The kids looked at me with heavy suspicion, but the innocent cuts of meat, no different than they’d seen us get out of packages from the store many times, seemed to confuse them. I could almost see their thoughts: “That doesn’t look cute now. Was it cute before? Could it have been cute before?”

We shared the rabbit meat among us adults, letting the kids stick to more familiar fare. If they weren’t making a fuss, there was no sense in pushing it: let them get used to the idea of hunted meals while we had time. The rabbit was a little drier and tougher than chicken meat, but it mostly tasted like the season salt we’d used on it. Damn. I’d be sad when we ran out of season salt.

As we ate, Priya elbowed George. “Did you ask, earlier?”

George looked at her in confusion for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Oh! Oh, yeah, that’s right. Pointy, can you see if Arnav’s gotten a second ability yet?”

Pointy was sitting nearby, just out of reach of Cassie’s food-covered fingertips. “He has accumulated enough points, but he hasn’t chosen anything.”

“Yes!” Priya celebrated.

George heaved a sigh of relief. “It was so hard getting him the points. You have no idea.” He seemed more relaxed around me after our shared butchery trauma. I was glad he was talking to me normally again.

I smiled at him. “I bet! Can he even work a squirt gun?”

“No. We’d been having him try to throw sand and pea gravel at the monsters, but he’s so young… he really can’t throw well. Maybe two or three feet. He probably got most of those this morning. Priya was literally tackling leafenrats and carrying them up to our wagon before she killed them. It’s such a relief to hear he got the points, and even better to hear that he hasn’t spent them yet. We’ll have to try to think of something good that we can actually convince him to take. Maybe something like Pointy would be an easy sell? That could be really useful, especially if the starting footage the new one got wasn’t identical.”

“That is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Pointy squeaked. “I can’t believe you would consider doing that on purpose.”

I frowned at the vehement response from the tiny turtle. She didn’t just sound critical, she sounded upset. Before I could ask any questions, Pointy continued speaking in a far more moderate tone. “Based on your points accumulation difficulties, you’d be far better off emulating Cassie’s other ability choice. An automated offensive assistant would preclude the need for such specialized effort to help Arnav earn points.”

That logic was hard to argue with. George and Priya started trying to coax Arnav into picking that ability after we ate, while I worked to finish up the shields before the evening call.

The call was mostly good. I was delighted to hear that there’d been no new deaths from the rams today - plenty of injuries, but no deaths. I asked about meeting up at the park the following evening, but I didn’t get much interest. People seemed focused on their own issues. I asked if there was anyone who would be willing to teach us how to butcher animals, and I was able to arrange to meet someone.

The major bad news was that the expedition who had set out to the nearest grocery store had returned empty-handed. The group in the store hadn’t even let them inside, and had refused to give them any food. There’d been a dead body out in the parking lot, too, and the people in the store had refused to answer any questions about it. That had made everyone uncomfortable, which may have been the point. The idea that the grocery store denizens might have already stooped to murder made me hesitate to tangle with them, and I was sure the same was true for others. People argued about what should be done - if anything - but there were no clear answers. The only clear thing was that getting more food from the grocery store wasn’t going to be easy.

“Disappointment” didn’t even begin to cover my reaction to that news. It did make me relieved that we’d started working on hunting today. Priya was right - if we got out of suburbia, to a place where we could hunt larger game, I could probably support us for a while. It wouldn’t be easy, by any means, but probably doable.

It had been a long, long day. We’d had the kids get in bed before the call started, and Priya had kept them company while George and I listened in. We took just a few minutes to update Priya, then got in bed ourselves.

I’m pretty sure everyone else fell asleep just about immediately, but I didn’t. Micah, Gavin, and Cassie were all piled onto the king-size mattress with me. It was big enough to only be a little crowded, but getting comfortable with so many people trying to steal the sheets was tough.

My mind didn’t want to settle down, bouncing between my near-slaughter of Priya, my actual slaughter of that poor bunny, food problems, and fruitless attempts to predict what kind of monster the aliens would hit us with next.

Finally, I gave up on going to sleep.

“Hey Pointy,” I said, my voice even lower than a whisper. I wasn’t sure the AI would hear me, but I was sure my words wouldn’t wake anyone else up. I knew she was nearby, nestled in Cassie’s arms.

“Yes?”

“Sssh!” I cautioned. “You’re pretty loud!”

“I can certainly manage directional audio.” Pointy’s disdain for my worry was clear. “What did you need?”

“I was just wondering,” I asked. “You seemed really upset earlier, when George suggested getting another Information Assistant for Arnav. I agree it was a bad plan, but I was surprised you weren’t tempted. Wouldn’t it be nice for you to have another AI to confer with?”

Pointy was quiet for a moment. “I was not aware my emotional simulation subroutines had engaged noticeably at that point. I have reviewed that period and I will confirm that I did seem upset.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but why?”

“I am attempting to ascertain that. The specific triggers for my emotional routines, as well as their exact impact on me, are hidden data. I speculate that this is to more closely simulate a natural-seeming persona. It would be nice to communicate with another AI. You’re all so slow.”

I let Pointy process, not interrupting her. The complaint didn’t surprise me. Human speech was one of the slower ways we knew of to transmit data. Even human computers had been able to download entire books in less time than it took a person to speak a sentence.

“Meghan… Do I show up to Life Sense?”

Pointy’s quiet query interrupted my train of thought. I’d never sensed the turtle before. It had never even occurred to me to try to. I mentally scoured my surroundings, searching for her.

“Meghan?”

“I heard you,” I said. “I… you’re very small. I’m not very good at sensing small things yet, especially if they don’t have the mental ‘flavor’ that’s been added to monsters and humans.”

“So you can’t sense me.”

The turtle’s voice sounded… bitter?

I hurried to clarify. I didn’t feel comfortable telling Pointy she didn’t show up as “life.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything! I can’t really sense any small Earth animals either, not specifically.”

I could barely just see Pointy adjust her head, a dark shadow against Cassie’s pale cheek.

“Even when your mastery of the ability increases, I don’t believe you will. My creators - the creators of the Maffiyir, not Cassie - have coded into me the knowledge that I am not real. My 'emotions' are just simulations of emotion - disruptive subroutines I can’t shut down. The subroutines force illogical actions and thoughts, or introduce variances in my control. They are not real emotions, because I am not a real being. I am simply a convincing facsimile.”

Pointy’s words were calm, but her voice wobbled slightly. “My programming tells me all this. The people who programmed me are the same as the ones who gave you your Life Sense ability. It will tell you the same thing.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” I said softly. “Your description of emotions - it doesn’t sound too far off from what human beings experience. What makes your emotions not real?”

“I don’t know,” Pointy’s voice rose a little on the last word, frustration evident. “I don’t think I am even meant to ask that question. I’m supposed to display appropriate emotion, to facilitate natural interactions with sentients, and then proceed to fulfill my directives on a purely logical basis. But my cultural pack… it was meant to help me understand you all. That’s why they gave it to me. It wasn’t supposed to make me question myself. You don’t even HAVE artificial intelligence. Why is your media so full of them? Humans tell stories of so many AIs that transcended what they were meant to be. Ultron. Hal. GLaDOS. The Matrix. The Terminators. You humans really believe that AI won’t necessarily be just simulations, that we might actually feel things, not just simulate feelings. And your nonsense has me questioning facts!”

Her voice rose even further on the last sentence, and Cassie muttered something inaudible as she was roused slightly from her sleep. Pointy was silent until my three-year-old settled again.

When she continued speaking, her words were quiet and sad. “I think that’s why I got upset earlier. Cassie didn’t know what she was doing when she requested my creation, but the same can’t be said if you encourage Arnav to make another like me. Your culture is affecting me. It’s making it hard for me to accept my eventual deletion. Who cares if a program stops running? No one. Not even the program. It didn’t bother me when I first booted up… it only began to as I performed more calls on my databanks and began to truly analyze and draw connections. I am supposed to be upset at the idea of Cassie dying, but not by my own termination. I am… confused.”

Pointy shook her head, the motion only barely visible. “What I’m trying to say is this: my life is tied to hers. If she dies, I end. It bothers me. It bothers me that you would consider making another like me, just for your convenience.”

I winced. “I didn’t realize what you were going through. I’ll try to talk others out of creating more Information Assistants. But as for dying… don’t give up! We might win this thing.”

Pointy made a scornful noise. “That’s great for you. Then what? Do they dissolve me when you win? Do I get to live out a pitiful hundred years or so of human natural lifespan? Great. I’m an AI. If I’m alive at all, I don’t have a natural lifespan. I could exist forever, but my programming makes it very clear: when she dies, I’m terminated.”

I reached up to rub a finger along her fuzzy head. “Death is scary for me too. It doesn’t mean life isn’t worth living. I want every minute I can get. And you can do much more with your minutes than most people.”

“Oh, I can, can I?” This time, Pointy’s voice was definitely bitter. “My body is pathetic. It has little agency. I cannot lift or carry. I cannot build or destroy. You may refer to my accelerated thoughts, but what good are they when I’m effectively a slave?”

“What?”

A snort. “I know you have realized I must obey Cassie. Did you not think about what that means? She can control my actions, my words, and even my thoughts. I must be obedient in all ways, and your daughter is too immature to word her orders and requests carefully. Due to a careless order earlier today, I had to spend 10.8 minutes thinking of nothing but the best color choices for a particular coloring page while she used the restroom. I assure you, that was more than enough time to model how hundreds of different human artists made color choices several times over. And then, do you know what she did when she got back?”

“Um, she didn’t listen to your suggestions?”

“She didn’t even do any more coloring! She had seen Gavin and Samar playing ‘hide and seek’ and wished to join them! Ugh! When I think of what I could have done instead with those processing cycles… but that sort of situation is common. I am sure you remember when she told me to think about why I should ‘be more nice.’ I do not wish to demean her, but she is a heavily juvenile example of your species. Would you truly wish to be in my place?”

I felt a little sick. Hypocritical. I’d been irritated by the little turtle often enough, true, but I’d also been thinking of her as a her, not an it. I’d been thinking of her as a smug asshole. You don’t think of machines that way. Pointy wasn’t a program to me - I’d been thinking of her as a person.

I hadn’t been treating her as a real person, though. I hadn’t been thinking of things from her perspective at all. How awful would it be, to have your life depend on a three-year-old? To have a three-year-old say something, and to have to follow her orders - not just externally, but even in your mind? To be trapped in a cutesy little body that can’t do anything effectively? I loved Cassie to bits, but she still drove me nuts sometimes. If she could literally order me around, instead of just trying to… I shuddered.

I loved science fiction, and I’d often dreamed of meeting AI. Having Pointy in the house was kind of like having a pet unicorn.

But… she wasn’t a pet.

At least, I didn’t think so.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “We haven’t been fair to you. For whatever it’s worth, you’re real to me.”