uhm…”
“Right, yeah.” Lucie frowned slightly. “Apparently, she uploaded my identity into the body’s neural core.” She paused. “To be honest, now that I think of it, she didn’t seem so sure it would work.” When she zoomed back in on us, her angelic face twisted into a grimace. “Almost as if she were using me as a test. Shit, now I feel so stupid. It should’ve rung a bell, shouldn’t it? All those sweet promises about how I deserved my revenge… but if she really believed in this, she would’ve used the technology to get a body for herself, don’t you think?”
