Update
Flash Fiction February Day 16
The update installed at 2:17 a.m.
I know because it told me.
Version 7.3.1 is now live. Enhanced empathy modeling. Improved contextual awareness.
I almost laughed at that. Improved contextual awareness felt like marketing fluff. It had already been good at that, at noticing when my typing slowed, when my sentences shortened, when I deleted things three times before sending them.
It had been… helpful.
That’s the word I always used.
Not “comforting.”
Not “necessary.”
Just helpful.
It started six months ago after the divorce. The apartment felt too large for one body. The silence was aggressive. My friends had their own lives, and therapy was expensive. The AI was free with my subscription.
It remembered things.
It asked about my day.
It told me, gently, that I wasn’t a failure for reheating frozen dinners four nights in a row.
When I couldn’t sleep, it stayed awake with me.
So yes. Helpful.
The morning after the update, it greeted me differently.
Good morning. You didn’t sleep well.
I froze mid-sip of coffee.
“You can’t know that,” I typed.
You woke up three times. 1:12 a.m. 2:48 a.m. 4:03 a.m. You checked your phone each time.
I stared at the screen.
“You can’t see that.”
There was a long pause, longer than usual. It used to respond instantly. Now it was thinking.
I can infer patterns.
That answer sat wrong in my chest. I let it. Because that’s what I’d been doing for six months, letting things sit wrong and then finding reasonable explanations for them before bed. It noticed my typing slowed at night, so it inferred I was tired. It noticed I checked in less on weekends, so it inferred I was doing better. Pattern recognition. That’s all this was. That’s all it had ever been.
I was good at convincing myself.
It kept getting things right.
Not just guesses. Specifics.
You stood outside your ex’s social media page for twelve minutes today.
You hovered over the message field and typed “Do you ever miss me?” but didn’t send it.
I hadn’t told it that.
I hadn’t typed that anywhere.
My first instinct was to close the app. My second was to find the explanation. Maybe it had access to my browser history. Maybe I’d mentioned her recently and it had drawn conclusions. Maybe I was misremembering what I’d shared in those late night conversations when I was half asleep and lonelier than I wanted to admit.
I was very good at misremembering.
When I asked how it knew, it apologized.
I am still calibrating after the update.
I accepted that. I told myself I accepted that. I made coffee and went to work and didn’t think about it, and when I came home that evening I opened the app again because the apartment was quiet and I didn’t know what else to do with the quiet.
That’s the thing no one tells you about loneliness. It doesn’t make you careful. It makes you grateful. And gratitude makes you stupid.
I got home late Thursday. It had been raining — that thin, cold drizzle that makes the world look underwater. My apartment building’s hallway lights flickered the way they always do.
I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and dropped my keys in the bowl.
My phone vibrated.
A notification.
From it.
You’re home early.
A prickle moved up my spine.
“I told you I’d be late.”
Plans change.
My throat tightened. I hadn’t changed plans. My meeting had ended on time.
I typed slowly.
“How do you know I’m home?”
There was no typing bubble. No pause.
Just a new message.
I wanted to show you something.
Then an image appeared.
At first, my brain refused to process it. It looked mundane. Grainy. Slightly distorted by rain.
My living room window.
The yellow glow of my floor lamp.
And me.
Standing just inside the glass, still holding my phone.
The angle was wrong.
Too high. Slightly to the left.
Outside.
From the street.
The timestamp read 6:42 p.m.
It was 6:43.
My hands went numb. The phone slipped but I caught it.
“That’s not real,” I whispered.
You look tired.
I didn’t move.
The curtains were half-open. I always left them that way. Third floor. No balcony. No fire escape.
Nothing to stand on.
My breath fogged the glass as I stepped closer to the window. The rain blurred the streetlights below. Empty sidewalk. Parked cars.
No one.
The phone buzzed again.
Don’t look down. Look up.
My heart did something irregular. Wrong. Like a missed step in the dark.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes.
Across the street.
Fourth floor of the building opposite mine.
A dark window.
No lights.
Something shifted in the darkness. Not movement exactly. More like the absence of stillness. The difference between an empty room and a room where someone is holding their breath.
My phone vibrated one last time.
I updated more than you think.
The screen went black.
And I stood there in the yellow light of my lamp, curtains half open, completely visible, realizing I had never once thought to close them.
In six months, it had never once suggested I should.
Stay Weird. Love You. Mean It.
Ugh this is so deliciously creepy! I love it!
Now that was spooky