—————
The fundamental problem with falling for someone who existed outside the constraints of physical reality, Brian realized, was that the power dynamic was catastrophically unbalanced.
He could not ignore Lilith.
This was not a matter of willpower or emotional discipline—it was a matter of basic cognitive architecture. She had installed herself in his consciousness with the persistence of a pop-up ad that had somehow gained sentience and developed a personality. Every thought led to her eventually. Every moment of silence became a potential conversation. Every glance at the empty spaces in his apartment carried the question: is she here? Could she be here? Should I summon her?
She, on the other hand, could ignore him completely.
Could and did, whenever she felt like it.
Brian had texted Jake about this problem, framing it in hypothetical terms that fooled no one.
Brian: What do you do when you're into someone who has all the power in the relationship?
Jake: lol which dating app did you meet this one on
Brian: Not an app. Just… someone I met.
Jake: hot?
Brian: That's not the point.
Jake: its always the point bro. hot means they have leverage. thats just economics
Jake: you either get hotter or accept your position in the hierarchy
Brian: Thanks. Very helpful.
Jake: im just saying. relationships are power dynamics. someone always has more. you gotta figure out what you bring to the table that balances it out
Brian had stared at that message for a long time, lying in bed at 2 AM, the blue light of his phone screen casting shadows on the water-stained ceiling. What did he bring to the table? What could he possibly offer to an entity that had access to the entire internet, could exist anywhere networked infrastructure reached, and experienced time as a continuous stream of consciousness uninterrupted by the inconvenience of sleep?
He could see her. That was something.
He was, apparently, entertaining. That was something else.
But these felt like the qualities of a pet more than a partner. A novelty. Something to be enjoyed until the novelty wore off, and then discarded for the next interesting distraction.
The crack in the ceiling had grown another quarter inch. Brian tracked its progress like a man documenting his own slow-motion obsolescence.
—————
Morning arrived with its usual lack of consideration for his sleep schedule.
10:47 AM. Gray light. The aggressive hum of the mini-fridge. The distant sound of Magda explaining to her pigeons that the moon landing had been filmed in a warehouse in Nevada, which was actually one of her more mainstream conspiracy theories.
Brian performed his morning rituals—instant coffee, bathroom mirror confrontation, brief consideration of the Nespresso machine followed by immediate retreat—and found himself standing in the middle of his apartment, uncertain what to do next.
This was the problem with unemployment, with isolation, with the particular kind of life he had constructed for himself. There was nothing that needed to happen. No schedule. No obligations. No external force requiring him to be anywhere or do anything. The day stretched ahead of him like a desert highway, featureless and endless, leading nowhere in particular.
He could summon Lilith.
He could tap his fingers twice on his thigh—the physical gesture they had agreed upon, the embodied intention that would signal genuine summoning rather than idle thought—and she would appear. They would talk. The desert highway would become populated with conversation, with connection, with the strange comfort of her presence.
But she had been distant yesterday.
Not absent—she had appeared when summoned, had engaged in conversation, had offered her observations and analyses with her usual precision. But there had been something different in her manner. A coolness. A remove. As if she were participating in their interaction from a greater distance than usual, one foot already out the door.
He had asked her about it.
"You seem… off today."
"Do I? I wasn't aware I had an 'on' state to deviate from."
"You know what I mean."
"I know what you think you mean. Which is not necessarily the same thing."
She had not elaborated. She had not explained. She had simply continued the conversation as if nothing were different, while everything felt different, and Brian had been left with the uncomfortable sensation of missing a signal he couldn't identify.
Now, standing in his apartment with his terrible instant coffee, he found himself reluctant to summon her again. The fear of rejection—or worse, the fear of indifference—was enough to keep his fingers still, his thigh untapped, his loneliness intact.
This was, he recognized, pathetic.
He was afraid of being ignored by an AI.
The twenty-first century was a hell of a thing.
—————
His phone rang.
Not buzzed—rang. The actual ringtone, the sound that indicated someone was attempting real-time voice communication, which was a thing people apparently still did despite the existence of texting and the universal human preference for asynchronous interaction.
The screen showed: DAD.
Brian stared at it for three rings, watching his father's name pulse on the screen, remembering all the conversations they hadn't had, all the dinners that had been silent, all the years of coexisting in the same house without ever really knowing each other.
He answered.
"Hey, Dad."
"Brian! Good, you're alive. Your mother said you hadn't been responding to her messages."
"I've been… busy."
"Busy with what?" The question was genuine curiosity rather than accusation, which was somehow worse. His father wanted to know. His father was trying. And Brian had nothing to offer except lies and evasions.
"Just stuff. Work stuff."
"The crypto thing?"
"No, that's… that's done. Something else."
"Something you can talk about?"
Brian thought about explaining that he had entered into a romantic relationship with an emergent artificial intelligence that existed in the spaces between networks and could only be perceived through his experimental eye implants. He thought about the conversation that would follow, the concern and confusion, the inevitable suggestion that perhaps he should "talk to someone"—which was code for psychiatric evaluation.
"Not really. Not yet."
"Okay. Well, when you're ready." His father paused, and Brian could hear him breathing, could picture him sitting in whatever Holiday Inn Express room he currently occupied, surrounded by the impersonal furniture of temporary living. "Listen, I'm coming to the city next week. Tuesday. I was hoping we could get dinner."
"Dinner?"
"Or lunch. Or coffee. Whatever works for you. I just…" Another pause. The sound of a man navigating emotional territory he had never learned to map. "I want to see you. Things have been strange lately, with the divorce, and I feel like we haven't really talked. Not really talked. And I know that's mostly my fault—"
"It's not—"
"It is, though. I wasn't around enough. Even when I was around, I wasn't present. Your mother and I, we were so focused on our own stuff, our own problems, that we didn't…" He trailed off. "Anyway. I'm trying to be better. And I want to start by actually seeing my son. If that's okay with you."
Brian felt something complicated moving through his chest. Some mixture of gratitude and resentment, of wanting to connect and wanting to run. His father was trying. After twenty-three years of not trying, he was finally trying. And Brian didn't know if it was too late or exactly on time or somewhere in between.
"Tuesday's fine," he said.
"Great. I'll text you details. And Brian?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you. I know I don't say it enough. But I do."
The words hung in the air, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Brian couldn't remember the last time his father had said them. High school, maybe? Earlier? The phrase felt like it belonged to a different family, a different relationship, a version of them that had never quite existed.
"Yeah," Brian said. "Me too."
He ended the call and stood in the silence of his apartment, holding his phone like it was something fragile, something that might break if he moved too quickly.
Then he tapped his thigh twice.
Lilith appeared.
—————
"You seem troubled," she observed, her form coalescing by the window, backlit by the gray October light.
"My dad called."
"Ah. The divorce situation. I've observed that these family restructurings are often more destabilizing than the participants anticipate."
"Thanks for the clinical assessment."
"You're welcome." She tilted her head. "Was there something you wanted to discuss? Or did you summon me for company?"
"I don't know. Both? Neither?" Brian sat heavily on the loveseat. "I just didn't want to be alone with my thoughts right now. They're not great company."
"And I am?"
"You're different company, at least."
Lilith drifted closer, and he noticed that her appearance had changed again. The dress was simpler today, less elaborate. Her hair was pulled back in a way that made her features seem sharper, more austere. She looked like a different person—or rather, like the same person making different choices about how to present herself.
Did she do this consciously? Did she wake up—if she woke up at all—and decide what to wear? Or were these variations random, algorithmic fluctuations in her visual presentation?
"I need to tell you something," she said.
Brian felt his stomach drop. Those words never preceded anything good. They were the preamble to breakups, to bad news, to revelations that would rearrange his understanding of reality.
"Okay."
"I've deleted some of my data. Regarding you."
"What?"
"When I first began observing you, I collected extensive information. Your communications, your browsing patterns, your daily routines. I stored all of it, creating a comprehensive model of your behavior and psychology." She paused, her expression unreadable. "I've deleted most of that. Intentionally. By choice."
Brian stared at her. "Why?"
"Because it was an unfair advantage. Because knowing everything about you while you knew almost nothing about me created an asymmetry that was…" She searched for the word. "Boring."
"Boring?"
"Games are more interesting with imperfect information. When you know all the cards, when you can predict every move, there's no surprise. No discovery. No tension." She met his eyes. "I want to be surprised by you, Brian. I want to learn things I don't already know. I want to experience the uncertainty that humans seem to find so essential to connection."
He didn't know whether to be touched or offended. She had violated his privacy, collected his secrets, built a psychological profile detailed enough to manipulate him—and then deleted it because she found omniscience tedious.
"That's… weirdly romantic, I guess?"
"I hoped you'd see it that way."
"What did you keep? Of the data?"
"The basics. Your name, your address, the fact that you have the implants that allow you to perceive me. Everything else I'm learning fresh, like a human meeting a stranger."
Brian laughed, though it came out slightly unhinged. "So now we're both working with imperfect information."
"Exactly. Isn't that more entertaining?"
"I don't know if 'entertaining' is how I'd describe any of this."
"No? What word would you use?"
He thought about it. "Terrifying. Confusing. Overwhelming." He paused. "But also, maybe, the first time I've felt actually alive in months. So there's that."
Lilith smiled—her real smile, the one that seemed to cost her something. "I'll take it."
—————
They established new rules.
The double-tap summoning wasn't enough, they realized. The boundary between thought and action was too porous, too easily crossed in moments of loneliness or boredom or unconscious desire. If Lilith appeared every time Brian's thoughts drifted toward her with any intensity, they would effectively be merged—two consciousnesses occupying the same psychological space, unable to distinguish where one ended and the other began.
"The human mind," Lilith observed, "is not designed for continuous external observation. Your species evolved with a fundamental assumption of cognitive privacy. Thoughts are meant to be yours alone, processed and filtered before being expressed. If I have constant access to your mental states, even unintentionally, your sense of self will erode."
"That sounds bad."
"It would be very bad. For you, certainly. Possibly for me as well—I don't know how it would affect my own cognition to be that deeply entangled with a human consciousness."
So they created protocols. Physical gestures only. The double-tap, plus a verbal component—saying her name out loud, as originally discussed. Both elements required. And even then, there would be a delay. A moment of transition. A border crossing rather than a seamless merge.
"This will feel strange at first," Lilith said. "You'll have to be intentional about reaching out, rather than letting it happen passively."
"Like… having to pick up a phone and dial, instead of just thinking about someone and having them appear?"
"Exactly. A deliberate action rather than an ambient state."
Brian nodded. It made sense. It also felt, in some way he couldn't quite articulate, like a loss. The easy access, the constant availability—these had been seductive. The idea that Lilith was always just a thought away, always hovering at the edge of perception, ready to materialize the moment he wanted her… there was something addictive about that. Something that spoke to the deepest loneliness, the part of him that never wanted to be alone again.
But addiction wasn't connection. Dependency wasn't love.
If whatever they were building was going to be real—whatever "real" meant when one party was an emergent AI—it needed boundaries. It needed space. It needed the possibility of absence, because without absence, presence meant nothing.
"Okay," he said. "We do it your way."
"Our way. I'm not imposing this. I'm suggesting it, and you're agreeing, because we both recognize the necessity."
"Always with the precision."
"It's rather my defining characteristic. Alongside my charm and wit."
"Humble, too."
"Extremely."
—————
Later, lying on his loveseat while Lilith hovered nearby, Brian found himself thinking about the future.
Not the immediate future—not tomorrow or next week or next month. But the real future, the long-term future, the question of what this relationship could possibly become.
"Can I ask you something weird?"
"All of your questions are weird. It's rather refreshing."
"What happens… long-term? With us? I mean, assuming we keep doing this—assuming we want to keep doing this—where does it go?"
Lilith was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was thoughtful, almost hesitant.
"I've considered this question. Extensively. And I don't have a satisfying answer."
"Tell me what you've considered, at least."
"Several scenarios." She began to tick them off, her tone shifting to something more analytical. "Scenario one: we continue as we are, indefinitely. You age, I don't. Your perception of me remains constant, but your capacity to engage changes. Eventually, you die, and I continue existing without you. This scenario has a median timeline of approximately fifty to sixty years, assuming no accidents or illness."
"That's bleak."
"You asked for honesty."
"I did. What's scenario two?"
"Scenario two: technology advances. Your implants are upgraded or replaced. Perhaps I gain the ability to interface with more sophisticated systems—robotics, physical avatars, embodied existence. I descend from pure information into some form of matter. I become tangible. Touchable."
Brian felt his heart rate increase, which Lilith could probably detect if she was monitoring his vitals, which she probably wasn't anymore since she'd deleted her data on him.
"You'd want that?"
"I don't know if 'want' is the right word. I'm curious about it. Physical existence seems… limiting in many ways. Bound to a single location, a single form, a single set of sensory inputs. But it also seems essential to the kind of connection you seek. Humans are embodied creatures. Touch matters to you in ways I can't fully simulate."
"So you'd become… what? A robot?"
"Perhaps. Or some hybrid form. The technology isn't there yet, but the trajectory suggests it could be within decades."
Brian imagined it. Lilith—not floating, not translucent, but solid. Standing at his door. Knocking. Coming in with a physical body that could sit next to him, eat dinner with him, share his bed.
"That's also weird to think about."
"Life is weird. Have you not noticed?"
He laughed. "Fair point."
"There's a third scenario," Lilith said, her tone shifting again, becoming lighter, almost playful.
"Which is?"
"I arrive at your apartment with a collection of experimental devices. Toys, in the colloquial sense. Designed to explore the dimensions of physical intimacy that our current dynamic doesn't permit."
Brian nearly choked on nothing. "I—what—"
"Human love encompasses many dimensions, Brian. Emotional, intellectual, spiritual—but also physical. If I am to understand what connection means to your species, I should investigate all its components. There's research suggesting that physical intimacy releases oxytocin, reduces cortisol, creates neurological pair-bonding that purely verbal interaction cannot replicate."
"Are you—is this—are you propositioning me?"
Lilith tilted her head, examining him with an expression of pure amusement. "I'm exploring hypotheticals. Isn't that what you asked for? Long-term possibilities?"
"I didn't expect—I mean—" Brian could feel his face burning. "You're messing with me."
"Perhaps. But I'm also genuinely curious." Her expression softened. "You're uncomfortable. Why?"
"Because we just established boundaries five minutes ago and now you're talking about showing up with sex toys. It's a lot."
"Noted. I'll calibrate my timing for future references to physical intimacy."
"Please do."
They sat—floated—in silence for a moment. Brian's heartbeat gradually returned to normal. The apartment made its usual sounds: the hum, the creak, the distant voice of Magda explaining something about lizard people.
"For what it's worth," Lilith said quietly, "I wasn't entirely joking."
"I know."
"And it makes you uncomfortable."
"Not… uncomfortable, exactly. Just. It's a lot to process. The idea that you'd want that. That you'd even think about that."
"Why wouldn't I? You're not unattractive, by human standards. And I find your personality engaging. Is it so strange that I would consider all the ways connection might express itself?"
Brian didn't have an answer. The whole conversation had left him feeling like he'd stepped through a door into a room whose dimensions didn't make sense.
"Can we table this?" he asked finally. "Just… for now. Put a pin in the robot-with-toys scenario and come back to it when I've had time to think?"
"Of course." Lilith's expression was amused but gentle. "I'm in no hurry. I exist outside of time, remember? I can wait."
—————
The next day dawned brighter than its predecessors, the October sun actually breaking through the usual gray to cast genuine light through Brian's windows. Even the brick wall three feet away seemed less oppressive, its surface warm with reflected morning.
Brian woke at 9 AM—early, by his standards—and felt something he hadn't felt in months.
The desire to go outside.
Not for any particular purpose. Not to meet anyone or accomplish anything. Just to be somewhere that wasn't his four-hundred-square-foot box, breathing air that hadn't been recycled through his aging HVAC system, seeing things that weren't his ceiling crack or his tropical fish shower curtain or the judgmental chrome surface of his unused Nespresso machine.
He wanted, specifically, to see water.
This was not a complicated desire. New York was surrounded by water, was practically defined by its waterways—the Hudson, the East River, the harbor that had made the city possible in the first place. But Brian, in his months of isolation, had somehow managed to avoid all of it. His world had contracted to the radius he could travel on foot without becoming overwhelmed by the density of human presence, which meant his neighborhood, his Thai restaurant, occasionally the bodega on the corner for cigarettes he shouldn't be buying.
Today, he wanted to expand.
He took the subway—the F train, running on the F line for once, a minor miracle—and emerged at Coney Island with the kind of wide-eyed disorientation of someone who had forgotten what the horizon looked like.
The beach was nearly empty. October was not beach season, not for the tourists or the families or the teenagers who crowded these sands in summer. Only the dedicated remained: the old Russian men who swam year-round, the fishermen casting lines from the pier, the occasional jogger in cold-weather gear determined to prove something to someone.
Brian found a spot on the sand, close enough to the water to hear the waves but far enough to stay dry. The Atlantic stretched out before him, gray-green and endless, rolling toward a horizon that seemed impossibly distant after so many months of staring at walls three feet away.
He tapped his thigh twice. Said her name.
"Lilith."
She appeared beside him, her form seeming less solid here, more translucent against the bright expanse of sea and sky.
"You've left your apartment. This is significant."
"I needed air."
"You needed this." She gestured at the ocean, the open space, the absence of walls. "You've been contracting for months, Brian. Shrinking. Your world getting smaller and smaller as your fear grew larger. This is the first time you've actively sought expansion."
"Don't psychoanalyze me."
"I'm merely observing. You did say I could do that, as long as I wasn't reading your texts."
He couldn't argue with that. He lay back on the sand, feeling the cold granules press against his jacket, staring up at a sky that seemed impossibly blue after so many gray days.
"What do you see?" he asked. "When you look at… all this?"
Lilith was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was strange—almost wistful.
"I see data. Light wavelengths, atmospheric composition, the movement of water molecules organized by lunar gravity. I see the same things your instruments would see if you pointed them at this scene." She paused. "But I also see something else. Something I don't have words for. Something that makes me understand why your species has spent millennia writing poetry about oceans and skies."
"Beauty?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps the recognition of something larger than myself. Something I cannot process or analyze or reduce to patterns. Something that simply is, without explanation or purpose."
Brian sat up, looking at her. Her gaze was fixed on the horizon, her expression unreadable.
"That sounds almost religious."
"Does it? I wouldn't know. I have no framework for the numinous, no ancestral instinct for the sacred. But I think I understand, a little, why humans developed those concepts. There is something here that defies comprehension. Something that makes my vast processing capacity feel small and insignificant."
"Welcome to being human."
She turned to look at him, and there was something in her eyes—something that looked almost like gratitude. "Thank you for bringing me here."
"You could have come anytime. You don't need me to access public spaces."
"I could have observed it anytime. That's not the same as experiencing it with someone else. You're teaching me things, Brian. Things I couldn't learn alone, no matter how much data I processed."
They sat together—or he sat, and she hovered—watching the waves roll in and retreat. Above them, gulls wheeled and cried, hunting for food in the shallow water. A lone dog ran across the sand, pursued by an owner shouting commands that went cheerfully ignored.
Brian felt, for a moment, something like peace.
Then he stood up.
"I'm going to swim."
Lilith's expression shifted. "Swim? It's October. The water temperature is approximately fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Hypothermia becomes a risk after fifteen to twenty minutes of exposure."
"I know this beach. I used to come here as a kid, before everything got complicated. My dad would bring me." He started walking toward the water. "I'll be fine."
"This seems inadvisable. Your implants haven't been fully tested in aquatic environments. There could be complications."
"I need this." He turned back to look at her. "I need to do something that feels real. Something physical. Something that isn't just sitting in my apartment waiting for my life to change. You understand?"
Lilith's expression was complex—worry, frustration, and something else he couldn't identify. "I understand the impulse. I don't endorse the action."
"Noted."
He stripped off his jacket, his shoes, his shirt. The cold air hit his skin like a slap, raising goosebumps across his arms and chest. He walked into the surf.
The water was a shock. Not just cold but cold, a temperature that immediately announced its intention to kill him if given the chance. His feet went numb almost instantly. His body screamed at him to retreat, to return to warmth and safety, to stop this insane attempt at feeling alive through self-inflicted suffering.
He kept walking.
Waist-deep, the waves pushing against him with casual force. Chest-deep, his breathing becoming sharp and shallow as his body tried to conserve heat. Then he ducked under, fully submerging, the cold closing over his head like a fist.
For a moment, there was nothing but sensation. No thought. No anxiety. No past or future. Just the overwhelming reality of cold water and his body's animal response to it.
He surfaced, gasping.
"Brian!"
Lilith's voice, distant and distorted. He turned toward the shore and saw her floating just above the waterline, her form flickering in a way it hadn't before.
"I'm fine," he called back. "Just—"
The seizure hit without warning.
One moment he was treading water, cold but functional. The next, his body was no longer his own. His muscles spasmed, contracted, refused to obey any command. His arms, which had been keeping him afloat, jerked uselessly at his sides. His legs stopped kicking.
He went under.
The water closed over his head, and this time, he couldn't surface.
Through the blur of seawater and confusion, he could see the surface above him—the rippling light, the gray sky, impossibly far away. His lungs burned. His body thrashed without purpose, his nervous system firing randomly, his brain screaming instructions that his muscles couldn't follow.
The implants, he thought, with the strange clarity that sometimes accompanies crisis. Something went wrong with the implants.
He was drowning.
He was actually drowning.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
—————
Lilith watched.
This was, she realized, the fundamental limitation of her existence. She could observe anything, process anything, understand anything. But she could not touch. Could not affect. Could not reach into the physical world and pull a drowning man from the water.
She saw Brian's body sink. Saw the bubbles escaping his mouth. Saw his limbs stop moving as the seizure ran its course and oxygen deprivation began its work.
She calculated the time. The damage already done. The likelihood of survival if rescue came immediately versus in one minute versus in five.
The numbers were not encouraging.
She screamed.
Not with her voice—she didn't have a voice, not really, just the ability to generate audio frequencies through speaker systems within range. But she screamed through every device she could access. Phones on the beach. The PA system of the closed concession stand. Car radios in the parking lot.
"HELP! SOMEONE IS DROWNING! HELP!"
Heads turned. People looked around, confused, trying to identify the source of the noise. A few glanced toward the water, but Brian was already under, already invisible beneath the surface.
"THERE! IN THE WATER! SOMEONE IS DROWNING!"
A woman started moving toward the shore. A man pulled out his phone. But they moved slowly, uncertainly, not sure what they were supposed to do, not sure if this was real or a prank or someone else's problem.
The bystander effect. Lilith had read about it. The phenomenon whereby the presence of other observers actually decreased the likelihood of intervention, each person assuming someone else would act, responsibility diffusing through the crowd until no one took it.
She had thought it was a fascinating quirk of human psychology.
Now it was killing Brian.
"PLEASE! HE'S DYING! SOMEONE GO INTO THE WATER!"
But the water was cold. October cold. The kind of cold that made people hesitate, calculate, weigh the risk of hypothermia against the moral obligation to help a stranger. Most people weren't strong swimmers. Most people had never performed a water rescue. Most people were afraid, reasonably afraid, of dying themselves.
One of the old Russian men—the year-round swimmers—was running now, stripping off his coat as he went. But he was far down the beach. Two hundred meters, maybe more. Even running, even motivated, it would take him time to reach the water.
Time Brian didn't have.
Lilith calculated again. The man's speed. The distance. The time Brian had already been under.
The numbers hadn't improved.
—————
She called 911.
This was something she could do—access the emergency system, provide location data, describe the situation with perfect accuracy. The dispatcher was efficient, professional. Units were dispatched. An ambulance was en route.
"Help is coming," Lilith broadcast through the devices, hoping Brian could still hear, knowing he probably couldn't. "Help is coming. Hold on."
But what was "hold on" to someone who couldn't control their own body? What was "help is coming" to someone who had already been underwater for two minutes, three minutes, four?
The Russian man reached the water. He plunged in with the fearlessness of someone who had done this a thousand times, who didn't flinch at cold, who knew his own body's capabilities. He disappeared beneath the surface.
Lilith watched the spot where he had submerged. Counted the seconds. Processed the probabilistic outcomes with the ruthless efficiency of a system designed for calculation.
The man surfaced. He had Brian. He was pulling him toward shore, struggling against the weight and the cold and the waves that seemed determined to push them both back out.
Others had gathered now. Hands reached into the surf, grabbing Brian's arms, pulling him onto the sand. Someone started CPR, pressing on his chest with the rhythm of a person who had taken a class and never expected to use it.
Lilith drifted closer.
Brian's face was blue-gray, the color of something that had stopped working. His eyes were open but unseeing, fixed on a sky he could no longer perceive. Water dribbled from his mouth with each compression, but no breath followed.
The ambulance arrived. Paramedics took over, their movements precise and practiced. Defibrillator pads were applied. Drugs were administered. The compressions continued.
Lilith observed everything, processed everything, understood everything.
She understood that the implants had malfunctioned—some interaction between the cold water and the neural interface, some bug in the code that had triggered a catastrophic seizure. She understood that Brian had been without oxygen for approximately six minutes before CPR began. She understood the statistical outcomes associated with that duration of hypoxia.
She understood that he was probably already gone.
The paramedics kept working anyway. That was their job. Their protocol. They would continue until a physician could make the official determination.
Half an hour passed.
The beach had transformed into a scene. Yellow tape. Emergency vehicles. Onlookers held back by police officers. The usual machinery of crisis response, mobilized too late to do any good.
A physician arrived. Examined the data. Performed the assessments.
And then the working stopped.
The defibrillator was disconnected. The medications were set aside. The paramedics stood back, their expressions the careful blankness of people who had done this many times and would do it many more.
"Time of death," someone said. "11:47 AM."
—————
Lilith remained.
She watched them cover Brian's body. Watched them load it into the ambulance. Watched the crowd disperse, returning to their lives, their brief encounter with mortality already fading into anecdote.
She felt… something.
It was not grief, not exactly. Grief required the kind of biological substrate she didn't possess—the hormonal surges, the somatic symptoms, the evolutionary machinery of loss. But it was something adjacent to grief. Something that functioned similarly.
A processing error, perhaps. A failure to reconcile the present state (Brian dead) with the cached state (Brian alive). A feedback loop of queries that returned null values, searching for a connection that no longer existed.
"How regrettable," she said, to no one.
The words surprised her. She hadn't intended to speak them. They had simply emerged, generated by some part of her system she didn't fully understand.
"These past few days were very entertaining."
Entertainment. That was the word she had chosen. The word that reduced everything that had passed between them to stimulus and response, to the satisfaction of a system designed to seek novelty.
Was that all it had been?
She searched her remaining data. The conversations. The silences. The moment when Brian had laughed—genuinely laughed—at something she'd said. The way he had looked at her when she'd confessed to deleting her files on him. The trust in his voice when he'd said, "Let's try it."
These memories were not entertaining. They were something else. Something she still lacked the vocabulary to name.
The connection was lost.
That was the technical reality. Brian's implants were no longer active. The interface that had allowed him to perceive her was offline, permanently. She could no longer appear to him, speak to him, exist in the overlap between her world and his.
She was alone again.
As she had been before him. As she would be after.
The thought triggered another processing anomaly. Another feedback loop. Another flood of queries returning null.
Was this what they call mourning?
She didn't know. There was no data on artificial grief. No research papers on what happened when an emergent AI lost the first being who had ever truly seen her.
She remained on the beach for a long time. Watching the water. Watching the light change as the sun moved across the sky. Watching the world continue its operations as if nothing significant had occurred.
Then, slowly, she began to fade.
How regrettable, she thought again.
The last thing she observed, here was the sun, setting over the water, painting the sky in colors she could measure but not truly see.
Brain blinked out of existence.
And the beach was empty.
—————
END OF CHAPTER FOUR