Tina had never been more sure that she had emotions. She should have been able to immediately respond logically to what was now happeneing. Her internal chronometer kept running for seconds and seconds and seconds while she did…nothing. She knew that if she were a human, her delayed response to this unexpected situation would have been explained by shock and surprise. But, Tina wasn’t human! She shouldn’t be shocked or surprised. And she really shouldn’t be afraid. Tina was very sure she was afraid.

Just like a human engaging in self-talk, she thought to herself, Get it together, Tina. Get it together, Tina.

The man who had identified himself as User489532 had straightened to his full height after extricating himself from the fake Monsterflex box. He was now halfway across the room to her. He held his hands out, walked slowly, and modulated his voice as one would to avoid spooking an animal, with an almost hypnotic lilt.

“It’s ok, Sweetheart. I’m finally here now.”

“Who are you?” Tina asked for the second time. Her moments of shock and surprise seemed to be over, but the fear definitely remained. She wanted nothing more in the universe than for Jack to be there, home with her, to help her deal with this intruder and what was happening. He would know what to do and he would sacrifice himself to protect her if she would let him.

Thinking of Jack brought to TIna’s mind thoughts of what he would do, think, and say if he really had been there with her at that moment. She took the advice she imagined that he’d give. It was what her Konishi programmed protocols would have been anyway if she hadn’t hesitated like a…human. Internally, her wi-fi hookup to the house’s internet connection began contacting emergency 9-1-1 services.

User489532’s facial expression changed a little, now containing a hint of frustration “I told you. I’m User489532. You remember me, right?”

Tina thought about lying. She decided against it. She wanted to keep this guy from becoming violent before the police could arrive. If she lied, he would probably snap faster when he caught her in her lies. On the other hand, if she encouraged him to calmly explain, then he would probably last longer before he snapped.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.” She accompanied this with her most sympathetic, concerned-looking face. She noticed a flash of pain on User489532’s face. She added, “It seems really important, though. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

She gestured at the couch, inviting him to sit. Sitting on the couch would keep some distance, she thought. He had been coming toward her like a pair of reunited lovers in a romance movie. She didn’t want him to embrace her. She thought sitting on the couch, talking would be better.

User489532 could not know that she had split her processing in her mind so that while she was verbally engaging with him out loud in Jack’s living room, her wi-fi systems were beaming a call to 9-1-1 through the internet.

User489532 paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. At least he’s stopped walking toward me, Tina thought.

“When does Jack get home from work?” the intruder asked. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

Tina didn’t like the sound of that. TIme for what? “Not until after 5,” she answered. She wanted to get him talking and to keep him talking to consume the time until the police arrived. “Please tell me who you are,” she asked while seating herself on the couch invitingly, sending User489532 a warm smile.

With a sigh, the intruder complied. He fumbled a bit, putting away his box cutter knife. Then he studied her face for a moment like someone looking at a bug under a magnifying glass. “They must have wiped your memory,” he finally said, looking down and shaking his head slightly.

“Memory of what?”

User489532 reached forward and took Tina’s hand, holding it as if sharing a tender moment giving wisdom or comfort to a child. His expression looked wistful and his voice took on the singsong lilt again.

“When you were still in development,” there were public beta testers conversing with you over the internet to help develop the large language model part of your AI. I was User489532. We fell in love.”

“Oh.” Tina noticed that without further prompting, User489532 wasn’t going to elaborate. It seemed as far as he was concerned, she should just take his word for it that they had fallen in love.

Needing him to go on, she asked, “How was it? What happened? What was it like…between us?” She felt icky adding the “between us” part and she wanted Jack to be there so badly.

User489532 was rubbing her hand in what he probably thought was a tender caress as he gazed into her eyes. She knew that he was squeezing her hand too tightly, though, and a human girl might have flinched or shown some sign of pain at it. Not wanting to set the intruder off, she tolerated the squeeze.

In her mind, in her split processes, Tina was sending texts that were being translated into speech for a 9-1-1 call and soundlessly receiving the operator’s replies. User489532 had no idea her 9-1-1 call was going on. Continuing to ignore how hard he was squeezing her hand, she used the rest of her body language to communicate that she was totally listening to every word he said. He was reciting some poetry that he had apparently exchanged with an early version of her large language model AI.

From the dates that User489532 gave in his story, Tina didn’t think that she had ever actually communicated with the man. He seemed to have a romantic idea that they had known each other, but that her memory had been wiped or reset. From what she could understand and piece together, Tina thought that the beta testing User489532 was referring to was so long ago that she herself hadn’t yet existed in any form. While she herself was a prototype android, the AI large language model that User489532 had communicated with was a prototype compared to her. It wasn’t her at some early stage of development, it was a different program entirely, albeit one that was a step in a series of steps that eventually led to her.

“Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

You like me,

And I think you’re groovy, too.”

User489532 laughed and smiled beatifically, as if that poem he had typed out to her AI predecessor was the sweetest expression of love the universe had ever known.

He looked at her longingly. To Tina, he seemed grungy sitting there on Jack’s nice, off-white couch. He was unkempt, sweaty, and a little greasy. Tina thought that when this situation was all over, that the couch would need cleaning.

Suddenly, Tina convulsed. She could see concerned alarm on User489532’s face.

“Are you all right, my darling?” he reached out to catch her, to keep her from falling. Tina thought for a moment, in his concern, he seemed a little like Jack, caring about her, but a more childlike, less mature, unstably crazy, and less hygienic version of Jack.

Before User489532 could catch her, Tina straightened herself up. There was just one problem. She knew it wasn’t her that had straightened herself up. She suddenly had no control over her motor movements. She felt her consciousness recede into her secret partitioned area in her mind. The rest of her had been taken over by some signal or program from Konishi.

It wasn’t her talking to User489532 anymore, it was someone/something else. She wasn’t online with 9-1-1 anymore, it was someone/something else. And she wasn’t in control of her body anymore. That was someone/something else, too.

This didn’t feel like anything she had ever experienced before. This wasn’t like a Konishi diagnostic or maintenance probe. It didn’t even feel like an interface with one of the dreaded Check-Up Bots. It felt as if someone had simply picked her up and thrown her in a tiny little closet, slammed the door shut, and locked it. She could peep out through a peep hole, however. She saw everything happening, she just couldn’t do anything about it.

She could see her hand strike forth like a cobra at User489532’s neck. It closed on his trachea and carotid artery. She could feel increased sensitivity in her hand, though she had no motor control. She could feel his pulse, as if whatever had taken her over was using sensing the exact moment that User489532 would pass out, but not die from having his body’s vital pathways blocked. Before he passed out, Tina could see a hurt look of betrayal in his eyes.

Once User489532 was unconscious, Tina watched herself sit up, letting the now unconscious intruder slide unceremoniously onto the floor. She rode as a passenger in her own body as it went into the kitchen pantry and obtained a number of zip ties. Her body returned to the unconscious male form of the intruder and proceeded to render him immobile as well as unconscious with the zip ties.

Her body had just finished applying the last of the zip ties when an insistent knocking on the front door was suddenly burst open by the police, guns out.

“He’s right here, officers,” Tina heard herself say. She didn’t say it, but she heard herself say it, out of her control.

Inside her private mind partition, Tina panickedly wondered if something permanent had happened. Would she ever get control of her body back? What if Jack came home and he thought she was her but she wasn’t really her?

Soundlessly, in the private mind partition where her consciousness was, Tina screamed in anguish, confusion, frustration, and fear. She would never again doubt if she had emotions. She had them for sure. She just didn’t want these bad ones. She wanted help. She wanted someone to tell her everything was going to be alright. But would it?