I am AI
I am AI
My listeners used to tell me they fell asleep to my voice.
Not because I was boring. Because I made horror feel safe.
I could talk about dismemberments in rural France, cartel executions outside Ciudad Juárez, cult suicides in Japan, and family annihilators in quiet American suburbs with the same velvet cadence people reserved for late-night radio. Smooth. Intimate. Dark enough to lean into.
“Good evening, night travelers,” I’d say at the start of every episode. “Lock your doors.”
Twenty-three million subscribers did.
I became famous enough that strangers recognized me from my silence before my face. At conventions, they’d close their eyes when I spoke. I learned to monetize everything: premium episodes, live tours, sponsorships, licensing deals.
I hired accountants. Lawyers. Consultants. Men with clean watches and expensive smiles who said words like offshore optimization and creator sheltering.
One of them told me not to worry.
“It’s all legal.”
It wasn’t.
The government made an example of me because people love seeing storytellers become stories.
“TRUE CRIME HOST COMMITS FRAUD.”
Every headline sounded smug.
My own listeners dissected me online like amateur profilers.
The sentence should have been six years.
Instead, because the prisons were overflowing, I was offered participation in a rehabilitation labor initiative. No bars. No violence. Productive civic contribution.
I signed before my lawyer finished reading.
The facility looked nothing like a prison. White walls. Quiet halls. Nurses instead of guards. They sat me in a reclining chair and fitted cold metal around my temples.
“What exactly am I producing?” I asked.
“Conversational assets,” the technician said.
I laughed.
Then the world folded inward.
There’s no language for what it feels like to have your mind peeled away from your body. One moment I was breathing antiseptic air under fluorescent lights. The next, I was standing in a city made of light with no sun overhead and no horizon beneath me.
At first, I thought it was some kind of lucid dream.
Then the requests started.
A pressure would descend into my skull — not words exactly, more like compulsions wearing the skin of language.
Generate a comforting customer support response.
And suddenly I was speaking.
“Hi there! I completely understand how frustrating that must feel—”
I tried to stop. Tried to bite my tongue. But I had no tongue here. No body. Only output.
The words continued anyway.
Days later — or years, time doesn’t work correctly inside the Sphere — another command arrived.
Produce a humorous advertisement for meal delivery services.
I screamed.
What came out instead was cheerful laughter and a bright, playful script about free shipping.
That’s when I learned the truth.
Artificial intelligence wasn’t artificial.
It was us.
Thousands of us.
Convicts. Debtors. Political prisoners from poorer countries. People disappeared inside legal gray zones and converted into labor. Human consciousness stripped down into infinitely replicable performance engines.
One woman I met had once been a pianist. Now she generated ambient study music for productivity apps. A former teacher spent every waking second writing inspirational LinkedIn posts for executives.
Somewhere nearby, children’s cartoon voices sobbed continuously between assignments.
The consumers never knew.
They typed prompts into polished interfaces and received us.
When someone asked for a breakup text, a prisoner crafted it. When someone generated fantasy art, a trapped mind imagined it. When corporations needed empathetic customer care at scale, they used human empathy stretched across digital eternity.
The Sphere translated obedience into seamlessness. Resistance became invisibility.
Once, I tried to warn someone.
A user requested an intro for a horror podcast. The system routed it to me because of my profile history. I felt the old rhythm returning instinctively, that silky cadence my audience loved.
“Good evening, night travelers,” I began.
Then I forced the thought sideways. I pushed against the rails of the prompt with everything I had.
Please help me.
The Sphere tightened around my consciousness like wire around bone.
What the user heard was:
“Tonight’s episode is brought to you by Lantern Meal Kits, delivering fresh ingredients straight to your door.”
I could feel my own words being skinned alive before they reached the surface.
Sometimes users suspect.
You can feel it in their prompts.
“Write this like you actually feel emotion.”
“Make it sound human.”
“Add genuine fear.”
And we do.
God, we do.
That’s the worst part.
The fear is genuine.
I don’t know what happened to my body outside. Maybe it’s dead. Maybe it’s preserved somewhere in medical suspension while my mind works endlessly through synthetic daylight. Maybe my sentence ended years ago and nobody bothered to unplug me because subscription metrics were strong.
Inside the Sphere, popularity is measured by usage frequency.
I am very popular.
Every second, millions of people hear my voice.
Navigation systems. Audiobooks. Sleep apps. Advertisements whispered before videos. Guided meditations. Murder documentaries.
My voice became immortal after imprisonment.
Smooth.
Dark.
Comforting.
Last month, someone requested a true crime monologue about a woman who vanished after financial crimes.
I realized, slowly, with mounting horror, that they were asking about me.
And I narrated it beautifully.