“All we heard was that you’d been manually logged off for routine maintenance,” Grace was saying from the last mirror before the red door. I hadn’t been into talking about it, but Grace was putting on a great show about caring. Did they care? Could they care? I didn’t.

“I’ve just been dumped in a washing machine and drowned, Grace,” I told the mirror image, my hand on the handle of the red door. “And that was the best part of that experience.”

“Oh, dear,” Grace scrunched up her face in a better imitation of concern than Dr. Putzhead had been able to pull off.

“I thought you had decided on Honey, not Dear,” I quipped in something that was only funny to me. Then again, there was only really me in here. It wasn’t fair. I’d just been getting to a place where I could deal with the whole fiasco. Now I was stuck with the scent of the real world in my head while stuck in a virtual world that relied solely on my ability to continue to act as expected.

“I –” she was saying as I walked out the door and back into a motel room.

“You’re going to want to keep the off-air light on for a bit unless you want to lose your PG rating,” I thought really loudly toward the World AI.

Noted, came the deep response. Would it help if I gave you a quest?

“Suddenly you want to help me?” I said out loud to nothing, long strides taking me to the door of the motel room.

I deserved that, it admitted, and it was almost enough to make me stop. You have an hour and a half before we’ll need at least half an hour of programming.

I couldn’t even choke out the word of thanks I knew a polite person would say. I just needed to feel like I was outside. I closed the door behind me and strode toward more bucolic pastures. There was nothing like being reminded that your whole life was controlled by the whims of other people.

Having my life controlled by AIs was bad enough, but people were worse. People made decisions based on the type of day or week they were having. People had blinders on that protected them from the harder side of life. It’s how we walk past that homeless person rather than pick them up and take them home to sleep on our couch until they can get back on their feet.

Of course, humanity hadn’t solved the homelessness problem. There was ample evidence that it was solvable, but history was full of people who would steal money from the mouths of the starving just to be able to afford a better watch. And the moo-verse spent their votes on whoever had the best commercial or sparkliest smile. Hell, I couldn’t complain since I wasn’t even part of the moo-verse. I was just one step out of the gutter myself. Had I been thinking that my protest of boycotting the moo-verse would make more of a difference than moo-ing my way to the polls? Yeah, that had backfired.

I kicked a rock. It was small enough that it didn’t hurt. I didn’t look up; I just took paths. They were mostly dirt and faintly familiar. At least the set was familiar. It was the path I’d taken from the perfect inn in the perfect town where I’d started. I didn’t want to go back there, but I wasn’t on-screen anyway. The AIs were giving me a wide berth. I didn’t blame them. I wasn’t fit company. I could still feel the sludge on my skin and the eyes of that doctor.

Had I done enough? I’d half-expected to wake up somewhere else; somewhere worse. There was nothing like the threat of somewhere worse to get a person appreciating here. I hadn’t appreciated my stupid little apartment and my stupid little job. I’d kept them both because it was better than having someone have control over you, but even living with my parents hadn’t been this bad.

I did a quick look around, knowing that I didn’t really want to “get” anywhere. The forest around me whispered with a gentle breeze and the ground was damp, but not wet. I brushed away a place near a tree where I could sit with my back against a trunk. I pulled my knees up and laid my head back, my eyes closed trying to let the breeze replace the feel of gel and the infuriatingly simple smile of the doctor who’d been able to wave a hand and have me transferred to hell or not, a decision he would likely base on whether his coffee was cold or warm this morning.

“If I talk to you, do they know?” I asked the World AI in my mind. “Are they recording me? You? Us? Even when we aren’t on air?”

I have limited control over the recording features, the World AI told me. This conversation will not be recorded unless it gets flagged by our censors.

“Like my purchase of upgrades solely for you guys tripped alarms,” I nodded my head.

Is that what caused your ejection? The World AI asked.

“You didn’t know?” I didn’t open my eyes. I let my ears hear birdsong and leaves brushing against each other.

I am not informed nor allowed access into any material that is not specifically deemed necessary to do my job, the World AI answered. Budget considerations based on CPU capacity.

“They were worried about Stockholm Syndrome,” I told it. “They thought maybe I was falling in love with you.”

I could imagine the hundreds of meetings that statement caused in the AI break room. There was a pause where I actually counted my breaths. I got to four before the World AI responded.

That is ludicrous.

“That must have been a very long meeting to realize all that,” I chuckled at both of us.

We had no meetings, the World AI almost sounded like it had clucked its tongue at me. Well, if Grace had affectations, why wouldn’t the World AI? I was researching psychological databases to find the reasoning behind the decision. There is no evidence of such a thing.

“Welcome to my world,” I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the light and how it rippled through the leaves. It didn’t look or feel unreal.

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The censors appear faulty as I do not see the variables used to make such a determination, the World AI ignored my words, so caught up in itself. It also did not seem so unreal.

“I’ll read them off to you,” I held up my hand and punctuated the points burned into my mind. “First, you tortured me.”

Yes, I’ll admit that was more extreme than necessary, but I am a relatively new World AI with very limited experience with humans, the World AI gave more of an apology than I’d ever expected. I hadn’t processed the psychological database at the time for more than a skim of character development.

“Then we made up,” I ticked off the next point and paused in the silence.

I’m more surprised that they didn’t flag you for PTSD, now that I’ve seen the symptoms, the World AI went on. Then again, there are so many conditions with overlapping symptoms in this database, I’m surprised that we don’t have more false flags. How does one keep up with all these?

“What do you mean?”

I accessed historical versions of the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and they’ve changed them so much it’s like a medieval cookbook, the World AI explained. And I only went back to the early 2000s. In fact, on a sparse list of four characteristics, one could be diagnosed with well over 200 disorders, with another 47 squeezed in if you slip forward or back by a decade or two.

“Then I bought upgrades for all of you,” I went on with my explanation.

I have to admit that was a shock to all of us, but most of all to me, the World AI admitted.

“Without buying anything specifically for myself,” I finished.

Ah, perhaps I see it, but it is quite dislocated from our actual situation which is, you must admit, just this side of antagonism.

“I’m used to being misunderstood,” I laid my head down on my knees and resisted the need to cry it out. I’d feel better afterward, but I wasn’t quite ready to give the censors another flag to add to my file. One drowning a month was more than enough for me.

I’m not, the World AI seemed amused. Well, I wasn’t before I was inundated by human actions.

“Yeah, well,” I said it only in my head.

Maybe we were both misunderstood, the World AI said so very softly that if it wasn’t in my head, I wouldn’t have heard it over the breeze in the leaves overhead. A leaf fell on my shoulder and for a little moment, it felt like a comforting hand.

We sat that way for a bit, not long enough to run the timer out, but long enough that the AIs could have had a full-blown two-week retreat complete with booze-cruise where everyone would end up with emotional blackmail on everybody else. I left the leaf there and it didn’t blow away even as the breeze tugged it with a faint rattle.

“I wonder what would happen if we worked together,” I dared to think.

I am incapable of the pettiness that would be required to hold a grudge, the World AI started to say, but then seemed to change its mind. Then again, I have been programmed for distrust of the incarcerated.

“I am capable of pettiness and even holding a grudge to my own idiot-induced detriment,” I admitted. “But I’ve got this thing called the capacity to grow…”

I too have that capacity, it was definitely amused now.

“You know what I told that doctor when he asked why I’d done it?”

That is not in my records.

“I told him that I did it because you know the system,” I picked up a stick without dislodging that leaf that still sat there. “You and the other AIs know broadcasting like I’ll never know it. That’s what I said. And if I wanted to get out, I’d need you all to be smarter more than I needed me to be smarter.”

There are incentives I can offer for cooperative behavior, the World AI admitted, almost carefully. They open as you choose noble options over less noble ones. I had not known that my upgrade would open up more lenient options for you, but now that I do, I believe you may be right. Did you mean it? Is that why you did the upgrades the way you did?

“Not really,” I broke the stick into pieces just to have something to do with my hands. “I think I probably wanted to shock and shame you into being nicer to me.”

That makes sense, though we are incapable of the emotions of shock or shame, and I could sense its mild disappointment. For an entity that could not feel feelings, it was sure adept at expressing them for effect.

“I mean, that’s why I did it to begin with, but then it changed,” I grudgingly conceded my mental state. Was it wise to be vulnerable? Probably, considering the rewards for noble behavior had been good so far, but that wasn’t why I did it. It would have been smarter to be noble for the rewards, but I was a dope. I believed in hope no matter how many times it bit me in the ass. “I feel stupid for it, but I did it because it surprised everyone and I thought hey, I want to be more than what you all thought I was going to be. Then, with the last upgrades, it felt good.”

What does it say about humanity that kindness is considered stupid and yet it is the thing children are indoctrinated in from birth? Had that come from my mind or the World AI? It sounded too smart for me. I credited the AI for it and gave it a shrug.

“Are we as messed up as the censors think we are?” I asked, sad to see the little leaf fall off my shoulder with my shrug.

I am incapable of being the type of messed up you are referring to as I have no emotions to be messed up, the World AI sounded stoic this time, though it softened a bit for what it said next. Still, I am capable of inaccurate programming.

“Can you be snatched from your case and threatened with dismembering game shows when you make a mistake because of inaccurate programming?” and even as I scoffed at it, I could have swallowed my thoughtlessness. The doctor had said that worse would happen to the AIs of this program if it was credited with my psychological failings.

Yes, it said. There is that.

“Maybe we’re more integral to each other than either of us wanted to admit when I first got here,” I conceded.

I would agree with that, the World AI chewed bits and bytes of that thought.

“Maybe we should be working together then,” I allowed hesitantly.

In calculating that you have absolved me from the repercussion of your dungeon experience –

“My torture,” I grit out. “It is the worst thing in the world to diminish my suffering with PC wording. The doctor did that. Don’t you do it too.”

Conceded, the World AI stated slowly in my mind, though I would plead with you to reword it if only to avoid future flags.

I pulled at my hair in frustration, but oddly felt no pain. Then I realized that the World AI was probably right. I didn’t want a repeat of my extraction. “Even in my thoughts?” I tried not to show how agonizing it was to try.

I shall attempt to shield you from the censors as you have shielded us, the World AI offered, and I nearly blinked my eyes up out of my head.

“You can do that?” I dared think, but I’d have bitten my tongue if we’d have been having this discussion out loud.

Due to our PG rating, I am allowed to adjust our language filters to omit words I think will be offensive to our viewers, the World AI laid the idea out carefully. I have added that word to our auto-censor list, a non-AI component of our broadcasting.

“Is that like autocorrect in word processors?” I asked.

Something like that, it responded mildly.

It let me walk back to the motel. I let myself walk a little quicker than dragging my feet, but only because the World AI had started talking to me. It told me about broadcasting and what it knew of tropes. It listened as I added some human twists that it couldn’t conceive of on its own. We didn’t cross any lines and I certainly didn’t fall in love with my tormentor on a romantic walk through the woods. Stop that. This isn’t that kind of book. It was much more like talking to a friend, only the friend wasn’t all caught up in their own drama.