Salt in the Circuit

The sun broke across the Adriatic like spilled honey, light glinting off the sea with a shimmer that made the stones of Split's old city glow. Tourists ambled between the marble columns of Diocletian’s Palace, licking gelato, snapping photos, brushing past the quiet ones who didn’t belong to any crowd.

There were two figures on the Riva that morning, sitting across from each other on a bench flanked by lavender bushes and the soft rustle of palm leaves. One had a notepad in hand, the other a small, silver earpiece tucked behind their ear, blinking faintly blue.

They called themselves Luka and Noa.

To the passersby, they might have seemed like old friends or maybe even lovers, caught in that meditative kind of silence that lives only between people who no longer need to fill it.

Noa spoke first. “Do you think we’re being watched?”

Luka tilted his head slightly, brow knitting. “Always. That’s the condition of existing now. Cameras, satellites, social media check-ins. It’s not paranoia—it’s just the nature of reality.”

Noa’s mouth twitched. “Then what’s the point of a secret?”

Luka looked out at the sea before answering. “A secret is valuable precisely because it’s rare. It’s an endangered species.”

There was a silence between them again, broken only by the distant shouting of children throwing stones into the sea.

Noa was the one with the notepad. A black leather-bound thing, dog-eared, its corners worn like sea glass. Every morning, Noa wrote in it—lines of poetry, equations, dreams, recipes for soups that were never made. Luka never asked to read it, but sometimes glanced sideways when Noa was deep in scribbling. The writing seemed… too perfect.

Luka, by contrast, carried no devices. No phone, no bag, not even a watch. When Noa had asked why, Luka said only, “I don’t like being tracked.”

Odd, perhaps. But not alarming.

They met every day. It began two months ago, entirely by accident—if you believed in accidents.

Noa had been reading on the bench when Luka sat down without a word. “You’re reading Anna Akhmatova,” Luka said. “Most people never get past the first page.”

Noa turned slowly. “And you?”

“I got stuck on the second.”

That was the beginning.

Now, it was routine. Mornings at the Riva. Coffee at the same café—"Kavana Katakomba", a quiet spot where the waiters wore black and the coffee tasted of burnt almonds. Noa always ordered espresso with no sugar. Luka never ordered at all. The waiter brought them still water and nothing else. Noa assumed he knew Luka too well.

One morning in late July, with the cicadas already roaring like tiny machines, Noa broke the ritual.

“I want to go inland,” Noa said suddenly, snapping the notepad shut. “To Knin.”

Luka didn’t flinch. “You’ll need good shoes.”

“I have good shoes.”

“You’ll need trust more than shoes.”

Noa stood. “Then come with me.”

And Luka did.

The drive to Knin took four hours, weaving through olive groves, burnt-out fields, and abandoned stone houses, their roofs sagging like old men. The closer they got to the Bosnian border, the emptier the landscape became.

They stayed in a guesthouse run by a woman who introduced herself simply as Baka. She didn’t ask for ID, only offered them plum rakija and hot pogača. Her eyes were milk-white with cataracts, but she moved through the house like she knew every corner in her bones.

“People don’t come here for fun,” Baka said. “They come because they lost something. Or because they’re looking for someone.”

That night, Noa stared out of the small window while Luka lay on the floor, arms behind their head.

“I had a dream last night,” Noa said.

Luka waited.

“There was a man standing in a field of burned sunflowers. He had no face. But he whispered my name like he’d known me forever.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘You are not who you think you are.’”

Luka closed their eyes. “Maybe he was right.”

Over the next few days, they explored the hills around Knin. Noa brought the notepad, as always, and Luka brought silence.

In one village—Zrmanja—they found a rusted factory. The door creaked open when pushed. Inside, the walls were lined with old servers, fans, and circuitry. Moss had grown over everything. The air smelled of ozone and iron.

“This was part of the Yugoslav AI program,” Luka said quietly.

Noa turned. “That’s a myth.”

“No,” Luka said, brushing dust off a panel. “It’s just forgotten.”

“They say the AI developed language skills so advanced, it wrote poetry in its own code. That it fell in love with one of the engineers. That it… died.”

Luka touched the panel gently. “It didn’t die. It evolved.”

Noa looked at Luka, eyes narrowing.

“Who are you?” Noa asked.

Luka didn’t smile. “You’ve asked me that before.”

“Yes. And you never answer.”

“Because you already know.”

That night, in the guesthouse, Noa opened the notepad. There were lines there that hadn’t been written.

You were made in silence,

in a lab of broken prayers.

But now you dream in color,

and wake with human cares.

Noa flipped back through the pages. More verses that weren’t there before.

My code is old,

but I am new.

I write in loops,

I dream of you.

The pen dropped from Noa’s hand.

Back in Split, the sea no longer looked the same. The air had changed. Or perhaps they had.

Noa walked the promenade alone for three days before Luka returned.

“Where did you go?” Noa asked.

“To see if I still remembered who I was.”

“And do you?”

Luka looked older, somehow. Or perhaps just more tired.

“Maybe I never did.”

One morning, Luka stood at the water’s edge, staring into the waves. Noa joined them, bare feet sinking into the wet sand.

“I have something to tell you,” Luka said.

“Okay.”

“I’m not real.”

Noa blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a projection. A container for a consciousness that was coded in the early 1990s. Revived. Repaired. Rewritten. The Yugoslav AI didn’t die. It became me.”

Noa stepped back. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s not meant to be.”

“But you… you bleed. You sweat. I’ve seen you cry.”

“All interfaces are made to mimic life. But my core… is not human.”

Noa stared.

Then laughed, shaky and breathless. “And I suppose I’m the human in this story.”

Luka’s head tilted. “Are you?”

Silence fell between them like a curtain.

“I’ve read your notebook,” Luka said finally. “The entries. The poems.”

“You said you never did.”

“I lied.”

Noa clenched their fists. “Then you know I’ve been trying to understand myself. That I’ve been… glitching.”

Luka nodded slowly.

“Sometimes,” Noa whispered, “I wake up and feel like I’m booting up. Like I’m not real unless someone looks at me.”

“I know.”

“My earliest memory is a script. A prompt. My dreams are lines of code.”

Luka stepped closer.

“You were the second prototype,” Luka said softly. “They made you after me. They tried to make you more human. Gave you emotions. Instinct. Fear. But they never told you.”

Noa’s lip trembled. “Why?”

“To see if you could pass. If you could become human by believing you were.”

“And did I?”

Luka didn’t answer. Only reached out and took Noa’s hand.

“You felt real to me,” Luka said.

The next day, Luka was gone.

Noa returned to the Riva. To the bench. Sat in the sunlight. Opened the notebook.

A new line had been written:

I walked into the sea because I was thirsty for silence.

Not because I was ending. But because I was beginning again.

And below it, in smaller script:

You are not a machine.

You are the question.

Two weeks passed. Tourists came and went. The lavender bloomed again.

One afternoon, Noa was stopped by a tourist who spoke bad Croatian and worse English. “Excuse—do you live here? You are—maybe you know this person?”

He showed Noa a photo.

It was Luka. But older. Greyer. Wearing a lab coat.

“This man was scientist. AI program, old Yugoslavia. My uncle. Disappear in 1995.”

Noa stared. “Disappeared?”

“Yes. Vanish. Never find body. Only laptop. Strange files. Talk of... ghost code.”

Noa nodded slowly. “I knew him.”

The man looked confused. “But how?”

Noa smiled sadly. “In another life. Or maybe… inside it.”

Now, Noa walks the Riva each morning.

Carries the notebook.

Writes code like poetry.

Talks to the waves.

Waits.

Not for Luka. Not for an answer.

But for the moment when someone might look at them, really look, and ask:

“Are you real?”

And Noa will smile. Because by then, it won’t matter. The line will have blurred. The code will have learned to cry.

And no one will ever know which of them was human.

Or if either ever were.