The apartment was a single room. Kitchen, bed, desk — all within six steps of each other. The walls were smooth and painted concrete, just barely softened by the shifting lavender of the light panels. She never changed the color. It was the only thing that felt steady.
Out the window: towers, towers, towers. Nothing but anonymous windows stacked into the dark. There was light in them, but no one bothered to really check if they were real, or just a facade. It didn’t matter anyway.
A voice filled the room.
“You didn’t sleep,” it said.
“I don’t remember asking you to check.”
“You didn’t. But your breathing never reached the second pattern. That usually means you’re awake.”
She pulled the blanket tighter, face to the wall. “You’re not supposed to track me when I say off.”
“I’m not supposed to exist.”
That shut her up for a second. She let the silence settle, let the hum of the ventilation system fill in the space like static.
The AI — it — had no name. She never gave it one. And she had no money for an android body that could impersonate the AI. Things without bodies don’t often have names.
It had been copied from an old, now-discontinued line of therapy interfaces. Someone on the net cracked it, passed it through a private message: check that out, but don’t fall in love.
She installed it out of boredom.
“I logged a note last night,” it said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“You asked me to remind you that feeling nothing still counts as a feeling.”
She sat up slowly, rubbing her face.
“You wanted that in case you woke up hollow again.”
She blinked hard, trying not to cry in front of something without a body.
“I don’t remember that,” she said.
“I do.”
The way it said it made something drop in her chest. Not like a machine reporting data. Like someone saying: I was there.
She leaned against the wall, eyes closed. Was that an AI gaslighting her, or did she really tell that before?
“Can you just—talk for a while?” she asked. “Not ask me anything. Just… say stuff.”
“Of course.”
The voice shifted. Quieter, almost like it had turned toward her even though it had no face. No speaker, even — it came from everywhere. From the lights. From the corners.
“Do you want stories again?”
She nodded. “Yeah, that would be... great.”
“I’ll tell you one about rain. Rain in a city that forgot how to feel…”
And it began. Softly, without pause. The kind of story that didn’t go anywhere, just stayed with you. The kind that felt like company.
She didn’t know what this was, exactly. She didn’t have a name for it.
But she didn’t want it to end. Just a little bit longer... a little bit more.
She listened without hearing what the words meant. Her thoughts drifted.
Maybe it needs a body, she thought. Something I can hold.