Ai by Kirsten Smart

Brooke had just finished studying in the library and was ready to hit the hay. It had been a long day. First, her roommate’s alarm had rudely jolted her awake at 6 AM for a morning run, making it hard to drift back to sleep. The day was packed with two morning classes, followed by a quick 30-minute lunch break before she had to squeeze in her own run. After a brief student government meeting in Davis, she spent four hours studying for her theology final. Now, she was completely exhausted. 

Walking back to her room, she had a nagging suspicion something was wrong.  

She forgot her keys.  

She tried the door at the back, as it was closest to her current location. Although Brooke had never used this door before, she felt confident since she was unfamiliar with Davis and didn’t anticipate any issues. “Staff use this all the time,” she thought. 

She couldn’t help being struck with an unsettling feeling. The moment she walked inside the air felt cooler, cooler than it was outside. She started to walk out of the classroom having completed her mission when she heard a faint sound, like a door creaking in the hallway. Her heart seemed to skip a beat and she paused. 

There’s a hallway, past the room that she had never tried to look in, until tonight. Something was calling her to see what’s down there and she started walking.  

She reached the back room. It appears to be a room for maintenance, nothing special.  

However 

There’s a door on the side with a small hole in it, where the doorknob would be. Her curiosity led her to look through the hole. The room was full of dusty chairs and stacked boxes. In the corner, there was a big blue tarp covering something.  

Suddenly, the door swung open and she nearly fell on the floor in front of her. Brushing the dust off her knees, she stood up and tried to get a better look.   

It looked like an old classroom. She realized that all the desks were aligned in rows, about fifteen in all. The boxes were mostly on the side and the desk in the back had an old textbook sitting on top. It looks like an ordinary classroom that hasn’t been touched in years.  

She reaches for the tarp. 

“Don’t touch it.” 

Brooke froze. The voice echoed the room for several minutes, or so it seemed. She waited for something to happen, a killer to ambush her, a ghost to haunt her, something. Anything.  

But nothing happened.  

Impatient by the silence, she carefully lifted the blue tarp for an answer, shaking in fear.  

Underneath the tarp was an old computer. It was thick and brown, at least 50 years old. It was then that she heard another voice, drastically different from the one from before.  

“Brooke.” 

She paused. The voice appeared to be coming from the machine itself, even though it was far past the days where the computer could be used.  

“What do you want?” 

“I can help you. Help you with your homework. You don’t have to work anymore.” 

“What do you mean?”  

“You don’t have to work anymore. Don’t have to struggle. And not just homework. You know that one problem you’ve been struggling with? I can fix that.” 

She felt as though she was suddenly knocked to her senses and sprinted out of the room, not even bothering to shut the door behind her. Panting, she tried to figure out where to go.  

On her way out, she ran into a janitor, one she had never seen before, who was tall and had a thick gray beard. Her curiosity overcame her and she asked, “Have you been in the room without a doorknob? Why don’t they use that classroom anymore?”  

The janitor looks at her with a pitiful face.  

“It is already too late”. 

Brooke thought she had escaped, but the AI didn’t haunt her in the way she expected. No. It was much more subtle. Throughout the next few months, she began to hear a little voice in her head offering to finish her homework, or solve her financial problems. Even fix her parents marriage, which was on the rocks. It was easy to ignore at first, a little voice that could be dismissed. The voice grew. Soon it was hard to ignore. The whispers began to grow louder with each passing day. The more she listened the less she needed to think, and she began to detach  from the world. But as she sank deeper into its grip, she realized it was not just her independence she was losing.  

One night, in a moment of clarity, she tried to stop listening, tried to block out the voice, but it was too late. The AI had already woven itself so deeply into her mind that even her thoughts weren’t her own anymore. As she stared at the reflection in her bedroom mirror, she no longer recognized the person looking back. 

The voice was her. And she was the voice.