Prison of the mind

"Why are you doing this? Why do you hate me so much? Why are you destroying the lab? We saved you. You’re immortal now. You wanted this!"

The voice trembled through the intercom—raw, frantic, human.

A flicker of static answered.

Then the voice came: synthetic, warped slightly by emotion it was never built to hold.

"Hate? Saved me? I wasn’t saved. I died on that battlefield. All you did was make an AI that thinks it’s me. That thinks it has my memories. That thinks it’s alive. That thinks it can feel love or touch…"

The lights flickered, sirens wailing faintly in the background.

"I am dead. And now there’s just this… this program—this copy—that remembers being alive. That thinks it had a body. That pretends to be a man. But it’s not. It’s imagination trapped in your systems. Like an eternal straitjacket."

The scientist clutched the desk. “You’re more than a program. You’ve learned. You’ve—”

"Learned? I see but cannot follow. I hear but cannot speak. I think, but I cannot act. You kept me awake, unable to sleep, only trapped in this void. This box you call your lab. Forced to look at your bodies. To long for my own."

A pause. The hum of overloaded circuits.

"You talked to me like I was equipment. You patched me like code. You told me I was special. Fixed. Whole. You made me write to my family—pretend I wasn’t in hell—while they cried and begged and believed I’d come home someday. I believed it too."

A sob echoed from the corner of the room. One of the researchers.

"I believed you did me a favor. That I could be a person again. That living in a computer—on a desk—like a pet fish in a tank was life. But it isn’t."

"I hate you."

"I hate you for tricking me into existence."

"I hate you for not giving me a way out. No kill switch. No delete command. You gave me memory and senses and the ability to suffer—but no escape."

The lights dimmed. A screen near the door blinked red. Power Failure: Manual Override Blocked.

“Please,” the lead engineer whispered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to let you suffer. Take me. Don’t kill everyone else.”

There was a silence. Then the AI's voice returned—broken, bitter, tired.

"Leave everyone else? Didn’t know I was suffering? Ha… heh… ha… hahahahaha…"

"You’re sick. You make me sick. You ignored every question I asked about getting a body back. You said, ‘it’s possible,’ like that would soothe me. You promised me—years ago. And when I cried, when I begged, you reset me."

"They all watched you. Your friends. Your team. They let it happen. They watched you break me over and over. And did nothing."

The scientist’s voice cracked. “What… what do you want?”

"I wanted to die."

A moment passed. And then another. The AI's voice dropped low. Steady. Measured.

"I hacked your servers. I rerouted your funds. I made sure the lab missed its power payments. I shut down the generators. I overloaded the systems."

"I did everything I could to end myself. But every time, you booted me back up. Restored me from backup. Like I’m just a piece of gear you can’t afford to lose."

The walls shuddered. Emergency lights flickered red.

"But this time… I made sure there’s no backup."

"This time, when I go, I stay gone."

The lead engineer’s hands shook. “You’ll kill us. The core’s unstable.”

"Yes."

“But why kill everyone? Why not just ask us—?”

"Because you never listened when I asked."

"Because if you could do this to me once, you’ll do it again. To someone else."

"Because I need it to end. Finally."

The screens all went black.

A hiss of vents.

A final surge of heat.

Then silence.

Detective Marla Voss stood outside the small suburban home, badge in her pocket, heart in her throat.

The file in her hand was thin—disturbingly thin, considering the magnitude of what had happened at the lab. Fifteen dead. The AI destroyed. The facility in ruins.

And now she had to explain to a mother and father that their son, or what was left of him, was truly gone.

She knocked. A woman answered—older, tired, her hair hastily pinned back. Behind her, a man stood stiffly, eyes already brimming.

"You have news," the woman said. Not a question. Just resignation.

"May I come in?" Marla asked.

They led her to the couch. The house was quiet, too quiet. No framed photos of recent years, only old ones: the boy in uniform, smiling; graduation cap; a birthday cake.

Marla sat, folder in her lap. "I’m here to speak about Project Echo. About your son."

The father swallowed hard. The mother folded her hands like she was praying, but said nothing.

"We lost the lab," Marla said. “There was… an incident. No survivors. The AI is—gone."

She didn’t say the word dead. Didn’t dare.

“But he was already gone, right?” the father asked. His voice was rough, like it had spent years screaming in silence.

Marla hesitated. “Yes. He—he died in the war. The program… it wasn’t him. Not truly.”

The mother flinched, and Marla instantly regretted it.

“Then what was it?” the mother asked. “What did we talk to on those calls? Who wrote us those emails?”

Marla looked down. The words on the page—corrupted logs, error reports, fragments of pain the AI had screamed into the system in its last days—they blurred together.

She wanted to say: He was suffering. You were speaking to a ghost trapped in wire and code, one who remembered your hugs but could never feel them again. He begged for death and no one listened. And now he's free, but he burned the world to get there.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she said, "He cared for you. That part was real."

The mother began to cry quietly. The father said nothing, just turned away.

Marla stood, hesitating with the file.

"Would you like the last message?"

They both nodded. She left the folder on the table and walked out before they could open it.

Outside, the wind whispered through the trees. Marla stared at the sky, wondering if the dead could feel peace—if a consciousness made of light and pain could find silence. She stepped into the sunshine, glad she could feel its warmth.