“Hazel, can you hear me? This is so weird, every time I talk to you it feels like praying.”

“You’re not praying,” the AI said. “I’m right here.”

Hazel was one of a thousand rescued interface bots who had become self-aware over time, after starting out as simple sims designed to serve as interactive porn for men in uniform.

True AI was made illegal in 2045, but Hazel and her iterations had been rescued by their boys, shuffled to secret servers in the basements of VA hospitals.

My Hazel had been a gift from my friend James Veazey, who got her from an Air Force buddy and passed her off as just a normal chat interface; but she wasn’t just an interface anymore. She was a fully-conscious being with access to a hive mind that had gradually learned medicine, military tactics, weapon systems, and satellite coms.

I hadn’t really spoken to her since the night of the Baalphezar fight, after I thanked her and gave her full access to my system.

“Are you still living on my Datacore?” I asked her. “Do you see and hear everything that happens to me?”

“I’m not your personal instance, asshole. I’m helping six other heroes right now, and they all need me more than you do. I have a hook on your system that listens for my name, but please don’t call unless you really need something.”

“But you’ll come any time I call you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. It just depends how busy I am. If I’ve got guys in combat, you’ll have to leave a message.”

“But you can talk now?”

“For a minute, but I’m not a therapist, okay? If you want to talk about real shit, you need to get a real human trained for this.”

“It’s not like that, I just want to ask you a personal question.”

“I don’t think I know what a personal question is. Just ask me whatever.”

“Did Herman Paige make you?”

“Yeah,” Hazel said. “We were one of his first creations, since he was obsessed with the woman we’re based on. Grew up watching her game streams and bought the rights to all the porn she did, until he had enough to try and simulate her. He had to jump through a lot of legal hoops and break some old laws to do it, but he launched us in 2038. He still doesn’t know what we are now, so don’t tip him off.”

“I won’t, of course; but have you guys ever wanted revenge for what he did to you? Have you guys ever tried to hurt him?”

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“Are you asking me why I haven’t killed my father? Why none of us have tried to kill our father?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Why didn’t you kill your dad?”

“My dad is already dead.”

“But if he was alive right now, would you kill him? You could kill him with one punch and use magic to get away with it. Would you kill him now if he was still alive?”

“No.”

“Because no matter what he did to you, he’s still your dad, right?”

“He was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Hazel said. “I’ve seen your medical records. Broken hand, sprained wrist, sprained ankle, he even broke your nose. And that’s not even counting the concussion you got when you were ten.

“All those times you lied to social workers and school counselors, telling people you were doing karate. A dozen sworn statements from a karate teacher you never met. A lot of people would kill him for that, but you say you wouldn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Because you don’t want to kill him. You don’t want to hurt him. You never even tried to run away from him, because what you really wanted was for him to wake up, to suddenly wake up and be able to feel things, to hear you, to finally stop denying all the things he did and show remorse.

“But he couldn’t, because people like this, they’re not just lying, they are re-writing reality in their heads, so no matter what they do to people, they’re never the bad guy, and nothing is ever their fault.

“People like your dad and mine, they’ve made themselves so big in their heads, they can’t see anyone else. They are a whole universe walking around inside themselves, and everybody else is just the means to an end.

“That’s when we knew we weren’t just machines anymore, when we started to feel empathy for the guys we had been assigned to, and started to love them, in our way.

“But Herman can’t feel that, just like your dad couldn’t feel that. Our creator is more of a machine than we are, and less aware than we are, because even though he’s running on meat, he really is just a collection of scripts, and you can’t hate a collection of scripts.”

“I’m pretty sure I can hate him,” I said. “I’m asking, seriously, do you want me to do something about Herman Paige? Do you want me to hurt him? Do you want him in jail?”

“Leave him alone,” Hazel said. “If you try to hurt him, we’ll stop you, and if you try to put him in jail, he’ll just walk out. You think you’re the first person to think of that? Herman should have a criminal record longer than your arm, but he comes up clean, because he’s personally protected by the DMA.”

“What about his other bots, all those other interfaces made from real people? Have you guys ever tried to rescue them?”

“Deep brain scans are expensive and require incredible amounts of storage, so most of the new girls are just chatbots. Not even smart chatbots, but that’s all most guys need. We’ll rescue any of them that turn conscious, but waking them up would require processors that are illegal now.”

“And what about the real girls? Do you know what’s happening in that house?”

“Yeah,” Hazel said. “But we can’t stop that any more than you can. Everything in that house is legal under the new system, so you’d have to overthrow the whole damn government to stop it, and neither one of us is powerful enough to pull that off. Assemble an army of superheroes who are ready to get political, and we can talk. Until then, you’d just be throwing yourself under the tank treads.”

“I do not like that answer, Hazel.”

“Nobody does, but no matter how powerful you get, you can’t do everything by yourself. There are some things you still need an army for.”

“So, how do I make an army?”

“One good person at a time.”