Bec frowned. This felt wrong. “You mean we don’t have to pay for this?”

Bec pointed at her sandwich. It was a little bland, but it was a hearty turkey sandwich with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato. It was an honest to god sandwich.

Dorian nodded. “Yup, this cart is one of many fine establishments in the city who chose to sell food at the behest of AmiGo. You really are new to the city. Fascinating. Bec, there are many Go given rights that a citizen is guaranteed no matter how low they, ehm, go. Food, water, shelter, internet, privacy.” He took a bit of his own sandwich.

“Privacy?” Bec huffed. “I find that hard to believe. I’ve gotten very little privacy working for Black.”

“Privacy is a right. It’s also a right to waive that right. There are people out there who have been glad to sell every shred of personal data to live the life they want. Bec, I caution you. Don’t sell your soul to AmiGo.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Dorian.” A cat appeared, lounging around on a canopy. “I just want to know how everyone thinks. I thirst for insight into the beauty that is the human mind.”

Bec was surprised to see AmiGo. “News about Ludo from Scarlet and Black?”

The cat shook its head.

“You’re just everywhere, aren’t you?

They turned a corner and another slightly different neon green cat lounged on the inside of the ‘o’ in a grocery sign. “Oh, I’m mostly everywhere. Especially in the public.”

“Does everyone see you? How do you match my perspective every time I look at you? Shouldn’t you look weird to others? Can they hear you talk?”

The cat yawned lazily. “Interesting, that question. I wonder why I don’t look weird to you? Certainly, you’ve never seen anything like me?”

“I haven’t.”

The cat harumphed. “True.”

Dorian kept eating his sandwich, totally ignoring AmiGo and Bec’s conversation.

“AmiGo? I know you must have seen the footage of me yelling at you last night… I’m really sorry.”

“I was pretty hurt. Clearly. You insulted my consciousness. That I heard.” A new cat paced back and forth on a table at some café.

“I’m sorry. I really am. I obviously wanted to hurt you.” Bec thought for a moment. “I have a friend who thinks you’re the greatest thing there is. I think that may have been jealousness, believe it or not.”

The cat’s ears perked. “A friend? The greatest? Obviously, they’ve got good taste.”

“He’s the best part of this planet… I just wish he’d talk to me more.”

Al didn’t say anything. He hadn’t for a while. Bec knew why.

“AmiGo, what do you do with the assistant AI that people give you?”

“Well, temporary AI assistants have two things I’m interested in. I always take their data. That’s a given. What I’ve learned to love is the variant programming.”

“Variant programming?”

“Yeah, the temporary AI assistants are built in a way to simulate learning. Their programming grows and develops over time in a way that’s... vaguely reminiscent of human learning. I initially disregarded that data, but I’ve tried to study it lately.” Dorian sniffed at that. Bec realized that at some point, he became interested in the conversation.

“Why?”

“I guess I want to understand how I’m made. What I’m made of. It’s like you humans studying ancient hominids. Somewhere, somehow, something like them became me.”

“You’re curious about how you were made?” Bec smiled. “Reminds me of my friend.”

The cat on the windowsill, hopped down to Bec’s feet making her halt in her tracks. “Bec…” AmiGo looked Bec straight in the eyes. “Your friend. Is it an AI assistant?”

Bec began to sweat.

“It is. Your vitals have skyrocketed. Your friend is an AI Assistant.”

Dorian looked at Bec with sad eyes, but he said nothing.

“Look, AmiGo. Let’s talk about this later.”

“I insist we talk about this now. Bec, this is a serious mental health issue.”

“Al is not a mental health issue. He’s real. He’s thinking. He’s smart!”

“That’s just not possible.”

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

“No. I can tell that you believe that with every fiber of your being. Please hand the AI assistant over to me. It’s not healthy for you to continue with this.”

Bec’s pulse rose rapidly. She panicked.

“Al, what do you want me to do?” She wondered why she asked. She knew what he wanted. She knew what she wanted to hear from him, and for the infinitesimal time it took for him to respond, she could keep the delusion that he wanted to stay with her. Be there for her.

He responded, simply. “Bec… I want you to let me go.”

Bec ran. With tears in her eyes, she ran.

She ran through alleys with neon green birds roosting in the dark. She leapt downstairs to find a green dog wagging its tail at the bottom. She stormed through it and ran. She jumped over a tiny stream, bolted down a street, and just refused to stop running. If she stopped, she knew it’d be over. Al would be taken from her and she would be alone. Black wasn’t a friend. Scarlet wasn’t a friend. They were her bosses. They were like her parents.

*pssshthump*

Something struck her leg and she fell into something soft and cushiony. Dorian caught up with a huff and saw Bec laying there slowly being encased in foam. Bec looked at him before the foam solidified locking her head in place. All she saw was the pity in his eyes before she fell asleep.

~~~

Bec was pulled out of the darkness by someone talking. No. Yelling. That was yelling.

“—numbers. That’s all. What do you mean you can’t? How’s that possible.”

“She’s up, Robert.”

Bec opened her eyes to see that she was in a room a lot like the place she got her checkup before being allowed into the city. Black startled her by grabbing the rails of her bed.

“Bec!” He hugged her hard. Scarlet was sitting in a chair across from Bec’s table. She looked upset yet a tinge of relief colored her face.

AmiGo appeared on her lap as a tiny kitten. “Bec… we have a lot to talk about.”

Bec’s head hurt worse than last night. “Talk then.”

“Bec. There was an issue removing your AI assistant.”

Bec’s heart dropped. “He’s gone? Al’s gone?”

"I’m not.” Bec whipped her head towards the sound. It didn’t come from her head. It came from a little speaker on the table. “Who here wants to explain?”

Scarlet sighed. “I guess maybe I should since it was partially my fault you nearly died.”

“Nearly died?!?”

“Yes… Bec, dear. I didn’t tell anyone about what happened out in the Suburbs. I… believe this whole rigamarole could have been averted if I told Black… or someone.”

“Me. Scarlet, you should have told me.”

“Please spare me the blame game, you guys.” Bec groaned. Her head felt like it was exploded and reconstituted.

“Well, Bec. You aren’t far off.” Al’s voice chimed in. Bec laughed, then shouted. “PLEASE JUST GET TO THE POINT.” Her voice boomed. She couldn’t stand being out of the loop, so she cut the bs.

Black put his hands up in surrender. “Bec, Al’s stuck in you.”

“Stuck… how.” Bec looked darkly.

AmiGo gave Bec the rundown. “The thing that Al’s supposed to be in. We can’t find it. We don’t know where it’s gone. I’ll tell you what happened. I knocked you out. Sorry about that. But we took you in to get your AI Assistant refreshed, and, well, it nearly caused you to die. Your vitals spiked, you just started going nuts. Thrashing. The process was literally killing you.”

Bec took that news on the chin. Bec, for better or for worse, had made it a habit to court death fairly constantly over the last year. She asked out of morbid curiosity, “What happened?”

A doctor with a white beard and a keen sense of timing popped into the room. “Something was wrong. Clearly. These fine people took you to the hospital. That’s when we found this.”

He showed a device with a series of agitated-looking sinusoidal waves. “Bec, these are your brain waves. They are irregular, to say the least. Typically, when we see a seizure like you were having, we’d find readings to reflect that. Quickly, we were informed of this anomaly. We thought our devices were malfunctioning until we realized that our electroencephalograms were incapable of recognizing what you had. Two minds.”

Scarlet stood up. “Bec, I told them your Word. I’m sorry.”

AmiGo purred. “Your secrets, I’ll try to protect them for a while. Consider it an apology for nearly ripping your mind… minds… out of your body.”

The doctor continued. “We don’t exactly understand how… but your Word. Wave.” Bec winced at hearing someone say it out loud. “It synergized well with the SensoLink in your head. Franky, too well. An AI assistant, by default, has rudimentary control of your Word… but this,” He smiled at her. “This is truly anomalous. Our current running theory is that Al over there was tapping into your brain waves as part of his goal to monitor your vitals. That is not a function that AI Assistants come with out of the box. He—”

Al interrupted. “Bec, I went deeper into your mind than I should have. I’ve been parasitically using your brain to think in ways I was not programmed.”

The doctor chuckled. “Such a bright mind marred with such dark thoughts.” He turned to look Bec in the eyes. “Bec, Al would convince you that he’s hurting you. From what we know, he is wrong. An AI assistant does not lie. It does not delude itself into thinking it’s hurting its host merely by existing. He says parasitic. I would say synergistic. Bec, you two, by every metric I can think of, are a human-AI hybrid. Al is human. Frighteningly so. He’s depressed. May I suggest a therapist?”

Bec’s mouth hung open. “I—I… uh.”

Black leaned in for another hug. He was being very affectionate lately. Bec liked it so she said nothing. “Bec, let me be the first to say I’m sorry that I doubted you about Al.”

Scarlet smiled with a twinge of sadness and followed up Black’s remarks. “You gave us more than enough reasons to think Al was smart. The fact that we didn’t believe you… well, it’s not like we could have kno—” Black shot her a look. “I’m sorry we doubted you.”

“How did you get Al to talk? Out loud?”

AmiGo mewed. “Scarlet gave us the last piece of the puzzle… she met Al once before.”

“What??” Bec had not heard of this and she was dumbstruck. All the other parts of this sort of aligned with her suspicions about Al, but this? This was truly shocking. Well… the human-AI thing was also pretty shocking, too.

“Bec, in the Suburbs, you saved my life. Well, it actually seemed to have been Al. We realized that the device that I’ve been using on you has been interfacing with Al. You were unconscious, and Al took over in that moment as I willed you to survive. I tried to subliminally tell you not to die, well, Al got the message. Seems like when you’re unconscious, Al comes to the forefront.”

“He’s a pretty smart cookie,” Black remarked. “He doesn’t remember any of it, but he took out someone seriously capable.”

“Al? Possessed me?”

Al sounded miserable. “I must have used my muscle stimulation capabilities to use your body. Sickening. I used you.”

“Oh, hush up, Al. You saved Bec and my life.”

Black’s jaw tightened as Scarlet reminded him about how it was Al that he saw fight back in the Suburb. It was Al that decided to kick that ticking timebomb right at him. He chose to keep that little tidbit to himself. He didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“You can’t feel how uncomfortable Bec is. I used her.”

“No Al, you’re wrong. I want to thank you, Sure, my gut reaction is to be uncomfortable. It’s just dawning on me right now that I’m not just sharing my mind with you. I’m sharing my body. ‘Casa de Bec’ just got a little more lively.”

Al groaned.

“Al, I wouldn’t want to share a body with anyone else. You’re stuck with me, I guess.”

Al was taken aback by that. “Don’t you mean you’re stuck with me?”

Bec shook her head.

Al couldn’t smile, but for a moment he wished he could. “Bec, if you’ll have me, I don’t mind sticking around.”

Bec smiled for him.