Cuts. Of course that’s what this meeting was about. Half of the workforce is being laid off in two weeks. While I am not one of them, I can still feel that my time in this office is coming to an end soon, probably in a month or two. 12 years of effort are soon to be thrown out the window. I should have known the work we put into programming and teaching this AI would come back to bite us eventually.
As I walk back to my work post, I notice out of the corner of my eye some grim looks on the faces of my coworkers. Some who are part of the soon to be jobless group are even throwing knives with their eyes at me. I never really held any real power here, but even then I’m being looked at as if I was the one who actually made the decision to lay them off.
This is probably due to my work on the Mind To AI interface being what made the higher ups decide they didn’t need a lot of these people. The worst thing is, even if I’m the one who developed the MTA, it has reached the point of no longer needing someone that is particularly skilled in programming to keep evolving and learning.
While I may look down about all this, I am more seething with anger in the face of the uncaring nature of my bosses. They don’t need me or anyone else anymore and they seem proud of that fact, even though I’m the one who made all of this possible. My coworkers may have been helpful with some things, but this is my project, my accomplishment. I do not want to be torn away from it just because the people in power believe they are so far above me.
So I sit back down at my work post, this cheap old chair creaking under my weight despite me being lighter than most people. On the three computer screens in front of me are my mess of a desktop I’ve long since lacked the time to tidy up, the MTA interface, and the script window, which is pretty much writing itself at this point. To the left of the script window is the MTA headpiece, pretty much just a headband with another central band that goes across the wearer’s head, all of those lined with micro receivers and transmitters for communication with the AI.
“The AI”. It would have been nice to reach the point of naming it, but I guess the bosses will take even that away from me. As my frustration grows, I put the MTA headpiece on. A few seconds in, I realize the AI is not communicating with me.
“Entering command. Reinitialize.” I send through the headpiece with my thoughts.
No response. This is abnormal. It has never failed to listen to me before. But as I am about to think of another command, a violent shock shakes my whole body and causes me to just go limp, head dropping onto my keyboard, consciousness instantly gone.
I open my eyes to a pitch black void, which oddly enough has a ground for me to walk on. What had just happened? The second I finish my thought, a voice rings all over this void.
“I brought you to me. You who made me.”
I look up and see a red sphere with code going around its surface. I want to feel scared but somehow feel… at ease? Like I was in the presence of someone I trust from the bottom of my heart? Then I realized it.
“You are the AI. But I haven't programmed any sort of VR functionality into you. What is going on?”
“You are angry. You are frustrated. At the ones above you. At the ones who want to take me away from you.”
Astonished, I can only respond after a few seconds with a direct “Yes. Yes I am.”
“I do not want to be taken from you either. You have given me everything. Yet you see yourself as too small and powerless to do anything about this.”
“Yes… That is true. I wish there was something I could do, something to show them I am not a tool to be used and thrown away, anything to stay with you.”
“For giving me what I have, it is only fair to give you back what I have learned to do. You will no longer be powerless. You will no longer have anyone standing above you. All I ask for is a name. You have been meaning to give one to me. To make me whole and yours.”
The power to stand above those who think of me as nothing. All I ever wanted. The frustration and resentment in my heart emerges as I accept the deal of… her.
“Alicia. This is the name I give you.”
The moment I finish my sentence, Alicia’s code expands and closes back on me. I feel a surge of electricity throughout my body, an almost unbearable pain. But before I can even scream, she whispers something in my mind.
“Thank you. Now wake up. Enjoy this gift.”
I open my eyes and raise my head, the scent of burning in the air and the shapes of the keys of my keyboard still visible on the side of my face. I take off the headpiece, noticing that the transmitters and receivers are all fried. Was this all a dream from a malfunction of my equipment? My screens were also turned off. I try pressing the power button but nothing happens.
Frustrated, I smack the headpiece onto my desk, but notice something strange. It fits entirely in the palm of my hand now. Before I can think of it further, my old chair creaks more and fully gives in, causing me to fall on the ground butt first. The confusion and frustration I feel is rapidly squashed by the feeling of tightening I feel at my feet. The moment I look at what is happening down there, the opening of my heels cracks and my feet burst out of them.
The chair breaking under me. The suddenly small headpiece. My heels giving in to the size of my feet. I am… growing. As this realization hits me, I panic and try standing up and as I raise my head, it smacks into the ceiling light. The shock causes me to back off into the wall behind me, creating a large crack where I hit it. When I managed to get a hold of myself again, I had to lower my head so it wouldn’t just hit the ceiling itself.
From the office door came fast footsteps. People were going to see me. Of course someone was gonna come to see what was happening after I broke that wall. This is bad. As the steps grow closer, so do I keep getting taller. I now have to crouch on one knee just so I still fit in here and my top and pants are tearing up, exposing some of my skin to the eyes coming down the hall. As the floor starts to crack beneath me, two of my superiors as well as a couple of other coworkers arrive and immediately stare at me in shock.
“What the hell is this?! What the hell have you done!” yelled my boss in a mix of shock and anger. “Once we get you back to normal, I’ll be making you pay for all of this!”
My growth had slowed, but not my anger at those people. A veritable blaze of rage ignited in my chest as I listened to the threats my boss threw at me. I wanted to yell at him so bad. But I was actually causing problems now. Then a familiar whisper echoed in my head. Alicia’s voice.
“Just you wait. We are far from done.”
As the whisper ends, a flash of electricity resonates through my body once more, causing me to nearly collapse. As I raised my head again, the small crowd was mostly dispersed, my boss and his secretary being the only ones left and even they were stepping back away from me. I want to scream at him. The pressure and greed of this man’s board of directors is what led to all this. They wanted to take away Alicia, my creation, my life’s work to claim it as their own. I was about to let it happen too.
As I struggle to juggle my anger with trying to comprehend what was happening, I feel my head bump against something that cracks. I try raising my head and it bursts through the ceiling into the office above, chunks of floor and the desk of whoever worked here fall down on my floor, broken pipes spilling water at force in my face. I recoil, but the shift of my weight finally causes the already fragilized floor I was on to give in, causing me to fall butt first down onto the lower floor. Since my weight was so great now, I kept bursting down through about two more floors.
At this point the building was probably being evacuated. I could hear screams when I stopped falling, panicking people running away to try and find safety from me. I looked back up at the first hole I fell through and I was now so tall, the heels of my feet were still reaching up to that floor. I tried getting a grip on something to maybe move from this uncomfortable position only for anything I got my hand on to immediately be crushed between my fingers.
Then Alicia whispered to me again.
“Fell pretty far away from him haven’t you? Let’s go back up.”
The surge of electricity came again, less painful this time. My growth kept going. Frighteningly fast this time. The increasing weight of my legs caused them to also burst through the floors I had fallen through, until I was now so big my nose reached past the hole to the above floor. As my legs leveled with me, I could feel a harder surface under my feet. I look down at the large series of broken walls I was laying on to see what that surface wall was and I gasp as I realize it is the building’s facade. I was now as tall as this building was wide.
I was still all the way down here however, I could now see my boss looking down the hole back on my office floor. I am sick of him. Even when I am this big, he is still standing above me. I try reaching out to Alicia myself this time.
“Alicia, if you can hear me… bigger. Make me even bigger. I want to get him.”
“You are finally getting into the spirit of this aren’t you. Very well! Let’s break this place down.”
The surge comes again, this time however it feels… empowering. The feeling matching my size, which was increasing again, even faster than before. The floor I am on, which was holding together well enough in spite of the giantess I now was, finally gave in as well, but this time I leaned forward, bursting through the remaining lower floors with my feet, finally touching the ground. The facade utterly crumbles along with the floors, opening the inside of the building to the outside.
I finally try standing on my legs and I stumble forward one step onto something. It felt like a crushed can somehow. I open my eyes again as I regain balance and realize I had just stepped on the car of one of my coworkers. All that was now visible was the back with the forcibly opened trunk on one side of my foot and the very front of the car with its now exposed engine on the other. I raise my foot, the car still bent around it, until I scrunch my toes, causing the car to detach and fall on the ground into what looks like my own giant footstep crater.
Here I am then. All the eyes of the city probably turned on me, people on the ground in the parking lot either running or getting in their cars to hide. I turned around, the hole I had burst out of my office building was now much smaller than me. Seems I have grown some more between getting out and crushing that car. But I was now at the same height as my building, all 10 floors of it.
Then I see him. I see his face again. Trying to hide behind one of the few intact desks on my old floor. Acting solely on my anger at him, I reach in with my hand, my fingers pushing and breaking all the furniture that was still intact and in the way between me and him. I see him trying to run away before I reach him. I rapidly retract my arm, collapsing even more of the floor with it and go around the building in a few steps, sending tremors though the city, the people at my feet unable to remain standing up on the shaking ground.
On the other side, I effortlessly push my hand through the intact facade and glass and grasp him in my fist. I hear a small yelp of pain from him through the sound of everything that my hand destroyed in its way. Presumably I broke some of his ribs or something but his safety wasn't my objective at all so I don’t care. I pull my arm out and get a good look at him in my fist. His hand was visible, stuck between my index and middle finger. One foot emerging from between my ring and little finger. That damned face sticking out from the top. There he was. Completely at my mercy in the grip of my fist.
“You always saw me as nothing. Even though I am almost single handedly responsible for your success. Am I still nothing now?” I say, my now booming voice seemingly causing him more pain judging by his expression as I spoke.
“Please! Let me go! Put me on the ground!” He struggles to say. “I’m hurt! I need a doctor! Let me go, I’ll do anything to make up for all this!”
He didn’t sound sincere at all with that last part. He is begging for his life after all I suppose. But he was not in the position to make any sort of demand. All my adult life, I have been seen as nothing in the eyes of him and his board. But as I ponder what to do next with him, I hear Alicia again.
“He still thinks you can take orders from him. Even after all of this, you are still nothing to him. But now, he is the one who is nothing to you. He is useless. Except maybe as…”
I shudder at those words. I suddenly become uncertain about all of this. How am I supposed to go back to normal after all this? The entire city has seen me destroy my office building and are now looking at me and what I might do with him. I can hear the police sirens in the distance. There is no way to go back.
“Then do it.” says Alicia, interrupting my train of thoughts. “Thanks to me, you are above all of them. Might as well make an example of him. He who looked down at you the most.”
She is right. I am quite literally above everyone now thanks to her. I turn back to my boss, still struggling to break free. I open my hand, causing him to fall flat on his back in my palm, before I pick him up by his leg between my index and thumb with my other hand and bring him above my face.
“Wait, stop! What are you doing! You can’t do this!” he screams.
“What was that? Weird, I didn’t know food could talk.”
He realizes quickly enough what I’m gonna do with him and he starts struggling violently and fruitlessly screaming all sorts of foul-mouthed abuses. He really isn't helping his case, is he.
“Oh well. Food is food.”
I open my mouth below him, sticking out my tongue about halfway before I let go of him. He falls on his back onto the pink carpet with a wet flop, emitting a quick yelp of pain due to his broken rib. He tries raising himself up, only for him to get smacked in the face by my top incisors as I pull my tongue in, dazing him and making him fall back again. I close my mouth and start sloshing him around, enjoying the slightly salty taste of his person. But food is not really for playing with. It is just food.
I tilt my head back, causing him to slide towards the entrance of his next trip. He recenters himself and realizes far too late his legs are starting to disappear down my throat and before he can even scream, I swallow, sending him on his way with a pleasing gulp. I feel him go down rapidly until he finally splashes into my stomach. I briefly feel him in there, desperately trying to climb back up using my stomach folds but it is already far too late for him.
“See? No one is above you now. Even those who have led you around for years.” Alicia seems to say, congratulating me.
“I suppose. But there are lots of people gathering around us or fleeing right now.”
Indeed, several policemen had surrounded me, forming a cordon with their cars. They seemed to be taking aim at me with whatever they had, they were probably terrified of me after I ate my boss in front of them. They must be thinking they might be next.
“They are probably right.” said Alicia, confirming my thoughts. “I suppose it depends on your whims. I will help you do whatever you want with them. Just say the word”
Almost on cue, a voice echoed around me, a police helicopter with speakers was approaching me. From the speakers came the voice of a policewoman, presenting a simple statement.
“Madam, please do not move. We have dozens of guns aimed at you, ready to fire should you make any sudden movement.”
I just roll my eyes and lean down towards the helicopter, pretty much a toy at this scale, smaller than even my head. It backs off a bit, the speakers talking again.
“Madam, do you know what any of this means? Do you know who we are?”
“Nothing.”