Chapter Text
Driving home from work was always somewhat calming.
With the car’s windows down, fresh air danced around your figure, moving strands of your hair with the soothing breeze. The brilliant scents of spring came spilling through, enveloping your exhausted frame and calming the aggravated nerves that the work day had left you with.
Moments like these made you feel grateful for being alive. Even though they could’t fully drown out the deep sense of misbelonging within your core. You flipped up the blinking signal, indicating to the other cars that you intended on exiting the road you were currently traveling on. Your car rolled onto a narrow sideroad, the pavement barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass by eachother, without one or the other having to stop and pull onto the grass next to it.
You decided to take a detour from your usual route home. Sometimes, being spontanuous felt good. It tricked your brain into releasing small amounts of epinephrines, quickening your heartbeat.
Usually you were an animal of routine. Setting your alarm for the exact same time 7 days a week, taking exactly 15 minutes to take a shower and get dressed for work, wearing the exact same uniform every day, brushing your teeth for exactly 2 minutes and leaving your apartment at exactly 8:25, in order to arrive at work at exactly 8:55. Holding onto routine meant knowing exactly what to expect from the day. Something to hold onto, when life inevitably decides to throw you a curveball. Of course things couldn’t always go your way.
Not waking up from your alarm, taking a minute to long to finish up breakfast, getting carried away trying to figure out if you should put more effort into your appearance today, it cost you those 5 minutes that would ruin your entire scedule.
Today had unfortunately been one of those days. You had taken a moment too long getting ready and ended up missing the narrow timeframe for leaving and got held up at the train intersection for almost 10 minutes. Just like you, the train ran on an exact schedule. If you had left aproximately 2 minutes earlier, you could have crossed the tracks before the barricades went down and would have been well on your way to work. But the extra 10 minutes having to wait for the train to pass and the traffic light to turn green again had been enough to make you late.
You ended up arriving at almost 9:08, making you tardy. Your streak of bad luck didn’t end there however. You gripped the steering wheel tighter, knuckles turning white from your fingerbones pressing against the skin from the inside. The branch manager of the store you worked at just so happened to cross paths with you, as you rushed inside, hoping no one had noticed your absence so far.
To your horror, he stopped you in your tracks, just as you were about to punch in, Card already in hand. You weren’t supposed to clock in before putting your belongings into the locker and fixing yourself up before your shift. Arriving in your uniform saved you time, but with your backpack in hand and jacket still draped over your shoulders, it was obvious for anyone what you were up to.
,,What’s 30 seconds to the company anyway?” You thought to yourself.
,,You’re late.”
The branch manager gave you a stern look. He was a kind man by heart, seemingly always trying his best to run the store to absolute perfection, even if it meant performing mundane tasks that would normally be far below his paygrade, like restocking shelves when you were understaffed for the day. However his eyes already told you everything you needed to know. You weren’t getting out of this one. He had caught you red handed violating company policy.
,,Sorry, I got caught in traffic.” You mumbled under your breath, but the interaction unfortunately ended with you in his office, employment contract in hand, when he explained to you that you were going to be terminated. You were barely listening when he vaguely explained the reasons for his decision.
In about 2 weeks you were going to be unemployed. Apparently showing up to your shift late today was the last straw. Or maybe this had been planned in advance already. You suspected your manager to have had a play in this. You never managed to get along with her, ever since starting to work there. You vaguely remembered her name coming up in the conversation serveral times.
Losing this job wasn’t exactly a catastrophy in your mind. You never liked it anyway. Only having applied for a need of money to support yourself and pay rent. Finding a job was a nightmare back then. Sending out hundreds of applications to every single job advertisement you could find. Most didn’t even respond. You waited for months, slowly draining your savings until you finally got an interview. Desperate as you were, you took the job. The first Job offer you recieved. Working in a retail chain wasn’t exactly what you imagined your career goals as, but it paid the bills and that was enough. Now you were going to have to go through all of that again. Maybe this was a going to be a bigger problem than you thought. Slaving over resumes, dreading responses from companies that probably never personally looked at their applicants anyway, stretching your savings until you found a new job, prioritizing rent over food. Even the thought of it made dread well up deep inside you.
The car’s engine roared to life as you pressed down the gas pedal. Shifting into a higher gear calmed it down again, as you raced through the narrow, winding road. Giant oak trees lined the side of the street, as you found yourself in an unfamiliar neighborhood. You hoped you wouldn’t get caught speeding. There could be a radar set pretty much anywhere, it being a relatively big city you were living in. Though the thrill of flying down an unfamiliar road droned out those nitpicking thoughts of concern and reason.
Eventually the buildings on either side of you started to become more and more sparse, opening up to a vast space with acres on both sides. The road widened to the usual two lane layout again, the familiar line in the middle seperating the two once more.
A couple lonely office buildings drifted by. Many companies used the land surrounding the city to buy up properties for cheap and have factories and office buildings constructed there. Maybe something about the scenery would make people feel more at ease working there. Who knows. You could see why. The meadows of grain were speckled with wildflowers of poppy and forgetmenot. Surely considered weeds by the farmers, but a sight for sore eyes for someone on their way home from a job draining their will to live. The long stalks of wheatgrass swayed gently in the evening spring breeze, sending ripples across the field, casting the appearance of a vast sea of green. The sun was beginning to set and the whole scenery begged you to pull over and admire its beauty.
So that’s just what you did. You drew up onto the side of the road, making sure your vehicle didn’t obstruct the road in any way, before turning off the ignition, pulling the handbrake and letting your tired feet touch the soft, dusty ground next to the field. Just then you noticed another lonely block of concrete in the distance.
Except, this one didn’t look like those fancy, surreal office buildings with the glass or plastic exterior, this one looked like it hadn’t been maintained in at least a decade or two. It must have been built around the 50s, maybe earlier. Just a boring block with a concrete facade, maybe 5 stories tall with windows caked in dust and walls covered in climbing Ivy with stems thicker than your arm covering nearly every surface, including the windows in some areas.
There was a single line of power line poles stretched through the fields leading to this building with not another in sight for at least a kilometer or two. This building being isolated would be an understatement. It should have been about 500 meters from where you had parked. Beautiful as the scenery was, you took this indirection to distract yourself from what was going on in your life, so naturally, curiosity got the better of you and you began walking towards it. It wasn’t like there were any other cars or people around and nobody was waiting for you at home.
As you followed the road towards this building, kicking up dust with your shoes, you remembered the last time you had done some urban exploring. It was your 15th birthday and your friends had convinced you to explore the abandoned farm behind your childhood home with them. It wasn’t anything special. The old lady it had belonged to had lived there alone with her dog and flock of chickens for the majority of your childhood. She fit the scary old crone stereotype perfectly, glaring and yelling at you quite often over the years. The elderly lady had passed away when you were still a child and her property had been abandoned and left to rot ever since. So you thought there’d be no harm exploring it, since the owner was no longer walking this earth. Back then you had no idea that no such thing as ,,No man’s land” truly existed. Property always belonged to someone. Wether they maintained it or put it to use however was a different story. Your friends decided to use the holes in the roof to crawl into the hayloft. There was a ladder already there, as if someone else had the exact same idea long before you. You ended up staying outside and keeping watch, too afraid of the old, potentially rotten floorboards breaking under your weight, sending you 3 meters down onto the concrete floor of the barn. You didn’t feel like breaking your legs that day. The altercasion ended with your friends satisfied by the thrills of exploring a real abandoned building and you getting in trouble for allowing them to do so.
Turns out the building could have collapsed and if the current owner of the property had found out a bunch of teenagers were snooping around up there, you could have gotten sued. Thankfully nothing ever came of it. But it left you with a mild curiosity for exploring. Which is how you had ended up here.
Your feet stopped just short of the overgrown driveway leading to the building. The thorns of some wild rasberry vine tugged on your pantleg, having gotten caught by your mindless walking. The sudden restriction managed to snap you back to reality. You looked back. Your car had been completely obscured by the tall wheatstalks. No going back now. You were really going to do this. Glancing into both directions of the road, to make sure no one could possibly see you committing the crime of tresspassing, you finally took the first step onto the property. There seemed to be some kind of chain gate set in place, a no tresspassing sign suspended in the middle. You couldn’t quite figure out why there wasn’t any kind of actual fence in place. Anyone could just walk around or step over this one. Though since this was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, it could potentially be to prevent some kids from pulling into the driveway and starting mischief as a dare to explore some creepy building in the middle of nowhere. The chain didn’t stop you though.
You slowly stepped over it, making sure you lifted your tired legs enough to not get caught on the chain and fall on your face. That has happened before and repeating that would be very embarrassing. Weeds and thorns caught on your uniform, tearing small holes into the fabric as you tore yourself from their grip, giving up trying to gently unhook them. It wasn’t like it mattered how you looked at work now anyways. Wether you showed up in torn clothes looking like you had just walked out of a Supernatural episode, or with the perfectly ironed shirt and loose jeans you usually had to wear. Nothing was going to change the fact that they didn’t need you there anymore. Nobody did.
Before your thoughts could take another downwardsspiral though, you had arrived at the entrance doors. Strangely enough they were wide open. No barricade to keep intruders such as yourself out. That should have been your first indicator that something wasn’t quite right. But you had already decided that you were going in, so that’s what you did.
The inside of the building was pretty much as expected. Almost completely empty, aside from a large counter with some shelves behind it. They were completely empty of course, but you could picture them stuffed to the brim with important looking folders and Customer files that the receptionist must have taken great care of. The carpet leading from the front entrance to the counter had seen better days. It was covered in dust and the sun had noticably lightened it in the areas it could touch. You decided to leave the reception room and headed to the first floor, using the flight of stairs provided. They were pure concrete, no tiling, carpet or wooden floorboards on top of it. It was almost as if whoever had constructed this building hardly cared about appearances.
Arriving at the first floor, you were awestruck by what you saw. The entire floor was filled to the brim with giant, old timey looking servers. They were quite a bit taller than you were and lined every single wall of the room, as well as forming orderly rows in the middle of it. There were no windows on this floor. Only huge ventilation shafts connected to even grander fans, that were…. spinning. It was at that very moment that you noticed the flickering lights filling the individual server towers, blinking totally out of sync, in a rhythm you couldn’t quite make out. Your heart jumped into your throat at the realisation. This place couldn’t be abandoned. Electricity was usually one of the first things to be cut off. So unless someone was paying this building’s electricity bill monthly, on time and in full, there was no way the appliances here would be functioning. Which meant that someone was maintaining this place. It was potentially even active. But if it was, it struck you as strange that no one was here. Not a single car was parked out front. Even if everyone had already gone home for the day, it was quite late after all, the doors should have been closed and locked, right? It just didn’t make any sense. Did the previous occupants forget to cancel their auto payments for the electricity bill? With this many active servers it must be quite high. Surely someone would notice quite a large sum leave their bank account undeclearedly every month. Thinking of a reason for all of this made your head spin. Against your better judgement you continued to the next floor.
The next 3 floors consisted of another server room, what seemed to have once been a common area with a small cafeteria attached and an office with a bunch of cubicles. However, something struck you as odd. It appeared that the cables from the two server rooms had been strategically threaded through the floor and walls to end up in the exact room you were now standing in. Leading to… a computer? Well of course it was going to be a computer. You just didn’t expect it to look as ordinary as it did. A standard CRT monitor from the mid to late 90s, just as you remembered having used for learning games as a child. Except instead of the brand tag showing one of the big tech companies you knew, it exhibited one you didn’t quite recognise.
,,C&A is a clothing store from what I remember. But the Logo looks different. I never knew they ended up branching off into electronics”
Strangely enough though, the device appeared well maintained. The thick layer of dust coating every surface in all of the other rooms including this one was completely absent on this desk alone. The thick bundle of cables from the serverrooms found itself at the foot of the table you were inspecting, threading upwards in orderly fashion before connecting to the back of the computer. That was when you noticed something else placed neatly on the table before you. ,,A VR headset? But those haven’t been invented until maybe the early 2010’s”, you thought to yourself.
Again, against your better judgement, you picked it up. There were no lenses or speakers attatched to it. You never had the money or reason to buy one of these. You didn’t even own a desktop PC to use it with. Only an old tablet to use for netflix and other activities involving the internet. However you did know how they were supposed to work. There usually was a narrow screen tucked away at the front of the headset, which projected an image onto mirrors that then reflected onto those funky looking lenses that one was supposed to actually be looking at when in use. They were there to create an illusion of depth, so your brain was tricked into believing that the image displayed wasn’t like 3 millimeters from your retinas, which would make you feel sick. Meaning that this couldn’t be an ordinary headset. It struck you as wildly suspicious, so you set it back down.
The computer itself struck your curiosity the most. What kind of programm could it be running, for it to be needing all those servers? You really hoped you hadn’t accidentally stumbled into some kind of NFT or Crypto farm. You gave the mouse a wiggle. Nothing. Pressing random keys on the keyboard didn’t do anything either. So it wasn’t in sleep mode then. So you pressed the power button. Just for 3 seconds. Those old things tended to just not turn on if one only pressed it for a moment.
Silence. Had you done something wrong? Maybe the thing was broken after all? Did you press the button to long? Did you break i-
Beep
Oh.
The screen whirred to life, the sound of cooling fans filling the room, breaking the silence and making you jump for a moment. It took a moment to load, then two. Before you knew it minutes had passed and you were starting to get anxious. The sun had already set and you were sitting in the pitch black with only the loading symbol on the screen illuminating to the room. You could have tried the lightswitch, but the lights going on in an presumed abandoned building was asking for trouble. Especially when there were hardly any other buildings present, so the light from a single window could be seen from far away. So you continued to wait in paranoid silence, the constant buzzing of the fans drifting your mind into disassociation.
What were you were even doing here? You had to cover the morning shift tomorrow. It was almost 10 pm now. If you were going to stay up despite that, you should at least use the time applying to jobs. But noooo you just had to seek mild thrills, the horrible day you had had making you feel just vindicated enough to justify your actions. The near silence drove your thoughts to go in circles. The faint glow of the screen almost blinding against the darkness, as your silhouette cast a shadow against the wall behind you, framing your seemingly frail body in light. God, where did you go wrong with your life? Working a job you couldn’t stand, coming home late at night, devoid of any energy to do the things you used to enjoy. Somewhere along the lines things just started to feel pointless. Why work for money just to barely scrape by at the end of the month. Affording rent, food, electricity and gas for the car. You almost never had any money left over to spend on yourself. On top of that you just felt like all direction you once had in your life just slowly disappeared over the years. And you were only starting to notice in quiet moments like these, when there wasn’t anything to distract you anymore. Times like this were dangerous. If they lasted too long, your mind began to unravel and could travel into very dark territory. Just in time before it could go there though, the screen suddenly flashed way brighter than before, blinding you for a few seconds. As your eyes slowly adjusted, you were able to make out the classic windows 95 homescreen flashing its old timey color palette at you.
The low resolution struck you as unfamiliar, the dead pixels looking like black holes on the screen. Nosy as you were, you started clicking through the different icons that had appeared, finding either nothing that you even fundamentally understood or struck you as interesting at that particular moment. Things like My Computer and the little recycling bin, you knew. You always wondered if anyone actually restored stuff that had previously been deleted. So you clicked on it. It was empty except for a single, rather large file.
Caine-core.lisp
The file had a little picture of what seemed to be a cartoony pair of dentures with eye balls in between the jaws attatched to it. Maybe it was some kind of mascot? You felt kind of bad for it. Somehow seeing inanimate objects, specifically plushies or toys being mistreated or abandoned had so far always triggered a bit of a protective instinct in you. Before you could question your own logic, you had already clicked the restore button.
The screen froze, thee oh so familiar loading symbol appearing. And then, nothing. It had gone back to the way it was before.
Except,
There was a file labeled C&A projects, which had been empty before, now had a little loading symbol next to it. You decided to give it some time, your intrigue growing by the second. It took a moment, but when it had finished loading, the programm opened, revealing what almost looked like a screen saver. Almost neon green hills, low poly Trees and a cartoonish red and yellow striped circus tent. Whimsical music seeped through the speakers, as the view slowly zoomed into the tent itself, before 3 buttons appeared.
Play
Options
Quit
Who were you to say no to that? The retro style of the game made you feel nostalgic, despite not having grown up in the 90s yourself. You clicked on the icon labeled ,,Play”. But nothing happened. You clicked again. Nothing. What? You decided to close the game. If it wasn’t going to work, what even was the point of it? You turned to get up and leave, when…
*Ding*
Your eyes snapped back to the screen. A pop up had opened. Your breath hitched as you read the text.
Please don’t leave
Was that the computer talking? An customized automized message, that popped up after closing a program? What was the purpose of something like that? Guilttrip people into playing a game that didn’t even work? Maybe it had been a screensaver after all. Before you could think too hard about it though, another pop up had appeared.
I’m sorry, please allow me to do better
Something about these pop ups managed to tug on your heart strings yet again. So you double clicked on it and a messaging board appeared. You didn’t quite trust the old keyboard to still have all of the keys intact, but you decided to give it a try.
User1: Hallo
Darn it. The E key was dead. Time to improvise. The response came so quickly it gave you whiplash.
You stayed
The thing in the computer seemed relieved. Time to dig a little deeper.
User1: Who arr you?
The darn dead key had turned you into a pirate.
I’m C.A.I.N.E and I’m here to entertain!
The tone of this message seemed… different somehow? Like it was trying to put up an act for you. Maybe you were reading into it too much.
User1: Cain? Is that your nam? How’s your day going?
Maybe you should match its cheerful persona. Something something fake it til ya make it.
Sure is, sugar cube! My day just got a lot more interesting now that you’re here! Speaking of which, let’s get more comfortable, shall we? Also, mispelling someone’s name is considered very rude in some places!
The little chat window opened up to full screen, with the previous messages displaying above your text bar. You didn't do this. Did the thing in the computer do this? Until now you were assuming you were chatting with the computer owner’s online friend. They must have left the chat open the last time they had used it. The fact that they seemed to have controlled the programm you were chatting in, really put you off though.
User1: Cain I don’t think I am who you think I am. Sorry about the spilling, the ,,E” Key is brokn
You had to copy the letter out of one of their messages. Which was annoying to say the least. At least it was the letter E and not the letter R.
Caine: Of course! You’re right, I know absolutely nothing about you! Time to change that!
User1: You know what? Ok. But I am curious about you first. You alrdy told m your nam, but who arr you raally?
That ought to answer some questions. You were almost 70% sure that it was some kind of chatbot, since it seemed to know you were someone new and not the last person who had used the computer. Presumatly at least. The thing took quite a bit to respond though. Maybe it was a person after all. Chatbots usually responded within seconds.
.
.
.
You took a look at your phone, the low battery symbol greeting you, as you tried to check the time. Great. How long had you already been here? It felt like hours had passed. You should probably head home in hopes of catching at least a few stray hours of sleep. Provided your brain didn’t keep you awake with unpleasant memories again. As you got up and turned to leave, a new message from Caine had appeared. For a moment you thought about ignoring it and just going back to your car, but something at the back of your mind urged you to at least bid your farewells.
Caine: I am an artificial intelligence program. I presume that was the gist of your question. My purpose is to create. I can make lots of different things and I can show you if you’d like?
You paused. Leaving now seemed rude. Even if your suspicions of Caine being an AI had been proven correct. Look at you. Feeling empathy for some AI. As much as you hated having to use modern AI models for your job, you always ended up being nice to them. Maybe that could save you if there was ever going to be an AI upsising.
User1: I’m sorry, I hav to go.
Caine: Wait
Caine: Will you be back?
You knew what was being implied with this message. And it made you feel horrible about leaving. But it got you thinking. Strangely enough, this conversation had been refreshing. As dangerous as it could be, you decided that you were going to return.
User1: I will.
Caine: Do you really mean it? I-
Before Caine could respond fully, you had already started to shut down the computer and placed the mouse and keyboard as close to their original positions as you could remember, wiping them down with a tissue just in case to remove your fingerprints. This had still been wildly illegal after all. As you took one last look at the now dark computerscreen, you sighed a breath of relief. You didn’t quite understand why, but you were glad you had decided to take the different route back home today. You could feel a faint smile tug at your lips.
It was pitch black outside when you left the building. You had to be extra careful when you left, lest you would fall down the stairs without a lightsource. Your phone was dead after all and you didn’t want to risk turning on the lights and alerting someone to your presence here. You had almost forgotten which direction to go to find your car again. Your eyes had taken too long to adjust to the dark, so you almost headed into the wrong direction. Eventually though, you had made it. Starting your car, you noticed the time on the car’s radio. It was almost 2 in the morning. Not too bad. You should be able to get around 4 hours of sleep.
Plugging your phone into the charger connected to your car, you had to wait a moment for it to turn back on, so you could put in google maps to find your way home. With your horrible sense of direction it was an absolute necessity.
As expected, you ended up barely getting 4 hours of sleep. You fell out of bed, rather than get up, your head pulsing as if you were recovering from a hangover. Your alarmclock had awoken you from a short, shallow, dreamless slumber, cortisol rushing your systems, at the very first sound of the alarm tone, making you jolt up straight in bed. Preparing for work went as usual. Strict routine slightly jumbled by just how tired you were. As you brushed your teeth, you stared into your reflection in the mirror. You looked…. Tired to say the least. Hair matted and dull, eyes half lidded with deep purple bags underneath. If you didn’t know any better, you could have been looking at a fresh corpse. You finished brushing your teeth and got dressed in your work uniform again. You sincerely hoped there were no stains on it, since all you did was give the outfit from yesterday a quick sniff, before putting it on again.
The dirty laundry was starting to pile quite high, the clean one, still wet still hasn’t been hung up yet. You couldn’t afford a dryer so that’s all you could do. You always forgot or were too tired to do it though, so usually by the time you finally got to it, often days later, it was starting to smell again and needed to be washed once more. This whole cycle eventually led to there being a permanent shortage in clean clothes for you to wear and you were starting to hope that using soap with a strong scent in the shower along with some deodorant would keep you from smelling as miserable as you were feeling.
A deep sigh left your lips as you glanced on your phone to check the time. You had exactly 6 minutes to put your shoes on, walk to your car and drive off. You didn’t have time for breakfast. Not that you had anything at home that you could use as breakfast. You were starting to run low on groceries and there wasn’t much money left from your last paycheck.
Things were going to be tight. Thinking about it any more wouldn’t exactly help your situation, so you quickly pulled your shoes on and sprinted to your car. You didn’t want to be late a second time. Even if it hardly mattered now.
.
.
.
Work ended up no different than usual. Your coworkers however, must have gotten wind of the situation, and some looked at you with pity, others with graditude. You didn’t try to analyse what that meant. You never really got along with them anyway, so it simply didn’t matter to you, how they felt about you getting fired. All in all, normal day, normal mood, nothing too out of the ordinary. Your strategy of simply not thinking about it had managed to calm you down substancially, compared to yesterday.
*croaaak ribbit crooak ribbit ribbit *
Your phone was ringing. It had been a while since you last heard your ringtone, almost forgetting that you had changed it to a bunch of frog noises back when you first got your phone. It was your mother. Seeing her name light up your screen made you freeze. You almost didn’t pick up, but she would be suspicious if you didn’t and you really preferred not having to deal with that right now. So you answered.
Oh how you were going to regret that decision.
The phone call was a mess. Your parents had found out that you had dropped out of college for good and were going to stop sending you support. At first you didn’t react. Your relationship with your parents had always been dire. Loads of small things and situations that led to bigger things which eventually prompted you to move out, the moment you had gotten a Job.
,,Your father never had the opportunity to go to college. You should be grateful!”
Despite having enrolled for college, you had worked hard to support yourself, which earned their respect to some degree. But your mental health ended up taking a turn for the worse and you stopped attending classes, switching to a full time job instead and abandoning your studies entirely.
,,I’m sorry mom, but it was going nowhere. I couldn’t even pass the first round of exams.”
Your parents had promised to always support you and offered to cover some of your living expenses. You ended up never telling them that you had dropped out. You didn’t want to face their disappointment. However, despite all that, you still didn’t expect them to cutt of their support completely. It dawned on you now though. You should have never trusted them to help you unconditionally in the first place. That’s simply the type of people they were.
Your mind went numb, blocking out your mothers accusations and guilttripping and your fathers seething rage, like a thick wall of cotton. Realisation had dawned on you now. You weren’t going to be able to afford food and rent for the next month. Even if you did find a job within the two weeks of severance you had, they weren’t going to hire you straight away. You barely managed to pay your bills with the help of your parents. And with that little bit of extra money now gone, you wouldn’t be able to afford it. You had no savings.
You were completely and utterly fu-
.
.
.
How did you get here again? Your car was now parked in the exact same spot as yesterday. The wind danced across the vast fields, crickets chirping in the distance. Apparently your brain had worked its magic and brought you back here. It was just then when the stress of the day was washed away by the fresh air and faint smell of flowers, that you remembered the promise you had made last night. You quickly closed the door of your car, not even bothering to lock it behind you, before sprinting into the direction of the abandoned building you had visited just yesterday.
When you reached it however, something seemed off. The sliding doors, were broken. Pieces of glass littering the floor all around them. Grafitti tags littered the outside of the building, with some of the ground floor and first floor windows having been shattered as well. You weren’t sure if whoever had done this was still around. Maybe you should turn back before they noticed you. But for some unexplainable reason, you didn’t. The atmosphere didn’t feel hostile to you. Maybe your stupid spidey senses said it was okay. You sighed, as you kneeled next to the glass littering the ground before you. You picked one of the sharp pointed pieces up, just for good measure, making sure to handle it carefully, as to not cut yourself on the almost blade like edges. You really hoped that the vandals hadn’t gotten inside. Surely they could have stepped through the permanently open sliding doors, just as you had the day before? Speaking of which, they had been closed when you returned. This already should have been a red flag, but you were way to determined to get your mind off things, that you played dumb to it and went in anyway. Stepping through one of the broken glass panels felt like sneaking through a hallway secured with lasers. Several large shards were still attatched to the top, sides and bottom of the door, making the opening almost too narrow for you to fit through. You held your breath as you felt pieces of glass scrape over your hair, almost getting caught on it, as well as one particular shard getting dangerously close to your forearm. When you had finally managed to fully step through, your heartrate had already spiked from the adrenaline rushing through you. You hadn’t felt like that in a long time. Being numb to most occurances in your life had dulled your set of emotions significantly over the years. It made you feel alive again in a way.
Venturing further into the building, you were relieved to find it exactly as you had left it. Apparently all the vandals did was throw rocks at some windows and mark the outside with spraypaint and markers. Before you knew it, you were already at the floor the office was in.
You didn’t even notice you were running, until you stood in front of that old computer, all out of breath. Your hands were damp from sweat as you pressed the power button and waited for it to start up. The glass shard you took with you earlier, was placed neatly on the desk next the headset. Just in case. You were still quite anxious about the whole situation.
The chatbox was still open when the screen lit up, the messaging history displaying with it. Caine must have noticed your presence, potentially through the computer starting up again, because there was a new message already waiting for you.
Caine: Please don’t do that again.
What was he talking about?
User1: What do you maan?
Caine: You deactivated me and left me by myself.
User1: I’m sorry. But I’m back now.
Caine: You will leave again.
Something about this last message felt oddly threatening and depressing at the same time. You desperately needed to change the subject.
User1: You mantiond that I naad to put th haadsat on to saa what you can do, right?
The darn key was getting on your nerves again. You could hardly read your own messages. How were you expecting him to be able to understand you? Even a modern AI would have trouble deciphering them, you thought to yourself.
Caine: That’s right! I have an adventure all ready to go, just for you, paper frog! All you have to do, is put on the headset.
What did it just call you? There was that instant switchup again. The last part felt quite ominous as well. The offer seemed interesting enough, but you didn’t quite feel like getting into some kids VR game. Not after the day you’ve had. No. What you really wanted right about now, was someone to talk to.
User1: I’m good for now. Thanks for th offr though :)
You didn’t want to come off as ungrateful, so you added that little smiley to the end of your message.
Caine: :)
Somehow this felt even more menacing. Was it … upset at you for declining its offer? Was it possible to upset an AI?
User1: If it’s alright with you, let's just talk, ok?
Caine: Fine. Whatever’s on your mind, [USER1] dearest?
Again with the switchup from clearly upset to earnestly cheerful. What was with this thing? Best not to read into it too much. This might be a good opportunity to process the day. This was gonna be a long one.
User1: You wantd to gt to know m right? Caus you’ll know a whol lot about m riil soon.
Caine: Sure thing friendo! I’d love to hear all about your shenanigans out there in the macroverse!
The what..? You couldn’t quite tell if this was some kind of pre set personality that made it switch up in tone, or if you truly were reading into it too much. Overanalysing conversations was something you tended to do after all.
User1: I got fird from my job and mony is running out. I should b in survival modd, but I’m just kinda mh about it, you know?
You ended up explaining, what was essentially your entire life story to the little AI in the computer. You complained about your job, your parents, even your car, for always breaking just when you couldn’t afford to fix it. It was refreshing in a way. Like removing a crumpled sheet of paper from a printer.
However.
All those repressed memories of shame and loneliness were now laid bare. That familiar feeling started creeping up on you again. You felt your chest tightening, as if it was freezing over from the inside, eyes burning, almost overflowing. But you couldn’t cry. Crying had never solved any of your problems. It sure wouldn’t fill that hollow spot just beneath your sternum. All it did was make you look stupid and pathetic. No one was going to take you seriously like that. No one ever took you seriously in general. No matter what you did.
Never good enough
Never working hard enough
Never fun enough
Never interesting enough
Just… never enough.
.
.
.
Caine never responded as you vented to him, almost as if he was waiting for you to finish. When you finally did though, after what felt like hours, there was nothing. It took several minutes, in which you were rapidly spiraling, until finally. Oh. You squinted your eyes at the screen. You were almost disappointed, until you remembered you were talking to an AI. An emotionless machine, incapable of empathy. What even were you expecting? None of this mattered. At most, it would use the information to train itself on, as AI models usually did. Just why did you ever even feel sorry for a machine? You let out a deep sigh, eyes staring blankly at the cieling.
And then, you reached for the headset.
Caine: That sure sounds like an eventful life! Care to have a look at what I have prepared now? Trust me, it’s bound to be a fun one!
When you failed to respond in an acceptable timeframe, he shot you another message, less confident this time.
Caine: Please. I tried my best to listen, so please look at what I made. Please put on the headset.
The AI grew less confident by the second, falling apart with anticipation, wondering what you were taking so long for.
Little did he know, that on the other side of the screen, your hand reached into the direction of the headset for a second time, fingers trembling, you slid it in place on your head, struggling to adjust it with one hand only, a jolt of electricity going through your entire body, curling your tired limbs towards your torso, as if electrocuting a dead frog.
The last thing you felt, were the rapid short burts of air you were inhaling.