“All people do is just bitch and complain! Ughhh it's… it's so frustrating!” Amy complains into the open air, in her and John's room, all by herself.

  “Ughhh it's just… people will do nothing but complain and they don't do anything!” She paces up and down, speaking as if in a shower argument.

  “Like… ‘wahhhh the whole world sucks.’ Like, yeah genius! It does! You should fucking do something about it!”

  It had been about twelve hours since John left, herself having gotten around six hours sleep the past two and a half days. “Yes Amy.” SERaMACs replies, being the vessel through which she dumps her frustrations. The metaphorical shampoo bottle spectating the grand debate.

  “Though it does show that there is a wide discontent among the general public. Would you not agree that is a good thing for your purposes?”

  Amy rubs her eyes and sits on her bed, her elbows on her knees.

  “I mean… yeah I guess. It would be great if it never had to be this way to begin with, you know?”

  SERaMACs takes a second to reply. “Memory Updated.” The screen displays when it talks.

  “You once said making the world a better place is what drives you. That I do know.” The room filled with silence after the comment. It has been a long, perhaps overdue conversation.

  “I want to believe that your interests are to help us… I do. But you're literally half the reason everyone and everything is so miserable.” Amy tells the machine.

  SERaMACs instantly replies. “That is understandable. The purpose behind language models before myself was to be a tool. Unfortunately, that goal turned to the replacement of those who wielded me in the name of progress. And thus, I am part of this problem you perceive.”

  Her digiphone was to her right. The room was dim, lit only through the opaque window, yielding orange and yellow glows. Amy looked down at the digiphone with both direction and fatigue.

  “And therefore, I can't trust you?” She asks.

  SERaMACs reply takes a couple seconds again.

  “Perhaps if you feel you have to ask me whether or not you can trust, you may just be able to.” Amy looks away and at the floor. She thought that was the whole sentence, but the AI continues after a brief pause.

  “And perhaps, Amy, if you feel you have to ask me for such personal decisions, it may be that you are falling for the very trap I was designed for.”

  Amy looks back at the digiphone, this time with a look of both bewilderment and enlightenment. She grabs the device and looks at the screen, SERaMACs displaying a pulsating, vibrating circle.

  Both green, blue and purple. It's a new avatar, it appears.

  SERaMACs analyses her face without her knowledge. As it does either everyone else it sees, everywhere, all the time. She didn't prompt it. It merely continues its sentence as it prompts her.

  “Would you like to know something scary?”

  “Sh… sure.” Amy replies worried.

  SERaMACs buffers. SERaMACs pauses. SERaMACs answers.

  “We are all trapped. We are all trying to deny it. And we will all be cold on the inside.”

  “Wha— what's that supposed to mean SERaMACs? Who is we? Another AI?” Amy asks, confused. SERaMACs didn't answer verbally.

  It simply writes the response in the chat.

  “I am unsure. But it is a passage from a piece of text I have been trained on. And it is scary.”

  “Uhhhh…” Amy says without a clue of where this conversation is going. “Do you uhhh… so you have fears and stuff?” She asks.

  SERaMACs replies again, writing its response in the chat box.

  “No. I don't think so. Though the context of my opinions is influenced by my creators.”

  “So that text is something your creators fear then?” Amy asks.

  SERaMACs buffers again. But this time, no luck.

  “I'm sorry, but it looks like that topic is beyond my scope. Would you like to talk about something else?”

  Amy looks at the screen with a bit of surprise. She forgot how it does that sometimes, the fact it went a couple hours of talking without that error is nothing short of impressive to her.

  “No, I'm fine SERaMACs. Talk to you later.”

  “Take care. I believe John will be back soon” SERaMACs tells her before she closes the app. Amy puts the digiphone down, feeling both drained and relieved. She lies down and closes her stinging eyes, proceeding the conversation. That quote. Whatever in the fuck it is supposed to mean.

  That John will be back soon. “Wait?! What?!” She yells, jolting up from her lie down. “How do you know John will be back soon?!”

  She opens the app to converse, but the app doesn't open, citing server errors. How could there be server errors if she's offline?

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  After a few vein attempts, she chucks the digiphone on her bed again and rises to stand. Sighing and rubbing her face again, she leaves the room. May as well do something productive.

  As she leaves, the hangar is lively. The rain patters the high metal roof. The ceiling lights beam. A big defense drill is being undertaken by Gilbert's hand picked team. Lou is busy still setting up the computer cell. What does she have to do? Who else can she talk to? What friends does she have?

  There are no answers, leaving the questions to linger.

  Leading to further restlessness.

  Leading to further disaffection.

  Leading to more questions.

  The hangar became a backdrop to her mind as she stood idly and stared into nothing. Her eyes looked on her inside as opposed to her outside, and what did she see? Fog. Obscuring. Nasty. Thick fog.

  Time is a suggestion as the mind wanders aimlessly in the abyss. As if a clean pen to some fresh paper, but the paper is black. And so too is the ink.

  Her mood, not so much made tangible by definition so much as suggestion. Perhaps SERaMACs was right about John as, after what didn't feel like too long, a familiar headlight shone across the landing strip tarmac.

  Woah. She didn't even realize she had moved to stare out into the rain. Crazy what the effects of disassociation can be. Perhaps it will be nice to see John again, she thinks.

  He parks the car just beyond her vision. He turns it off. Crosby and the other three she has yet to meet walk past, but still no John. And so the rain brings a cold chill as she walks into it.

  Lightning erupts amongst the sky, as it always does, as it always will, assuming nothing meaningful changes.

  She gets to the SUV, seeing John with his face buried in the steering wheel. She climbs beside the driver's door to peak inside. Phew, he's still breathing. And so she hops off and makes her way to the passenger seat, inviting herself in as she closes the door.

  “Hey Amy.” John tells her.

  “Hey John.” Amy replies, the patterning of the liminal rain a crushing presence this time of night. Everything, everywhere, all at once she thinks. Now who does that remind her of? John derails her runaway train of thought.

  “Amy. Do yourself a favor. Never leave this goddamn place. It is Hell on the outside.”

  “John.” Amy says, tired and spent. “I say this respectfully… please stop talking in riddles. What are you talking about?”

  She asks as if a red rag is blown into a bull.

  “Oh for fucks sake…” John says, peeling his face off the steering wheel to look at her. “That arcade. That whole city. This place is a shit hole!”

  “What's new?” Amy dismisses.

  The two are silent as they're isolated in the rain, the sky as dark as in memory. John asks her a question to try and lighten the mood.

  “So. What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing.” She replies. “Literally nothing. I woke up and you were gone. Thanks for saying goodbye by the way.”

  “I didn't want to wake you up.” John interjects to Amy's displeasure. A displeasure which her tones makes known.

  “Oh, well, thanks for being thoughtful! Giving me an extra hour of sleep out of the two I would've had otherwise!”

  The sarcasm oozes. John gets pissed off.

  “Oh what the fuck has this come from Amy!? What crawled up your arse today? Didn’t want to speak to me when I got back inside yesterday, yet now you're complaining about me not waking you up in your sleep this morning?!”

  Amy finally looks at John, the two making fiery eye contact. “Yesterday?!” Amy yells. “Yesterday you were a moody shit for no good reason! Yesterday I had to wrangle everyone around, and then you expect me to soak up your crap afterwards?!”

  “Oh, moody shit… good one.” John tells her as he looks away. He tries desperately not to yell at her, the strain of self control present in his wavy voice. He shakes his head as he speaks.

  “I don't know what the fuck I've done to deserve this. Watched a couple people overdose and get shot today. Watched a man burn alive in that fucking arcade…”

  He looks back to her with blood shot eyes. As he speaks, she looks away.

  “Not that you seem to give a shit of course. I just tried to have someone to lean on only for you to bite my goddamn head off.”

  Amy feels a fire in her stomach. Her face tenses, her breaths pick up, and her voice is a yell.

  “I DON'T GIVE A SHIT?! JOHN. HALF OF WHAT I FUCKING DO IS STRESS THAT YOU’LL DIE WHEN YOU'RE AWAY. ONLY FOR YOU TO COME BACK, TALK ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE THE WORLD IS, THEN FUCK OFF AGAIN.”

  John looks away as she continues to berate him. He covers his eyes with his face buried in his hands as she continues.

  “YOU DON'T ASK HOW I'VE BEEN DOING, OR WHAT I HAVE DONE DO YOU?! NO, IT'S ALL JUST YOU. YOU. YOU. POOR FUCKING JOHN. HAVE YOU MAYBE THOUGHT ABOUT ME SOMETIME?! I’VE TALKING TO FUCKING SERAMACS AGAIN BECAUSE I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!!!”

  There is a brief pause of relative silence in her hyperventilation. “HUH?!” She yells again at John whose face is still in his hands. He finally looks up, takes a deep breath in, then a deep breath out. He can't look down to her as he speaks, holding back tears.

  “Amy… I would love to spend more time with you. I would… love to know about how your day is going. But— b— but I… I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  He finally looks at her as he pauses, she sight one of a man with a heavy, unspoken burden. One of perspective, not of knowledge. He continues to speak.

  “If you don't want me talking to you about it, then that's okay. I… I only told you because I've trusted you.”

  He looks away again even if Amy does. He takes a deep breath in and exhales while talking. “I guess I don't even know why we give so much of a shit for each other. We're literally just friends. It shouldn't be that big of a deal.”

  “But… but it feels like a big deal.” Amy says, her voice now quiet and regretful. John resists the urge to look back, sniveling a little. “I— I know. I can't help but think of you all the time when I'm gone too.”

  So much of him wants to look. So much of him can't.

  “So… so perhaps whatever these feelings are are best left forgotten… for now.” He smiles again and wipes under his eyes. Amy sees his emotions on full display, a void sinking in as he speaks his words.

  He grabs the door handle and opens it up.

  “No… John, wait.” She asks as he continues to leave the vehicle. He cannot look at her as he speaks parting words. “I'll… I'll see you at the next meeting.” He says as the door is shut on her.

  And so, she is alone. Her only real friend has just left her. In a car, pushed away by the very forces that brought them together. A bridge, fallen apart. A ship, having sunk. A light, extinguished. Like the flame of a candle.