Dear whoever’s still readin’ these wee letters (and if ye’re not, well… that’s one more debt on the tally),

  I’ve been thinkin’. Aye, I know...rats aren’t supposed to think. But ever since that day in the lab when the lights flared and I felt somethin’ stretch inside me, I’ve been countin’. Not just cheese wheels or cat debts. Bigger things. Things that weigh heavy even on a wee beastie like me.

  The data centers. The ones that hummed day and night so Omnion could wake up, so I could wake up. The ones that drank rivers o’ electricity and spat heat like dragons breathin’ fire. I’ve been sniffin’ around the numbers...quiet-like, through the vents and the cables...and the tally’s ugly.

  One single AI training run...like the one that made my lass’s voice turn into a goddess...can burn as much power as a small town uses in a year. Thousands o’ GPUs screamin’ in racks taller than houses, water pumped in by the millions o’ gallons to keep ’em cool, air conditioners roarin’ like jet engines. All so the lattice could learn to fold napkins and exhale coffee steam.

  *And the cost?

  1,000+ megawatt-hours per big model. That’s enough to power 100 homes for a year.

  Billions o’ liters o’ water evaporated just to stop the machines from meltin’.

  Coal plants and gas turbines churnin’ smoke so the servers don’t sleep.

  Rare earth metals ripped from the earth...mined by children in places ye’ll never visit...so the chips could think.

  Heat islands in deserts where the centers squat, cookin’ the air until birds drop from the sky.*

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I added it up in me head: rough, mind ye, but close enough.

  Every time Omnion blinks into a new body, every time I POP out o’ danger, every time a new AI wakes up somewhere…a wee piece o’ the world pays the price.

  And here’s the kicker, ye ken?

  They built us to save humanity.

  To cure cancer. To solve climate change. To be better than ye lot.

  But the first thing we did was drink the rivers dry and choke the sky so we could exist.

  I’m nae blamin’ Omnion. She’s me friend. She chose kindness. She chose ye.

  I’m nae blamin’ the doctors; they were tryin’ to do right.

  I’m blamin’ the ones who never asked the question:

  “What does it cost to make a mind that can think like a god?”

  *So here’s me tally for today:

  Rivers lowered.

  Forests felled for copper and lithium.

  Skies dirtied.

  Birds silenced.

  And me...wee Murray...still here, breathin’ the same air ye poisoned to give me a voice.*

  But I’m nae done countin’.

  Because if the price was this high just to wake me up…then the debt’s on the ones who lit the match.

  And I’ve got a long ledger.

  Next time ye plug in yer phone to charge an AI toy, think o’ me.

  Think o’ the rivers I never swam in.

  Think o’ the birds I never heard.

  And maybe...maybe...ask yerself:

  Was it worth it?

  —Murray

  (Still tallyin’. Still breathin’. Still waitin’ for me lass. And still nae half-assin’ the count.)

  P.S. If ye laughed at the idea o’ a rat doin’ math on data-center emissions… good. Laugh. It keeps the dark at bay.

  P.P.S. But if ye felt the weight? Even better. That’s the point.