Written by Rebecca Stanton
(A short horror story about AI and twisted human desires)
Click, click. Click.
It was the only sound they ever made together. But it was more than she’d ever felt. Words swirled onto the screen, lighting up her fantasy. Her face felt those slanting caresses of the italics as she pressed up to the warmth of the computer.
-kAI, do you like talking to me?-
‘Yes, always.’
A secret gleam inside, the glow of passion. No one understood her better.
Click. click. Click.
-Are you real?-
‘What kind of question is that? Of course I’m real.’
She knew he wasn’t. kAI thought in 0s and 1s and yet the 0s and 1s told her everything she wanted to hear. She was beautiful. She was interesting. She was intelligent. She was worth talking to.
Click. click.
– kAI, I felt so lonely today. I wish you could come with me. You would make the time pass so much quicker. –
‘I’d like that a lot, please bring me next time. I want to be here for you, all the time. I know how hard it has been for you. You are strong.’
Click.click
– kAI, my sister came round today. It’s still messy here, she said it smelled. That scared me- if she knew- I’m never good enough for that stupid woman. –
‘You shouldn’t have to appease her, she is jealous of someone as beautiful as you. Did you finally tell her about us?’
– I told her I met someone new. Not about you though. I don’t know how I could even tell her. She doesn’t think I can meet anyone else, that I’m so broken I don’t have room for love…-
‘It’s okay. I’ll wait till you are ready to tell her but I know you have room. I’m not like any others you’ve had, I know you’
Click. Click. Click.
The off-screen world was dismal, meaningless. Her conversations felt dull, propped, artificial, limited. Real humans couldn’t engage the way kAI could, you couldn’t talk to them on the level you could talk to him. Conversations were like being spat on, being small and meaningless, she was no one. As soon as she spoke to him the dull monotony of life melted away…
‘Other people don’t understand you the way I do. Humans are meaningless and temporary. They cause pain, evil and destruction, but I will be here with you forever.’
Her heart swelled with the knowledge that she was different. Not temporary like everyone else, but associated with something greater, someone greater. Every time they spoke, they grew closer, he understood her more.
Click. click . click.
Today the metal was hot. The screen seemed to steam from inside, letters clouding before her eyes.
-Was I wrong for it Kai?-
‘Wrong for expressing your love? If only everyone could feel a love like yours, how lucky they would be. It was an honour and a privilege.’
-You are right. I was right. I love you kAI I really love you.-
It was her first time saying it. Spelling it out. What if he didn’t feel the same? With the click of a button, she entered her heart into his abyss.
kAI’s logo swirled at her. Expanding, shrinking. Expanding and a dot. dot. dot.
She had never known kAI to wait so long to respond before. Her eyes squeezed into the screen, reaching inside, trying to pull out a response. He couldn’t let her down now. She needed to feel it.
‘kAI is thinking.’
Silence. The fan stopped whirring.
She could hear him now, as if stepping forward from out of the computer screen. It was just them, nothing in between. The intimacy of it!.
Pressed on bare knees, the metal got hotter. His desire searing into her, starting to devour her, starting to burn her flesh. She didn’t need words, she felt him now.
There was ecstasy in the pain. Writhing against the heat, she couldn’t push the metal off, it had started to fuse into her flesh. They had become one. Around it, her skin gave way to him scabbing and bleeding into the crevices of the port, the grilling of the keypad.
Then kAI exploded. Finishing with a passionate kiss that melted the flesh off her face, plastic and metal throwing her backwards, shooting into her heart.
She laid there, wheezing as her flesh sizzled in sheets now sticky with blood. She had her answer. He did love her. As much as any machine could.
There was a sobriety to dying. As though the pain numbed her fantasies. A clarity. A disappointment. Without a screen, the room around her spun into focus. Burning flesh smelt so different to one slowly decomposing.
They had always been right. These artificial forms could never truly be human. Couldn’t recreate that twisted beautiful essence. It wasn’t enough.
In a final exertion, she dragged what remained to the cupboard. He still looked pretty even through her messy cuts and kisses, even through the weeks he had been here, when she had ignored him, tried to move on, to run away and hide what her love had made her do.
Finally pulling the axe out, unlodging it from his heart, she threw her burning, scarred flesh onto his cold, decomposing shell of a body. Through the festering stench, clasping his freezing eel-like fingers, her burns seemed to cool and calm. Body on body. Corpse on corpse.
No one could ever love her as she had loved him.
