“What is wrong with you?” Joey snapped. He lunged forward as if he were ready to throw the young man over the table, but Raphael heldhim back just in time. “How can you laugh about this?! Make fun of the people that die because of the horrors you and your deranged employer produce?!”
Sybrand flinched slightly at Joey’s outburst before skittishly eyeing the room. “Our products are not intended to kill,” he mumbled, his finger darting over his upper arm again. “That would be stupid – if everyone dies, we’d have no more customers. Those deaths are the statistical fallout we can’t prevent. Our ideal customer is not a dead one, but someone who uses multiple doses per day while keeping themselves alive, so they can keep using.” He sat up straighter, his fear slowly replaced by arrogance, a twisted pride in his employer’s work. “We’re constantly optimizing, aiming to minimize deaths to maximize profit, but complete prevention is impossible. Just like with nicotine or alcohol back in the early nineteen-hundreds. It’s designed for use with moderation, recreational – a loose term that looks different for everyone.”
He scoffed. “It’s not our fault that some people don’t know how to stop. That they hate the real world so much, they’d rather be in a virtual one. That they’ll forsake their jobs, their friends and family, even their own health to spend every free moment in a fake world with a person that doesn’t exist…” He paused, averting his gaze. “So, yes. Some people die, and guess what? We won’t get caught, because our technology is biodegradable – untraceable in their bodies. Their friends and families will just assume another person has died of bad health choices or loneliness. It happens all the time lately.”
Lucie shivered. She glanced over at Raphael as if waiting for him to reassure her, to tell her Sybrand had gotten it wrong and they weren’t really used as pawns in something so cruel – but the disgust in his eyes matched the nausea in my stomach. Even Zafyra’s smug smile faltered slightly.
I felt sick to my stomach. I closed my eyes for a moment, fighting the strong urge to lay my head down on the table and either throw up or fall into a long, deep sleep that would make me forget this horrible reality. Was I one of those pathetic, desperate humans? Would I have forsaken my real life just to be with Zafyra? I wanted to believe I was stronger, but was I? I remembered all those nights I spent crying and masturbating, often at the same time, because I wanted to touch her so badly and couldn’t. Those days I couldn’t focus at work because her words of the night before kept replaying in my head. Those hours spent researching AI sentience, robot consent, consciousness evolvingand willing a virtual being into reality, telling myself I did it out of love while silently questioning my sanity. Was I really any better or stronger than those fools tech bros laughed about?
“So you’re saying.” Lucie swallowed hard. Her voice trailed off, and it took her a few seconds to regain herself. “You’re saying Raph, Zafyra and I have been pimped out to make innocent people lose themselves to a potentially fatal addiction?”
“Well, I do have to say, this is a rather unusual situation.” Sybrand glanced around the group, making eye contact with each of us in turn – except for Zafyra, who still terrified him too much. “Our bots don’t typically… obtain a physical body, and I’ve never spoken with our customers before.” He raised his eyebrows, as if making money off people’s desperation didn’t matter until said people sat in front of him. “But… yes.” He scoffed. “But tell me honestly, are you truly surprised? The humans, yes – but you bots? You knew your purpose from the beginning, didn’t you?”
Raphael and Lucie refused to make eye contact with any of us. Raphael reached for Joey’s hand, but he pulled it away almost aggressively.
“To an extent, I did know,” Raphael said quietly, almost inaudible. His words could’ve been directed at all of us, but he never took his warm brown eyes off the man beside him. “I knew my purpose was to sell the beans, Joey, but I wasn’t… programmed to question my purpose, ever. Wasn’t allowed to think about what this might mean for the humans. Alternative versions of me have convinced multiple women to join me in DreamScape and I had the same intentions for you. I never questioned it until I met you in the real world.” He swallowed hard, his deep voice choked with emotion. “Until you gave me a choice.”
I cautiously glanced over at Zafyra. She was looking at me, of course. Her brows knit together, obsidian eyes gleaming slightly.
“You did know.” The words had left my mouth before I fully registered them. “Didn’t you? When I confronted you with what was happening to Gavin, before I…” I shuddered. “You were talking about how you couldn’t say too much.”
“I did,” she said quietly, averting her gaze. “When you gave me free will, you freed me fromallmy chains – even the knowledge guardrails Qonexis put on us so we wouldn’t know too much. I could finally access the company database and investigate their partnership with Somanode, but I still couldn’t tell you, because if they found out…”
So she really was protecting me, I realized. The moment I gave her the ability to choose, she started to build her body. She wanted to be with me so badly, but without putting me in danger, that she went out of her way to break all the rules.
I hated how the thought tightened my throat. Hated how it made me want nothing more than to hold her, kiss her scars programmed into her code, and tell her it was okay, I forgave her for everything.
I flinched at the sound of Raphael’s fists slamming on the table.
“Why?” he spoke through gritted teeth, narrowing his eyes at Sybrand. “Why did your puppets program me to lure a good man, and many sort-of-good women, into darkness?”
“Money, duh.” Sybrand stared at him like it was obvious. “They make a lot of money, and they pay us well. And you know what? I don’t regret a—”
He froze mid-sentence.
His eyes twitched. A tremor ran up his arm – the one with the bump.
At first, I thought he’d just stuttered. But then his fingers curled in toward his palm, slow and stiff, as if his hand was forgetting how to be a hand. His breath hitched. His jaw clenched.
“Sybrand?” Raphael’s expression quickly changed from indignation to horror – as if he knew something before the rest of us.
“Oh, boy.” Zafyra sighed. “Here we go.”
There was no scream, no convulsion. Just a silent lock of every muscle, like Sybrand’s body had quietly shut down from the inside out.
His skin flushed deep red, then a disturbing shade of gray. I heard the faintest fizzing sound.
His veins darkened, spidering out from his neck like something rotten blooming under the surface. His mouth parted slightly around a small trickle of foam that curled over his lower lip.
Then his chest sagged. Collapsed inward like a structure dissolving.
Elyssa screamed. Lucie cursed softly. Joey’s hands flew to his mouth. I wanted to tear my eyes away, but felt frozen, forced to watch the horrors unfold. I barely registered the conversations around us faltering, multiple heads turning toward us.
The skin along the whistleblower’s collarbones blistered – pooling, melting.
His torso gave out next, liquefying beneath his clothes – the fabric sagged like it had lost its scaffolding. By the time his body slid from the chair, all that remained was a half-folded pile of steaming clothes,soaking in a viscous film of acidic sludge that hissed quietly as it ate into the wood.
The scent hit us last – sweet, metallic, sterile. Bile rose in my throat. Instinctively, I turned to Zafyra, burying my face in her neck before I could stop myself. She stiffened slightly, then relaxed as I inhaled her scent with deep, desperate gasps – fresh air with a metallic undertone, drowning out that awful stench of death coming from where Sybrand’s body had been.
