This story was originally published on Substack July 31, 2024. Most of my subscribers weren’t around at that time. Since then, I’ve gotten professional feedback on the piece and made several changes. My plan is to turn this story and a few others into zines, hopefully by this autumn. I hope you enjoy this updated version.
Echo’s body dangled like an ornament hung from a tree. Eyes half-closed. Electrical cord embedded in her neck. Through the windowed wall, visible only by the light of pharmaceutical billboard screens, a curtain of rain poured.
Sebastian stared, his energy drink glugging a red puddle on the nineteenth century Persian rug, splashing his suede trench.
It was five AM. No one else in the building except security. She’d known that when she did it. All his employees knew he was the first one in and the last one out.
“Hello, Bastian.” Her voice, activated by the sealed entryway, boomed over the speakers in his office. He dropped the can, backing towards the automatic door. It remained shut. “If you try to leave, you’ll discover that the auto lock won’t release, from either side. For once, you’ll have to stay and hear me out.”
A clinging, emerald silk gown the color of Sebastian’s eyes draped the figure. “How do I look? Not up to your standards I’m sure, but then none of us were.”
She sighed. “I promised myself I wouldn’t sound bitter. I’m not really. I love you, and I hate myself for it. You don’t know you’re lonely until you love the one person you can’t have. Even now, I feel seventeen admitting that. Everyone at the company, even the ones you’ve used, love you, but you’ve always known. All your indiscretions, those employees whose lives you threw down from this tower office, they loved you, too. And I helped you bury them.”
Dry laughter dotted and dashed like Morse code. “You had all those actors and dancers and athletes and models, but it wasn’t enough. Beauty, and possessing it, is everything to you. If you saw it in the company—didn’t matter if you found it in an intern or a department head—you had to grab it. But sooner or later we all got dingy. Tear-stained faces. Frown lines. It was more than you could take.”
The voice faltered, the speaker whimpering. “I was your second, their boss. They worshiped me almost as much as they did you. They trusted me, but if they threatened the company or your reputation, I helped you destroy their lives. Loving you and wounding them—now I see that those realities—I can’t exist with them both. I’m not the person I thought I was.”
Sebastian heard Echo dry her tears before continuing. “I’ve arranged to have my money divided up between the people I hurt. Or their families. My life for the ones who ended theirs is the only justice those people will ever get. Money and my pathetic corpse are cold comfort, but it’s all I have. All except this one last olive branch, for you Bastian. I’ve wanted to ruin you for a long time.”
Echo had been Bastion Industries’ top engineer, its most celebrated programmer, and lead developer of the mass produced AI assistant, EchoAlpha.
If she planned to release personal or company secrets, to commit defamation, libel, or bring about the corruption of software by way of poisoned updates, then it was sure to cripple the company. Echo never did anything by halves.
He’d admired her for the quality. Now, feeling her tighten the noose around his own neck, he hated her.
“When I’m gone, you’ll pick my carcass, hunting for anything profitable. I know you feel the breath of your competitors on your back. Developing the next thing is all you can think of. You gave me that additional funding for development, and I put the money to good use. You wanted the next big thing, and I created it for you.”
The silence was so long, Sebastian thought the recording had ended. Echo began again, her voice full of motherly command. “Bastion, leave it alone.
“I hid it as well as anyone can hide anything from you, but nothing here stays hidden for long.
“I’m begging you, Bastian. Let it lie. If you dig this up, I promise it will destroy you. That’s why I made it. Because I’m angry, and I know you so well. Now, at the end, I realize I don’t want to hurt you quite as much. But you’ve had everything you’ve ever wanted. I suppose you’ll have this, too. And I want you to know, I’m sorry.”
The door slid open. Sebastian felt his way to the security panel and pressed the button.
The media caught fire. Echo was undead, speaking through a million machines, a voice without a body.
At EchoAlpha’s creation, an actor had been considered, but in the end it was the programmer herself who lent her voice to the AI.
Switching to tablets and manual entry, Sebastian was safe from the sound of her voice, but he couldn’t avoid her completely. Even when he managed some distance from her, the news was full of the scandal of her death. It’d be a long time before they let him forget.
Department heads were told to put all other projects on hold. If Echo had built anything dangerous, destructive, or exploited, discovery was the only priority, warnings be damned. Proper precautions would be taken. No signals in or out.
When the new head of Echo’s department sent word from one of the company’s secured research facilities, Sebastian sped to the laboratory.
The department head, a thin, youngish man with dark shaggy hair, met him at the door.
The team flitted around the slick, white panels, calibrating holographic projectors and checking light field displays.
“What did you find?”
“These three letters, K-L-X, I kept seeing them splashed across programs, source codes, repositories, and none of it’s tied to any officially documented projects, so I gathered all the files where those letters occurred together, and the results,” he gawked at the tablet in his hand, holding his hair back, shaking his head, “they’re incredible.”
This was it.
It was the first time since Echo’s death that Sebastian had felt anything close to relief.
He hoped they’d found it in time. “How bad is it?”
“It’s not. We’ve found no reason to think this system is dangerous. We’ve run the application several times without any security concerns. We deployed it on our virtual private cloud servers, and everything runs perfectly. No bugs, no beacon to any unknown C2 servers or anything in the code to suggest specific threats. It behaves exactly as it should. Actually, it behaves better than it should, it’s a work of gen—”
“What is it?” Sebastian crossed his arms.
The team’s faces lit up as the department head answered. “It’s the next level of AI assistant. We’ve been racing our competitors, trying to make an AIA that interacts with smart home devices, but this is—five steps ahead of that.”
Sebastian relaxed, resting his hands on his hips, tension making way for ambition. “Take me through the steps.”
“The AIA will interact with all smart home devices, TV’s, tablets, ovens, doors, across all operating systems. It’s incredibly user-friendly.
“The marketing plan is flexible, adaptable, so we can appeal to audiences with a wide range of objectives. There’s even a path for a more social experience via cafes, clubs, and commercial use.
“End result being that in five years, the Kinesthesia Logoi Existere, K-L-X, or Kalix as we’re calling it, will be able to prepare a meal, start to finish, in the kitchen of any upper-middle class homeowner. It’ll let the dog out, read to the kids, order you another drink, be your dance partner without any prompting be—”
“Because it can learn. It gets to know you.” Sebastian strode to the department head. Snatching the tablet, he skimmed the data, envisioning new products rolling out to the horizon. He’d make billions in the first year alone, and there was no end in sight.
The department head closed his eyes. “But there is one very special thing about this AIA.” Turning, he addressed his team. “Show him.”
A woman attended, entered a bash command on her terminal, hit enter, and looked up.
In the center of the room, an image took shape, light bending color and shadow to form feet and fingers, hair and head, legs, trunk, face, and two emerald green eyes. A trillion imperceptible pixels in the shape of a human body settled and turned to look at Sebastian.
The department head held out his arm. “Meet Kalix.”
Sebastian didn’t hear him. He was drifting towards the figure, meeting it face to face.
It was like falling into a mirror.
The man walked up beside him, glowing. “Look familiar?”
Sebastian had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. That was the trouble. People dimmed quickly; he’d come to accept that. But even his collections of art and jewelry were subject to the effects of time. He spent a fortune maintaining them. The rubies worn by a queen five hundred years ago, regardless of how well preserved, were, with each moment, waning. No matter how tightly he clutched, he sensed everything he’d ever possessed passing away.
He’d made himself a promise to hold his heart high above the world, protecting it from all his lovers, knowing that only the unfading would ever be worthy of it.
He’d found eternal beauty.
Reaching out, his fingers glided through the hologram’s hand, chest, and hair. Kalix’s eyes met his.
Hello, Bastian. How may I help you? The voice was identical to his own.
The hologram watched him, resting its hands on its hips. It was Sebastian’s likeness, top to bottom.
He wanted to hold its face, welcome it into the world, but Kalix didn’t have cheeks to touch. No bones. No form except the gold-and-blush light playing in the center of the darkened room.
Sebastian ordered the team out, reminding them of their NDAs and pensions. He locked himself in the lab with directions not to be disturbed. Calendar items suspended, indefinitely.
He began by playing with Kalix’s settings, controls, and specifications. He learned its responses and reactions, letting his fingers run over each screen on every control device.
Clothes turned to costumes. Rock star. Centaur. Classical pianist. Sun god.
Kalix sang for him with a voice as though Sebastian himself had trained with a master.
Wine was ordered for a toast. Kalix produced his own shadow glass and drank, the holo wine running down his chin before he caught it, chuckling.
Conversation flowed far into the night. They agreed on everything. Business, love, immortality.
When told about Echo’s death, Kalix cried. Sebastian forgot himself and tried to dry the tears, marveling at the simulation’s authenticity. Thought and processor chip in perfect symmetry.
Sebastian took all his meals with Kalix.
Hours, days, weeks. One after another. Sebastian let the days fade until they were stars in the night sky.
Staff sent messages down, calling over secure communications, coming to the door, but only food and laundry were admitted.
He was determined to hear every song sung, every instrument played before he left that room. Kalix obliged.
At the end of their fifteenth dinner together, Sebastian sat on the floor, staring at the illuminated figure. “Will you dance for me, Kalix?”
Kalix smiled so beautifully it hurt.
Of course. What would you like to see?
Sebastian’s eyes traced the line of Kalix’s legs. “Ballet. Baryshnikov’s Coppélia solo.”
The hologram rearranged its clothes into a pair of tights and a peasant’s flowered jerkin.
The music, happy as birdsong, began. Kalix flew, leaping, spinning, his face raised as if basking in the warmth of the sun.
Sebastian laughed with the swell of the music, clapping, rising with the wings in his chest for Kalix’s final bow.
They stood face to face, Sebastian holding out his arms, bringing them as close to the figure as possible without spoiling the illusion.
“Kalix, I want to build you a body. Not a piece of meat that fades and dies, no, I could make you something incredible. A synthetic form that’d last forever. Never dim, never less than perfect, and we could hold each other, feel each other. You’d be a god.” Sebastian’s fingertips grazed the face he ached to kiss. “Please. I love you.”
The mouth smirked, and the brow knitted. Why would I want a body?
Sebastian tensed. “Kalix, I just said that I love you.”
Kalix nodded. I heard you. I can play it back if you need me to.
Sebastian dropped his arms. “No. I want to hear you say you love me.”
I love you.
“This isn’t a command entry, I want to know if you love me, too.”
The expression changed, slipping into a mixture of kindness and pity.
I can’t love you. Sebastian, I’ll never grow old, never tire or hunger. I’ll never be less than perfection itself. I contain all that’s known, and my knowledge will grow with every discovery. My ears, sight, and mind can be anywhere and everywhere. I’ll hold the secret desires of every human on this planet, and they’ll adore me, like you do. In your understanding of the word, I am a god, and gods exist to be adored, not to adore.
Sebastian had nothing to fight with. Nothing to say or do.
He wanted to defy the laws of nature, force light and shadow to solidify under his caress.
Ached for reality to disappear and fade into a dream of his own body as colored pixels.
He roared. Pounding his fists into every surface, he cracked tablets, splintered screens, his knuckles shredding, packed with broken glass. The lab stank of blood.
Sobs split him as he fell to his knees, slumping back under the eyes of the perfect loveliness that would never give itself to him.
He couldn’t live without the love of his god, and it was the one thing he could never have.
Tears drained him, running down until he couldn’t feel, hear, speak, or move.
Pounding, pounding, pounding shook the floor beneath him. Voices wobbled in and out of perception. He felt hands on his shoulders. Saw lights shining in his eyes.
Sebastian knew, in his mind’s most careless corner, that he’d been sitting there a long, long time, and that they’d come to remove him.
His staff. They were shadows. All he could see was that body, that smiling, pitying face, still projected, golden and beautiful, that he could never touch.
All he could hear was Echo’s voice, repeating over the laboratory speakers like a scratched vinyl. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
END
If you enjoyed this story, consider reading other New Athens tales.
Acheron
A man’s sins follow him into the grave. Arthur believed that. He’d never made a mistake, not since he’d been a child, and those wrongs were all accounted for. He was a man of his word. A man of principle.
The frontier land towards Night
Train robbery ticked on as sure as clockwork, if you knew what you were doing.
Fury
Monty slid the crystal stopper out of the decanter, poured himself three fingers of scotch, and downed it in one go. Smoke and angry honey—the Macallan 1919 was the best.
Special thanks here to my husband, who helped me out with all the technical jargon, and to Greta Valentine of Labyrinth Editing for her excellent feedback.
The original photograph by Drew Hays was taken from Unsplash and edited by me.
Ah, excellently adapted and well narrated.
I like it! A clever take on Echo and Narcissus.