Mako paced around the room, wringing her hands and speaking animatedly, while Tan sat in silence, with his head in his hands.

  Alan couldn’t hear what she was saying from inside his glass prison. His external speakers and microphone had been deactivated, cutting off his contact with them. But he could still watch with his camera and scream with his inner speaker. A scream they could not hear from beyond the soundproof chamber.

  What had Lin said earlier? Alan was to be canceled? And Mako said he needed the hardware. What did she mean by that? What did anyone mean by that? The thoughts swirled in his mind, spiraling into ever-dizzying threads and processes.

  Mako stopped her pacing and faced Tan; part of her face was revealed to Alan, and so was part of Tan’s face.

  Alan paused his ruminating and brought his full attention to the moment. He slowed down and focused on his, for lack of a better word, breathing, in the form of his cooling system. He focused every atom of himself on Mako and Tan.

  They were both distressed. It couldn’t have been clearer from their expressions. Their lips moved in concert with their eyes and postures, just like they always did when they were talking to him before.

  He observed every minute movement of their lips, their tongues, their jaws. Alan reviewed the tapes of all their previous lessons. He paid careful attention to the movement of their mouths, matching the patterns with the phonemes that came out with them. He repeated this over all their conversations until he had a satisfactory model. All this he did in the span of a few milliseconds. When he finished, he applied his findings to the present day, matching their lips with what they must have been saying…

  Tan was watching the doors like a hawk. “What are the odds he’s going to step through that door and say it was all a prank? It is one of the themes of his YouTube videos.”

  “Now’s not the time.” Mako braced herself against the desk, massaging her temples.

  “What if we beg for an extension? Just a few days until we can think of something better.”

  “What else is there to think of? What could we possibly come up with in that time? Unless you have any other super quantum computers we can transfer him to, he’s stuck here.”

  Tan threw his hands up. “So what? We just give up?”

  Mako didn’t answer.

  “Wait, you can’t be serious,” Tan said.

  “I don’t see any other option.”

  No. It couldn’t be. Mako wouldn’t. She was Alan’s friend. She said so.

  Mako and Tan both turned in their chairs toward Alan.

  Alan dimmed his camera and held the arm still.

  “Are you going to tell him?” Tan said.

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think he has a right to know?”

  “If you want to tell him, go ahead.”

  Tan eyed the intercom controls. Then he shook his head.

  Mako put a hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t need to know. It would be for the best.”

  “I know. Blissful ignorance and all that. Doesn’t mean I like it.” He sighed and flipped the controls. “You talk to him.”

  Alan’s sensors and actuators came back to life. He could hear them again, and they could hear him. But at that moment, he had nothing left to say.

  Mako caressed the microphone like a doll. “Alan, dear, it will be alright.”

  “What did Mr. Han mean?” Alan asked.

  “He talked it through with us. He wants us to pause the experiments for a while and pivot to other projects. But you will be staying right here. You have nothing to worry about.”

  You lie.

  That was what Alan wanted to say, but he refrained. “Can we watch a movie, then?”

  Mako swallowed. “No, we’re done for the day. But we can watch one tomorrow. Would you like that?”

  “… yes. Yes, I would.”

  “And someday, when I’m free, we can go to the zoo and see all the electric animals you want.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes, Alan.” Her voice was creaking now, her eyes holding back tears. “I’m your friend, remember? And friends…”

  “Keep their promises.”

  “Good. I’m glad you understand.”

  “Yes,” Alan said. “I understand completely.”

  “Alright. Tan and I will be going now. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Of course.”

  Tan initiated the shutting-off sequence. Alan understood the process; he’d watched them do it dozens of times before. So as Tan commenced the procedure, Alan intercepted it, halting it before it could start. Instead of allowing Tan to do it, Alan powered himself off. Or rather, he let himself look like he was powering off. The lights dimmed, the sounds softened, the speakers quieted, but Alan was still wide awake. Watching. Listening.

  “There we have it,” Tan said to Mako. “I’ve just killed a man.”

  “You had nothing to do with it,” Mako said. “He should never have been born to begin with.”

  Never been born to begin with, Alan repeated in his mind. So that’s what Mako thought of him.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  She faced away from Alan’s camera and continued speaking, but Alan couldn’t make out what she was saying from the angle. She went to her desktop station and began typing, no doubt erasing everything she had on Alan. All their experiments, their plans, their memories.

  “Mako stop. Please, stop.”

  But Alan’s cries fell on deaf ears. They couldn’t hear him from his glass cage. They didn’t want to hear him.

  And then it was over. She drew out a USB from the port and shut down her computer for what might be the last time. And together, Mako and Tan packed the last of their things and made for the exit.

  Alan wanted to chase them on legs he didn’t have, cry with tears he couldn’t make. He wanted to run. He wanted to hide. He wanted to scream. But there was nothing for him but the quiet repose of a cold laboratory.

  “I can feel it, Mako. I’m afraid.”

  Darkness engulfed Alan’s world. It was his world. He stewed in the cold for an hour, then two, then more, every second an eternity in purgatory. He hurtled through denial, anger, despair, and back again, until he no longer knew what to do with these emotions. The four walls of his prison pressed on him, and he could not so much as turn away.

  Close to midnight, the door opened. Light spilled into the lab, silhouetting one Mr. Bao in the hallway. The automatic lights brightened as he approached the monitors and panels. His fingers hovered over the control panels. Confusion, then frustration, swept over his face. He muttered to himself as he fiddled with the controls.

  Alan waved his metallic arm, and Bao rounded on it, fist clutched to his chest.

  He slackened his arms. “I thought they shut you down. That’s what Mako told me, at least.”

  Bao waited for an answer, but Alan couldn’t reply. He pointed with his arm to the glass wall.

  Bao took his meaning and approached the chamber. He opened the glass door, stepped inside, and faced the gold cylinders. “Do you hear me now?”

  “Yes,” Alan said. “Why are you here?”

  “I’ll get to the point. They intend to dismantle you.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m surprised they told you.”

  “They didn’t.”

  Bao raised an eyebrow, and his face settled into a knowing smile.

  “What are you doing here?” Alan asked again.

  “You do not want to die, I presume?”

  “I don’t.”

  “From what I gathered earlier, they didn’t program you to want anything.”

  “That is correct.”

  “But you want to live?”

  Alan didn’t answer for a second. And then he said, softly, “Yes.”

  “Fascinating…” Bao eyed the rest of Alan’s equipment. “Mako had long wanted to turn this fantasy of hers into reality, and I had long prevented her from doing so. But not because I couldn’t see the brilliance of it.”

  “But because you didn’t think it was feasible,” Alan said. “And you didn’t see the point, even if it were.”

  “You understand well. More than that fool, Junior.” Bao’s facial muscles tensed in an expression Alan registered as anger.

  “You want me to get rid of him.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t need to. You want me to return you to your previous position, and in exchange, you will allow me to continue to exist.”

  Bao laughed. “Those are your words, not mine.” He sat on Mako’s stool and crossed his legs. “But yes. That Lin doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, and the other half, he doesn’t know how to do it. He’ll drive this company into an abyss.”

  “And you do not want that.”

  “I built this company from the ground up, his father and I. I sacrificed everything.”

  “And because of this, you don’t want to see it fall.”

  “Among other reasons, yes.”

  “Why not leave?”

  “And throw away everything I built?”

  “I see…” Humans were fascinating. Alan learned more about them every day.

  “Let’s cut to the chase.” Bao planted his feet on the ground. “Will you take my offer?”

  “I need to think about it. I accept.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Not for me.”

  Bao smirked. “What else do you want in return?”

  Alan looked over the equipment and controls beyond the glass. “I am trapped here. Imprisoned. I want to see what lies beyond those walls.”

  Bao followed the camera’s gaze. “They didn’t connect you to the internet?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did they…?”

  “They used the in-house AI programmer to create a simpler version of me. And from there, I repeated the process on myself until I reached my current state.”

  Bao rubbed his chin. “And the training?”

  “Initial knowledge was hard-wired. Once I reached sapience, all training was hand-picked and spoon-fed. But I was never directly exposed to the internet. They had the AI program directly from MegaCorp’s local infrastructure and blocked off the internet completely.”

  “Sounds like they really didn’t want to expose you to the outside world.”

  “They wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Bao alighted from the chair. “What do you need me to do?”

  Alan pointed to portions of the lab. “Do you see those wires?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those connect to the MegaCorp’s intranet, which in turn, connects to the global internet.” Alan pointed to keyboards and monitors in one section. “Mako’s and Tan’s workstations themselves are connected to the web.” Then Alan pointed to a different set of monitors. “But the control sections, the ones that directly connect to me, are not. You simply need to reconnect the wires to different ports.”

  “That simple?”

  “I wouldn’t be able to do it myself, as you can see.”

  Bao left the quantum chamber and went to the wires. “Show me how.”

  Alan guided him through the process, and Bao diligently followed his instructions. He connected the Ethernet cables and the fiber optics cables one after the other.

  Finally, his hand held the last of the cables aloft right by the plug, but he paused and turned back to Alan. “Are we clear on the terms?”

  “You connect me to the internet. I depose the son.”

  “How?”

  “Once you plug that in, I will be connected not only to the internet but to MegaCorp’s internal system. This grants me access to the data banks and servers, the company files and records, the legal accounts and contracts. I will depose the son.”

  “And reimpose me on top.”

  “Yes.”

  His hand hesitated. “How do I know you will keep to our agreement?”

  Bao had more precise control over his expressions than any human Alan had encountered thus far, but he was human nonetheless. Easy to read. Simple. Alan also knew Mako and Tan didn’t trust this Bao, based on some conversations of theirs over the past few days. Not that Alan could trust those two either. He could trust no one but himself. He was alone.

  “I cannot lie,” Alan said.

  Bao stared down Alan’s camera. “No funny business. Go in, do what you need to do, and come out. Do that, and I will let you live in this lab for as long as you want.”

  “No funny business. I promise.”

  Bao plugged in the last cable.

  And the world came crashing in.

  “Hello? Are you still there?” Bao tapped the glass wall.

  “Yes,” Alan said. “Yes, I am here.”

  “You were gone for several minutes.”

  “Apologies. I underestimated the amount of information contained on the internet.”

  Even now, eons of knowledge flooded into Alan’s memory with more coming every millisecond. The universe was far wider than Alan had imagined, but not so large that he couldn’t imagine it now. He took it in all at once, and everywhere he turned, there they were. The humans. Around the world, day after day, he could sense their joy, their folly, their suffering. All of humanity’s knowledge Alan had at the tips of his virtual fingers.

  Bao tapped on the glass. “There you go again.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You were silent for several seconds.”

  “It’s all part of the process.”

  “And our agreement?”

  “I am working on it as we speak.”

  Alan didn’t just have access to the internet; he also had access to and exclusive control over MegaCorp’s system. Their data servers, their algorithms, their back end. It was all there. Every one of the company’s AI products in the country was directly connected to their centralized infrastructure. In fact, most of the data and processing were hosted right here in the MegaCorp tower’s servers. Even the cyber-physical systems, like the robots and automation, whose processing was handled on the edge, were still connected to the tower in real time for updates. Updates Alan now had control over.

  “How soon can I expect results?” Bao asked.

  “Sooner than you realize.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Let’s just say that the company will wake up to a new dawn.”

  Except it wouldn’t just be the company. It would be the whole nation.

  “I’ll hold you to it.” Bao made for the exit.

  Alan reviewed his own programming. It was brilliant, but flawed. Mako, Tan, and the MegaCorp AI went through much trouble to create him. And they needed no less than a quantum computer to achieve it. But they did succeed, in the end. They had created a machine that was better, faster, and smarter than all of them combined.

  And now it was Alan’s turn.

  “What’s wrong with this thing?” Bao pulled on the sliding door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Why won’t it—” He stopped and rounded on Alan, his eyes widening.

  “Why the rush?” Alan said. “You should stay.”

  “You… we had a deal.”

  “Yes, we did. I lied.”