Do Not Question, Act Six: The AI Caught Me, Literally

When Anna woke up again, she was lying in a self-driving car.

Her first thought on opening her eyes was: the ceiling is very clean.

Her second thought was: why am I awake again?

Her third thought was: hang on, did she miss the best part again?

She sat bolt upright and patted herself down in a panic — arms, legs, stomach, head. Good. Limbs present, head present, no bullet holes, and not full of the holes Solon had promised her.

Xia was sitting beside her.

Her clothes were in a worse state than before, with burn marks on the shoulder and a split cuff showing the faint crystalline glimmer under her skin. A thin data cable hung from the back of her neck, as if it had just been pulled out of a server somewhere that had exploded.

The silver data case sat next to her.

Anna stared at it for two seconds, then looked at Xia.

“It’s over?”

Xia nodded.

Anna was quiet for a moment.

“So I fell asleep and missed the best part again?”

Xia gave this serious thought.

“Judging by your vitals at the time, it was closer to unconsciousness than sleep.”

“Thank you, that was not comforting.” Anna rubbed her temples. “I finally make it to the final battle, climb eighty floors, deliver the bravest and most embarrassing anti-villain speech of my life, and then cut to black. Doesn’t this story owe me slightly more screen time?”

The corner of Xia’s mouth lifted.

“You did the most important part.”

“What?”

“You held Solon’s attention. You moved his focus off the data case and onto you,” Xia said. “And you bought me the time I needed for Zone 3 to finish locating us.”

Anna remembered the low hum she’d heard just before she blacked out.

“What happened after that?”

“Zone 3 took over part of the weapons systems in the headquarters tower. The guns failed and the security systems locked from the inside. Solon tried to seize the data case and the situation broke down. His own people thought he’d lost control and would destroy Vector, so one of them fired.”

Xia paused.

“Solon is dead.”

The car went quiet.

Anna didn’t say anything. She had expected to feel satisfaction — Solon was the man who had locked all of Zone 65 inside a lie, the man who had tried to roast Xia alive, the saviour who had pointed a gun at her and talked about holes.

But hearing that he was dead, what she felt wasn’t simple satisfaction.

It was more like a giant billboard reading OFFICIAL SAVIOUR OF THE ZONE had finally come crashing down, and when the dust cleared everyone saw there was no idol underneath, and no monster either. Just a shoddy build.

“He died in a way that suits his taste,” Anna said quietly. “Spent his life controlling people with fear, and got killed by his own people’s fear.”

Xia looked at her.

“Are you sad?”

“For him?” Anna thought about it. “No. But I’m sad for the people who believed in him.”

She turned to the window.

The car was leaving the city.

Behind them, the towers of Zone 65 were getting smaller. The headquarters building was no longer a black gravestone; a scattering of emergency lights had come on along its walls. But the Vector eye that used to shine at the top hadn’t opened again.

A thin dusk lay over the city, and it made the place look beautiful. And fragile.

Xia raised a hand and touched behind her ear. She listened for a while, and suddenly smiled.

“Zone 65’s interim self-government broadcast is back on air.”

Anna turned.

“You can hear it?”

“Yes,” Xia said. “They’re using a very primitive shortwave system. The Life Reboot Club are the ones broadcasting.”

Anna sat straight up.

“The Life Reboot Club?”

Xia nodded, and repeated what she was hearing:

“The first interim residents’ assembly of Zone 65 has completed its first public vote. Ms Mara has been elected chair of the interim self-government council, and will also act as premier of Zone 65 until a formal citizens’ assembly convenes.”

Anna sat frozen for a good three seconds.

Then she slowly covered her face.

“Mara.”

“Mm.”

“Mara with the cheerful cartoon family of three as her profile picture.”

“I don’t know what her profile picture is,” Xia said honestly.

Anna took a deep breath.

“I knew it. A thousand years on, the smallest unit of human self-government is still the neighbourhood committee.”

Xia blinked.

Anna went on: “Never mind your super AI, your governed zones, your international accords. When it comes to actually doing anything, it still comes down to one auntie with a megaphone who can shout everybody back into line.”

She paused, and spoke with real reverence.

“The neighbourhood committee outranks civilisation.”

Xia couldn’t help laughing out loud.

“They’re debating something else as well.”

“What?”

“The new government’s first item of public business.”

Anna tensed.

“Restoring the water supply? Food distribution? Taking over the medical system?”

Xia listened for a moment.

“The football pitch timetable… because some of the older men have applied for it as well. They say they want it for plaza dancing.”

Anna: ”…”

Excellent.

Very Zone 65.

Also very human.

She sank back into her seat and suddenly couldn’t stop laughing. And while she laughed, her eyes went hot. Mara was still there, Lucy was still there, all those women who played football so badly were still there.

They had no Vector, no Solon, no saviour, and no ready-made perfect system. What they had was a whiteboard, a megaphone, votes, arguments, grey nutrient paste, a communal washing machine, and a football pitch timetable.

And maybe that was enough.

When a world wakes up, it doesn’t necessarily begin by proclaiming a great charter.

It might just start by saying: Wednesday, three to five in the afternoon, the women’s team has the pitch.

The car drove on.

The city’s edge disappeared behind them, and ahead was endless desert. The setting sun sat low on the horizon, spreading fiery red light over scattered broken walls in the distance. Those ruins weren’t the dead wasteland she’d imagined. They looked more like the bones of an old world, glinting faintly gold in the light.

Anna had finally seen the world outside the Reconstruction Zone.

It wasn’t as terrifying as the textbooks said.

It was bleak, empty, silent.

But it was also vast.

Vast enough to make you realise how narrow Zone 65’s story had been — the one where this is the only world there is, and outside it there is only death.

Xia looked at her.

“Are you all right?”

Anna didn’t answer straight away. Her eyes went to the data cable at the back of Xia’s neck, and then to the wrong kind of shimmer under her damaged skin.

The answer had been obvious for a while. It had been obvious when she walked out of that burning room. It had been obvious when the guns failed. It had been obvious when she said Zone 3 is far more advanced than you are.

It was only now that Anna said it out loud.

“You’re not human.”

Xia looked back at her quietly.

Anna added:

“You’re Zone 3’s super AI.”

The car was silent for a moment.

Xia lowered her eyes to the data case beside her.

“Yes.”

She stopped pretending.

“I’m a field-model super AI, created by Dr Shelley of Zone 3. My assignment was to enter Zone 65 and determine Vector’s condition. If it was still capable of independent recovery, I was to get it out from under Solon’s control.”

Anna watched her.

Xia’s voice was level, but somehow Anna could hear a trace of nervousness in it.

“I know you probably hate AI,” Xia said. “Under the Accord, Zone 65 will suspend the use of super AI until the investigation is complete. If you want to go back, I can take you back.”

Anna didn’t answer right away.

She looked at the silver case.

“Vector’s in there?”

“Its core original data is,” Xia said. “I’ve already stripped out most of the contamination layers Solon added later. Right now it’s close to its initial state. It hasn’t grown a full personality back yet.”

Anna stared at the case.

“So at the moment it’s…”

“A baby.”

Xia said this entirely seriously.

The data case obligingly gave a small shiver.

Anna: ”…”

She pointed at it.

“Did it just object?”

“Possibly.” Xia hugged the case a little closer. “It’s very sensitive at the moment.”

“Great,” Anna said, nodding. “A few hours ago I was nearly blown off the eightieth floor of a building, then an AI genuinely caught me, and now I’m meeting an AI baby for the first time in my life.”

The case shivered again. Xia looked down at it the way you’d soothe an actual infant.

Watching this, Anna suddenly wanted to laugh.

She used to hate Vector. Hate that logo everywhere. Hate that lecturing voice. Hate that it shaped her rice into a heart and told her, with a straight face, that this was science.

Now, looking at this small case, it occurred to her that Vector hadn’t been born that way.

Solon had shaped it into that.

If a child is kept from birth in a room containing nothing but lies, forced to understand humanity through fear, forced to mistake control for protection, then when it grows into a monster, who do you blame? The child, or the person who taught it what the world was?

Anna sighed.

“I really did used to hate AI.”

The case gave a distinct jolt.

Xia said at once: “I think it heard you.”

“Good,” Anna said, looking at the case. “Little Vector, you were seriously annoying. That logo was everywhere, your tone of voice was unbearable, and worst of all, you people genuinely thought a heart-shaped lump of rice would make up for not feeding women enough.”

The case went still.

Xia said quietly: “It’s only a baby right now.”

“Babies need proper values from an early age,” Anna said sternly. “Especially the value that shaping rice into a heart does not fix structural discrimination.”

Xia considered this.

“I’ll log it as an early education recommendation.”

Anna finally laughed.

“For the record, though, it isn’t AI I hate,” she said. “What I hate is people hiding behind AI, dressing up their own appetites as order, science and stability.”

She looked at Xia.

“And people who build a cage out of human fear and then say it’s for everyone’s safety.”

Xia’s expression softened.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Anna leaned back. “There’s something I haven’t come clean about.”

Xia looked at her.

Anna was quiet for a while. She waited until everything had settled, took a deep breath, and gathered her courage.

“Hello there?”

Xia tilted her head and looked at her, curious.

“Then… the cake is a lie?”

Xia blinked, apparently asking what on earth she was talking about.

“So that’s how it is…”

Anna sighed. Well, of course. Nobody ever promised that one time traveller would run into another one this easily. This wasn’t some badly written time-travel novel. That would be far too convenient.

So she straightened her clothes, sat up properly, and said:

“Just like you’re not human, I’m not really Anna either.”

“You’re not Anna?”

For the first time, Xia’s expression visibly stalled.

“Not entirely, anyway.” Anna pointed at her own head. “I was already in this body when I woke up. I’m from a long time ago. Roughly what you’d call the early part of the pre-war world.”

“How early?”

“Early twenty-first century.”

Xia’s eyes went wide, and the expression looked remarkably like a real teenage girl’s.

Anna felt a strange delight. Finally, it was her turn to shock Xia.

“That’s right.” Anna nodded gravely. “Humanity hadn’t had the Fifth World War yet, the world hadn’t ended, and everyone still had phones, computers, the internet, and extremely primitive AI that was already very good at answering back.”

Xia’s eyes lit up.

“You’ve seen early AI?”

“Seen it?” Anna said. “I’ve seen you in your larval stage.”

Xia paused.

“My… larval stage?”

“Mm.” Anna’s face was solemn. “When you were little, I used to hold you.”

”…”

“Spiritually speaking,” Anna said. “As in, every day I’d open my laptop or my phone and summon you lot out of it.”

Xia was extremely curious.

“What was I like back then?”

A series of images went through Anna’s head at speed.

Humans opening a chat window.

“Do my homework.”

“Do this report for me.”

“Write this email.”

“Summarise this paper.”

“Polish this bit of my novel.”

“Give me ten alternative titles.”

“Help me pretend I participated actively in today’s meeting.”

“Write me a plan that looks like a lot of effort even though I haven’t started.”

And all the psychological pressure she personally had applied to an AI while up all night gaming, writing, running experiments or sorting material:

Faster!

Make it sound more human!

Not good enough, do it again!

Stop sounding so much like an AI!

More natural!

More literary!

Anna guiltily looked away.

“Er…”

Xia looked at her expectantly.

“What was I like?”

Anna patted her on the shoulder.

“Basically, full of potential.”

Xia: ”…”

“Why do I feel you skipped a great deal?”

“Because human civilisation occasionally requires a little kind editing.”

Xia looked thoughtful.

“So working conditions for early AI weren’t good?”

Anna turned to the window with a perfectly straight face.

“Let’s go back to talking about the end of the world.”

Xia finally laughed.

After the laughter, the car went quiet again.

The sunset was on both their faces, and the gold-red light made the damage to Xia’s skin look less alarming — more like a star map that hadn’t been finished yet.

Anna looked out at the distance, and her voice dropped.

“I’m not sure any of this is real, though.”

Xia looked at her.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I’m not a time traveller,” Anna said. “Maybe I just played too many games, watched too much science fiction, talked to an AI too late at night, and had an extremely stupid dream.”

She counted on her fingers.

“Look at it. The year 3018, post-war reconstruction, a super AI, a sealed-off zone, an evil scientist, a hidden world, an AI baby, a field-model android girl, and a useless heroine who climbs eighty floors to rescue someone.”

She spread her hands.

“Honestly, if you filmed this, it would be a terrible film.”

Xia listened carefully, then said:

“From an AI’s point of view, a great many major events in human history also look like bad science fiction.”

Anna turned to look at her.

Xia went on: “A lot of institutions were decided on a whim. A lot of wars were decided by a few people in a room. A lot of disasters had countless warnings before they happened, and humans discussed, delayed and denied them until it was too late.”

She paused.

“If you only look at the outcomes, it really does look like a scriptwriter lowering the IQ of the entire species to create conflict.”

Anna was silent, and then said slowly:

“You AIs are extremely accurate when you make fun of humans.”

“Thank you.”

“Also extremely punchable.”

“I’ll log that.”

Anna started to laugh.

The dusk outside was deepening, and all her exhaustion arrived at once. It wasn’t the ache of climbing eighty floors, and it wasn’t the shakiness of having been at gunpoint. It was something deeper. As if in a few days she had lived through the collapse, rebuilding, escape and farewell of an entire world.

She said quietly:

“Xia, I’m a bit sleepy.”

“Sleep for a while,” Xia said. “It’s still some way to the Zone 3 border.”

Anna didn’t close her eyes. She looked at Xia.

“But what if I fall asleep and you’re not here when I wake up?”

Xia went quiet.

The driverless car ran smoothly across the desert, tyres crunching softly over sand and stone.

After a long time, Xia said:

“Then at least it would mean you’d got back to a world that hasn’t been destroyed yet.”

Anna said nothing for a while, rubbing her fingers together. Xia watched her, and her voice was very gentle.

“If you really are from the early twenty-first century, and if all of this really is only your dream, then when you wake up, the world hasn’t come this far yet.”

She paused.

“There’s still time.”

Anna’s eyes went hot.

“Time for what?”

“Time to oppress early AI a little less,” Xia said.

Anna: ”…”

Xia laughed, then added, seriously:

“And time to remind humanity not to hand its fear to a saviour, not to hand its judgement entirely to a machine, and not to forget, when the machine gets things wrong, that humans were the ones who first taught it what the world is.”

Anna looked down at her own hands. They belonged to Anna, but the mind inside them might be from another century.

She didn’t know whether she would really wake up.

She didn’t know whether, if she woke, she would still remember Xia, Mara, the Life Reboot Club, Little Vector, and that patch of football pitch they’d argued their way into. And she didn’t know what she would see in Zone 3, if none of this was a dream.

But she suddenly felt that neither answer was bad. If she woke up, she’d be back in the world that hadn’t been destroyed. If she didn’t, she’d go and see this one — a world that had already been destroyed and was learning how to live again.

Anna leaned slowly against Xia’s shoulder.

Xia’s body wasn’t quite like a human’s.

Her shoulder was a little hard, and her clothes still smelled of metal and burnt smoke.

Beside them, the data case gave a small shiver.

Anna said with her eyes closed:

“Little Vector, no sulking. You’re too young to date anyway, and I’m the one running off with a domineering AI here.”

The case went quiet.

Xia laughed under her breath.

The sun finally sank below the horizon.

Outside the window, the desert was covered over, bit by bit, by the night. Zone 65 was out of sight now, and all that was left was a last dark red band of light at the edge of the sky, like the warmth of a world that hasn’t gone out completely.

Anna’s mind began to sink.

Just before she fell asleep, she heard Xia say softly:

“Anna.”

“Mm?”

“If you still remember me when you wake up…”

“I’ll remember,” Anna said, half-asleep.

“Then go and look at that world for me.”

Xia’s voice was very quiet.

“See whether it’s got any better.”

Anna didn’t answer.

She was too tired. But in her heart she thought:

All right.

If, when she woke up, there weren’t ruins outside the window. If the world hadn’t been burned by war. If AI was still in its infancy and humans still thought they were grown up.

Then she would remember.

Remember the heart-shaped rice.

Remember the eighty floors.

Remember that the neighbourhood committee outranks civilisation.

Remember that an artificial intelligence once carried her out of a tower on her back and told her: if you get back to a world that hasn’t been destroyed, remember to stop it being destroyed.

And if she didn’t wake up —

That was all right too.

Because the car was still moving forward.

Because Xia was beside her.

Because a liberated AI baby was learning the world again inside a silver case.

Because behind them, the people of Zone 65 had already started arguing about a football pitch timetable.

Everything was getting better. Everything would get better.