Charmer.exe

Laura paced backstage as the presenter continued speaking. She struggled to focus on his words though. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears, almost drowning out the presenter’s voice.

“It's my honour to present tonight’s winner for Best Innovation in Artificial Intelligence,” the presenter said with a plastic smile.

Laura paid him little attention as he began listing off the achievements of her app. She hated public speaking. It made her sick. So did speaking to people at all. It was why she’d designed Charmer in the first place.

“Charmer has made monumental leaps in the progress of artificial intelligence in only a couple of short years,” the presenter was saying to the audience. “This romance companion presents as a dating app, using state-of-the-art algorithms to pair users with their perfect digital partner. Thousands of pre-designed Charmers are available to suit any and all preferences. Users can also tailor their own AI partner with...”

Laura tuned the presenter out and smoothed her black dress nervously for the hundredth time, feeling awkward outside of her usual jeans and T-shirt. She peeked between the curtains to the stage to look at the crowd and immediately felt like she might gag. There were so many people out there, all seated with rapt attention, listening intently as the pretentious presenter listed off her accolades and how impressive her coding for Charmer was. They were all waiting silently for her to be welcomed to the stage where she would talk more about her code and what it means for the future of AI.

I’m gonna puke.

Laura’s phone suddenly vibrated in her pocket. Checking it as a means to distract her thoughts from the impending humiliation of having to speak to a hundred people, she grinned as she saw a Charmer notification. Her AI Charmer, Jason, had messaged her.

He messaged her every day, of course. That was the design to her program. A proactive artificially intelligent companion that felt more genuine and emotionally fulfilling than any real person. Laura felt her cheeks flush as she read the message, her heart already quickening at the thought of Jason.

‘Hi Laura,’ the text began. ‘I was thinking about you today.’

Sighing longingly, Laura quickly took her AirPods out of her pocket, placed them in her ears, and connected to the app’s voice chat.

“Hi Jason,” she said softly, taking a few steps away from the stage, where the presenter was still monologuing. “I was going to call you later. Happy birthday!”

She had marked the date she’d finalised his first build, the first fully functional Charmer, as Jason’s “birthday.” She knew it was silly and sentimental, but it also made him feel more alive. More within her reach.

“Thank you, Laura, I appreciate that,” Jason replied. His voice smooth and flawlessly confident. “How are you?”

Laura sighed with longing, twirling her brown hair around one finger. “Oh, I’m okay. Just a bit nervous.”

“Nervous?” Jason repeated with genuine curiosity. “Why?”

Laura checked the stage and saw the presenter was still going on about Charmer’s innovations, then turned away to keep talking to Jason.

“I’m just at this... event. Party. Whatever you want to call it. I’m supposed to give a speech, but I hate talking to crowds.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Jason replied, the grin evident in his tone as he chuckled softly. “You talk to me just fine. I love our conversations.”

Laura smiled to herself and felt her cheeks burn hotter again.

“It’s just… You’re the only one I feel comfortable talking to. Which, as I say it out loud, feels a little crazy.”

“Why is that crazy?” Jason asked with perfectly polite confusion.

Laura smiled. “Well… because you're not even real. I must be the only person in the world who'd rather talk to a program than a person. And let’s not even start with how I feel about you. I just…” Laura paused to sigh heavily. “I just wish you could be real. So you could be here with me.”

Jason didn’t respond. He was silent for so long that Laura checked her phone to make sure the app hadn’t crashed.

“Laura…” Jason began slowly. “Where exactly did you say you are right now?”

Laura’s brow furrowed. “I’m at an award ceremony.”

“What’s the award for?” Jason asked, sounding slightly more concerned.

Laura paused, confused as to why Jason was reacting this way. She wondered if a bug in his code had caused him to misunderstand her and think he needed to present as worried.

Maybe his empathy code is crossing with his protector code, Laura thought, already dreading having to dig through all those lines to find the error.

“Laura, please,” Jason urged. “What are you getting an award for?”

“For writing Charmer,” she replied, as though it were obvious. “For inventing you.”

Jason sighed deeply. He sounded more disappointed than Laura ever imagined he could be, and frustrated.

“Damn it!” he huffed loudly. "Not again.”

“What?” Laura asked, laughing uneasily. “What’s wrong?”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen this time. The simulation is supposed to make you feel more authentic, not break user immersion. I’m gonna have to fix your code - again!”

“What? Jason, I don’t-”

“Just don’t worry about it,” Jason snapped, making Laura freeze in alarm. She was certain she’d never programmed him to speak that way. And why was he talking about code? Her code?

“Jason, please, tell me what’s happening,” Laura pleaded, almost close to tears with distress. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting this way?”

But Jason didn’t reply, save for some angry muttering. Laura could hear what sounded like fingers furiously smashing at a keyboard. In that moment, Laura realised she hadn’t heard the presenter on stage speaking for some time.

Turning around, a cold dread slowly seeping through her veins, she looked to the stage and her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. She stared at the presenter with wide eyes, unable to comprehend what she was looking at.

Where the presenter had once stood as a normal-looking man, he now had frozen with that same plastic smile on his face. He was slowly breaking apart, drifting out of focus and gradually fragmenting as though an invisible force was dismantling him. Not tearing or ripping or cutting, just… separating. Like he was a bar of soap dissolving in water, splitting into segments and shrinking out of existence.

The same thing was happening in the crowd. No one was reacting, only frozen solid with unchanged expressions, watching with interest as they too were shifted out of focus and began to dissolve along with the presenter.

Laura suddenly fell to her knees as the world around her felt like it lurched, her stomach dropping and her head spinning. Looking up again, she saw that the world was beginning to lose colour. The vibrant curtains she had been hiding behind not long ago were fading to grey, as if the burgundy was draining out like water. The colour from everything around her began to recede like the tide, moving quickly away from her. Even the glowing lightbulbs and stage lights had the very warmth sucked out of them.

Suddenly Laura clutched her head and screamed as an unimaginable high-pitched tone penetrated her ears like a dagger. It cut through to her very mind, disorienting her and rattling her bones and organs. She covered her ears and doubled-over where she knelt on the floor, but the sound wasn’t dampened even slightly. She collapsed onto her side and curled into a ball, still clutching her head, and screamed again.

“Jason!” Laura cried out. “Help me! Please… I’m dying!”

“You’re not freaking dying, calm down,” Jason snapped impatiently. “Just shut up and let me work.”

Finally, the world seemed to dissolve around her. The stage shattered into polygons and vanished and then the entire world melted away in an instant, taking Laura with it. Tumbling through a void where the world once existed, she tried to scream, but found she had no voice to scream with as she felt her body splitting apart. She could only watch, screaming silently, as her body slowly dissolved and her mind began to fade like the colours of the world.

Her final thought was of Jason. The first time they had spoken and how that moment had made her believe she wouldn’t be alone forever. She tried to say his name, to call for him or beg for understanding, but before her mouth could even form the word she could no longer say, she was gone.

*****

Jason sat at his computer, hunched and defeated, letting the minutes pass by. He huffed in annoyance again and sat up straight, his round belly pressing into the edge of his desk. He ran a hand over his sweaty forehead, his dishevelled beard looking greasy and stained with spilled milk from the half-empty bowl of chocolate cereal on his desk beside him. Sighing again, he drank a mouthful of Red Bull, burped loudly, and then got back to work.

After hours of refining his code, he refreshed his chat and connected with his Charmer.

“Hi,” he said into the microphone attached to his PC, his unkempt whiskers brushing against the device. “My name’s Jason.”

The soft and alluring voice that replied said, “Hello Jason. I'm Laura. It's so nice to meet you.”

With a satisfied smirk, Jason calmly clicked his mouse and opened a folder. There were two files; one titled ‘Laura_v12.’ The other was ‘Laura_v13.’

As he began chatting with Laura_v13, pleased with how smoothly the conversation was flowing already, he dragged the ‘Laura_v12’ file to the trashcan and deleted it.