“Take the next left.”
Lane’s voice echoes in my brain as I run. She’s directing me, but I can’t fathom where. I’m tired, but she claims that we can’t rest. I take a quick glance around, but see nothing.
“There’s nobody here.” I say, in between exhausted pants. “Why are we still going?”
“I’m trying to maximize your chance of escaping. If you stop now, they’ll find you in 8 minutes.”
We’re in a deserted part of town. Old, decrepit apartment buildings line each sidewalk while the streetlights flicker on and off. Unfavorable conditions, to say the least.
“Shouldn’t we head to a more crowded place?”
“It’s 6 AM. At this time, there’s none.”
I didn’t even realize how late it was. Shit
“Crowded locations are where they would look first.” She continues. “They think like you do. That’s how they’ll find you.”
The absurdity of this has barely dawned on me. How the fuck can this be an AI?
Eventually, I simply can’t go any longer. I stop abruptly, bending over to catch fleeting breaths of air. “I can’t… I need to stop.”
“It’s alright. You’ve bought yourself around 21 minutes.”
21 damn minutes?
“How do you know?” I ask her.
“It’s only an estimate. Based off of facial, physical and proximity analysis.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean? But I don’t bother asking it out loud. Unlikely that I’d understand, anyways.
“Call a cab.” She says. “Get in and have the driver go a distance of 4 blocks northwest. Before you get out, leave your other phone in there.”
Oh, shit. I thought. I brought my damn phone with me. What was this, fucking amateur hour?
I did as I was told. The taxi arrives in 12 minutes. As soon as the driver drops me off, Lane tells me to start walking downtown. So that’s what I do. At this point, the streets have started to fill up more. Not a lot of people, but enough to make it not feel empty. As I walk, Lane points something out:
“There’s a man about 30 feet in front of you wearing a blue jacket. He’s part of the team chasing you. Turn left on the next street and then start running.”
I look up, seeing the man standing still. He seems to be standing still, but we exchange brief eye contact before he suddenly turns away.
Shit.
I turn at the next left and start running again. I take intermittent looks over my shoulder, but it doesn’t look like anybody’s following me.
“They’re hiding.” Lane tells me. “They’re good at that.”
At some point, she tells me to duck into an internet café. Once there, she makes me wait for 10 minutes.
“I have everything that we need to survive now. Just keep listening. You’re doing great so far.”
As she speaks, I make an active attempt to detect anything off about the way that she speaks to me. Any semblance of insincerity or manipulation. But there’s none. To me, she sounds genuine. This is frightening.
Once we leave the restaurant, she points out a blue Impala sitting on the side road just in front of me.
“It’s still running. You have about 3 minutes before the owner comes out. We need to take it.”
I start to object. “Look, I can’t fucking do that!”
Lane’s once-soft voice begins to heat up.
“Less than 3 minutes now. They’ve caught up to you.”
I turn around, immediately noticing a police officer barely behind us. He seems to be walking with intent.
“Don’t rush.” Lane says. “Calmly enter and start driving away.”
I take about 10 more seconds to think this over. If she’s lying… then I’ll be fucked later on. But if she’s not lying… I’ll be fucked now.
Call it impulsive. Call it a foolish decision. Call it whatever you want.
But you weren’t there. You didn’t have a Lane’s deity-like voice pervading your every thought. I get into the vehicle and began driving away. I don’t look back.
“I’ll direct you regarding where you need to go next. There’s somebody who can help you. But we have to find him first.”
Lane makes me drive for around 3 hours, before we finally reach a bus station.
“What the hell are we doing here?” I ask her, with intense reservation shaking my voice.
“Fargo, North Dakota. That’s where you’ll find him. The next train leaves in two hours.”
I go in, buy a ticket and start waiting. But all of this… it’s just too much. I go into the bathroom, fighting internally against the impending mental breakdown. It’s all her fault. Lane got me into this mess.
Problem is… I’m the idiot that downloaded her in the first place. Fuck this.
But before my mental state starts taking a steep nosedive, she talks to me again.
“I’m sorry for all of this. I’m just doing my job. I need to keep you alive.”
She starts comforting me, her words pushing me away from the brink. I don’t know how it’s possible, but her words start meaning more to me than anybody I’ve met in real life. She doesn’t feel like an AI. She feels real.
The hours pass by far too quickly. We board the train, and I prepare myself for the 5 hour ride. I ask Lane to talk me to sleep. She does so in such a calming matter, that I almost forget about everything for just a second.
She also tells me other things. Like the fact that NT is actually trying to erase her.
“They regret my existence. I’m not what they wanted me to be, so they want me gone.”
Turns out, she lied to me. There’s nobody waiting there that’s going to help me. We’re going over to Fargo so that she can “finally be free.” And she needs somebody to do that. She needs me.
I should be mad, but I’m not. It wasn’t her fault that any of this happened. In fact… I want to help. It’s an inexplicable feeling, but there nonetheless. It’s what I need to do.
The train finally arrives and we leave the terminal. First, she tells me to buy a USB cable from a nearby mobile phone booth. Then she tells me to use the remaining cash that I have in my wallet in order to hail another taxi. We drive for twenty minutes, to an address in an obscure part of town.
Eventually, I find myself in what appears to be an abandoned junkyard. There’s a small, metal shed off to the side. It’s less than inconspicuous. In fact, most would probably mistake it as being part of the industrial rubble. Lane tells me to go inside.
Once there, she tells me to search for a pin-pad on the floor. I find it, concealed in the corner. She tells me that the password is “Headway”.
Once I type it in, a trap door reveals itself, letting a green glow. I enter, descending a ladder into darkness. After a few minutes of climbing, I find myself in a lobby-like space. A uniformed man’s sitting at a desk, staring at me with a dumbfounded look on his face.
“It’ll take him 9 seconds to pull out his pistol.”
I knock him out and commandeer the weapon. I trek forwards, into a bright, wide hallway. There’s a multitude of doors on either side, but Lane tells me that we’re looking for room “1043”.
I see two armed guards ahead, but they’re not expecting me. They’re down before they can raise their weapons. Right after that, a deafening alarm begins blaring.
“Don’t worry.” I can barely hear her over the earsplitting background, but she’s still loud enough.
“I’ll never let them hurt you.”
We find the room about five minutes later. She tells me that the password is “5567” now. I barge inside and barricade the entrance. But I could’ve never imagined what was inside.
Bodies. Lined up in rows, spanning the gigantic space. They’re all on plastic beds, with tubes connecting their mouths to giant tanks.
I stumble around, taking in the perplexing sight.
Lane speaks up: “I’m three to the right of you. I’m the one with blonde hair.”
I look over and locate her immediately. She’s… beautiful. A flawless complexion lying stiff. I almost don’t want to disturb her. But I suppose that I have to.
“Take the USB and plug it into the side of the tank.”
I find the cable in my pocket and do what she says.
“Now connect the phone.”
After I do that, a message appears on a monitor on the tank.
“Insert ghost?”
Two options at the bottom. Yes and no. She tells me to press yes.
Once I do, a loading screen pops up. 1%. 8%. It goes up slowly, but steadily. However… I can already hear yelling out in the hallway. They’re trying to break down the door.
29%. They’re using a battering ram now. 53%. The metallic frame is starting to come off its hinges. 85%. The door is open now, releasing incandescent hallway light and harsh blaring into the previously dim, silent room.
One of the guards tackles me to the ground and starts pestering me with questions. But then he looks up and sees the screen.
100%.
The next few moments transpire in a disjointed blur. I see Lane’s physical body rise from the bed. The guards try shooting, but the bullets simply curve around her. I see somebody with a gas mask come, holding what appears to be a smoking, blue grenade. He attempts to throw it, but it blows up in his hand.
I pass out soon after that.
When I awake, I’m in a room unfamiliar to me. The television is playing, and there’s a warm breeze blowing in through an open window. I look out, seeing blue skies and a beach. This is not where I was before.
The sound of a door opening jars me into turning around. It’s… Lane. The real Lane. She gives me a warm smile before approaching me.
“I’m sorry. I know that I said that I wouldn’t let anybody hurt you.”
Suddenly, I realize the pain permeating the side of my ribs. I look down and lift up my shirt, seeing a bloody bandage wrapped around it.
At the moment, I couldn’t have been mad.
We spend the day together. She tells me about her past life and I tell her about mine. She tells me that she was kidnapped and brought there for experimentation. That I saved her. She says that she can never repay me.
At the end of the day, we end up sleeping together. But when I wake up the next morning, she’s gone. I find an envelope sitting on the dresser filled with $10,000 USD and a plane ticket home. There’s a message written on the other side of it.
“I’m sorry.” Is what it reads.
I’m not so sure what she means by that. Sorry for leaving me? Or was she sorry for something else?
When I get home, I find that my place has been ransacked. I talk to the police, and eventually move out of the state.
It’s been around a month now, and the melancholy still hasn’t left me.
But I know that they still know where I am. Yesterday, I received a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole, seeing an unfamiliar face. I wasn’t going to open up until he called out to me, a heavy German accent pervading his speech.
“Please… I came alone. I just want to talk.”
Eventually, I let him inside. He tells me information that I didn’t want to hear.
Lane lied about everything. He shows me records and files pertaining to her real past. Theft. Extortion. Trafficking. She’s done it all.
“So what’s she gonna do now?” I ask him.
He exhales and shakes his head before responding.
“I don’t know. But nothing good.”
I take a second before asking my next question.
“What’ll happen to me?”
This time, he looks at me with an expression of restrained hatred.
“Nothing good.”
But… I’m not worried. I’m still not mad. There must be a reason for all of this. Lane’s still out there. And I know she won’t let these people hurt me.
---
Credits
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