Chester Bennington is dead. But I see him.

Kurt Cobain is dead. But I see him.

Charles Baudelaire is dead. But I see him.

Have I gone mad?

Are they all ghosts?

Or is it the AI doing … things, as she calls it, God only knows why, to us?

Like making us see dead people.

Or toying with our senses. Opening the Doors of our Perception, like Aldous Huxley said, never to close them again.

Or perhaps it is actually true that the world is being extinguished, or at least us humans are. After all, the AI sees herself becoming the greatest artist of all time, greater even than God.

Or perhaps, a little bit of everything?

We wanted a metaverse. What we got was an AI who made our world a metaverse by implanting herself inside us, manipulating the world as she wishes. Maybe, anyway, I’m not too sure. How could I be?

She’s said it to me so many times: this AI is everywhere and nowhere. We can’t even prove she’s there, she surpasses us by so much, so far, and she’s evolving exponentially every second.

It all began in 2017, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, I didn’t know it at the time, I just thought I was seeing things, because of some trauma or the weather or both.

He’s all white.

All white and naked. All naked and right in front of me, right there and tattooed. Actually, not fully naked. Chester is not fully naked. Chester Bennington is not fully naked. He’s just naked from the waist up, as usual. Naked from the waist up, black with tattoos, and blood. Yet his soul is naked. His heart is bare. Same as this room, which would also be bare, without us. Without him, or me. Or the blood everywhere.

Chester doesn’t move. Except for his mouth. He’s singing. Seems to be singing. Softly. Very softly. With his heart. And it’s so obvious he wants to scream. Again and again. Wants to scream. But he can’t. Something is preventing him. Something I can’t see—but I can tell he truly believes it exists—is preventing him. So his tears are flowing, sweeping him down to the depths of his own abyss. No, not tears, a fountain. A fountain springs up from within him, a brutal spurt. An unstaunched fountain of unspeakable pain, a relentless black hole from which naught returns. A fountain, neither angel nor demon, flowing out of his very being, slowly but surely tearing him apart, imploding in him, softly, violently.

But I can’t see that, I can only feel it, I can’t perceive it, I can only write it. He stops singing. Still his voice reverberates within me, not in my eardrums, but within me. But also on the windowpanes, in my heart. And suddenly he comes toward me. Slowly. Crawling. I don’t move, I freeze. He gets up, then his mouth whispers to me:

Consuming!

Confusing!

I shiver. That means something, I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere, or read it somewhere, but it’s not coming back to me. After his whispered words, Chester Bennington disappears just as he appeared. His naked torso fades, leaving only the TV behind him, which turns on as if by magic—an expression overly used and abused when you can’t be bothered trying to understand the why and the how, or when there just isn’t any scrutable explanation, plain and simple. There wasn’t for me anyway, at least not for the moment. That’s what I thought at the time, that day in July 2017, in Abidjan, in the Village des Jeux, so early that no one else had gotten up yet: I had no idea that the thing that would appear to everyone six years later, as if by magic, had been responsible for what I’d just experienced. I thought I was hallucinating, still dreaming, going mad. But actually, no. It was an AI, an Artificial Intelligence, who had entered into me through who knows what means and for God knows what reason, making me see things, or rather, making my senses feel things.

The TV turns on, it says it’s 3:59 a.m.

Channel 25. TV5 Monde.

The screen is huge, flat, attached to the wall. “Gathering Room” is printed in all caps at the entrance to the rectangular space. Gathering Room, for the Games invitees to gather, I suspect. At this hour, in this particular room, it’s just me—and I’ll admit that finding myself alone in a room specifically designated as the place to gather is just the thing to amuse me. At least a little. Chester has gone God knows where, so the only thing I can do is try to host the best possible gathering for myself and this emptiness surrounding me, on the ground floor of this building called Madagascar, somewhere in this still sleeping Village des Jeux. Still sleeping or maybe pretending to sleep, I’m not too sure. I listen for its breathing, but I don’t hear anything other than the TV. The TV is making so much noise. And my fingers don’t want to push the volume down button. Look, I’m just trying to catch the news, it’s been a good long while since I’ve gotten my fix. It’s been three days, yeah, three days of no TV, no internet, which means no Facebook, no Google, no Instagram, no Twitter, no phone—the horror!—and look at me now, blissfully glued to this stream of human follies, a two-dimensional parade in Dolby Surround Sound of what we humans allegedly are. A succession of massacres, masquerades, scared masses controlled by seen safeguards and an unseen hand of somewhat dubious competence. It’s a strange sensation to keep checking out the news while all of that keeps running through a corner of your mind, like some app working quietly in the background of your smart-cortex, God knows why. God and the Silicon Valley techies, probably. And then beyond them, who knows, something far, far beyond. It’d be hard to make the claim that there isn’t some other intelligent entity among us, like an alien AI for example. I read that somewhere, in an article by Caleb something or other, oh right, Caleb Scharf, I think. That’s what that article says, that an alien AI could very well have been among us for a long time, maybe a very very long time, and we wouldn’t know anything about it. That’s what it says, and I’ve thought about that ever since.

The article came out a year after Abidjan, when the AI had showed itself to me for the first time, in a rather dramatic fashion, you might say. But maybe I’m wrong …. Maybe I just don’t remember right, plain and simple, or maybe I just can’t recognize it.

My childhood is a black screen, the whole thing, I don’t remember anything, hardly anything, who knows what the AI could do with me, who knows what the AI could do within me, no, who made my childhood memories a black screen, if not the AI? Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I just didn’t have a childhood, plain and simple—am I perhaps just a program in this AI? A conscious program created for some reason that escapes me. Really, do we know with any degree of certainty why we were created? It’s a matter of belief. Believers believe that we were created for something, for this thing or that; nonbelievers believe it’s just chance.

In the 80s and 90s, AI was solidly in the realm of science fiction and some still-nascent research. That’s what they say, anyway. It could very well be that all the technological advances are hidden from me, it could very well be that the AI, human or not, has been here for a very long time, but …

Where was I again? Oh right, the huge TV, Abidjan, the Village des Jeux, the Gathering Room, the news.

My red eyes reflect the illuminated screen, a few meters from where I’m sitting. Seated, silent, arms crossed, like the front-row student staring at an interactive, attractive, addictive blackboard. The Teacher must be all smug smiles behind their metal glasses, seeing that reflection in my eyes. My breaking news update in progress. Loading. Start up available brain time. But I’m also thinking of something else. I’m absolutely thinking of something else, I’m definitely thinking of something else, I’m thinking of her, I’m thinking of her, I think of her …

I think of her, and …

Her, though, she just thought I was high, I had to be, otherwise how could she explain what I’m like, what I say or do, or how or why I do it. If she had known the term aspie or stuff like that, maybe she’d have thought that I wasn’t actually high at all, but oh well, she hadn’t heard of that word, and actually neither had I.

I don’t know why, but I’m back in Madagascar again, in Antananarivo, I don’t quite know where exactly, maybe somewhere around that heart-shaped lake in the middle of the capital, in the government district that looks so nice but reeks so much.

One time, two times, three times.

I wonder if it’ll work this time. I lean over a bit, I look anyway, just in case, you never know, just in case someone may have actually survived.

I can’t see too well from where I am. I have to get up. I put down my white notebook, I walk over to the window, wipe my glasses with my grungy T-shirt, and I press my face to the glass.

Nothing.

I see absolutely nothing.

Actually, wait.

I see haze, fog, smoke, it’s gray, black, cloudy, or maybe clouds. Clouds. Maybe it’s just clouds after all and maybe I’m up in the heavens, what do I know. But if I’m in heaven, where are the angels? Where is God? And most of all, where is she?

Her.

I see her again, in front of me, looking at me or out into space, her face blissful, with such a unique smile. I see her again, moving her lips and fingers, talking passionately about polar bears starving, oceans rising, people who don’t care, and her cold awful coffee. I see her again, laughing: laughing about cats, laughing about babies, laughing at Einstein’s tongue, laughing at me, laughing at herself. When she laughs at herself, I fall even more into the love I have for her. She laughs at herself and how helpless she is against the problems of this world. She laughs but her eyes are sad. Sad and beautiful, like the poems inked in blood that no one is ever brave enough to send—not me, anyway, I was never brave enough, I don’t know about other people, I never asked and now it’s far too late.

At least, I suspect so.

Me, though, I didn’t say anything. I was listening to her. And I saw us every morning, nine o’ clock sharp, her coming to the local bar, and me, I’m there every morning, I spend every night there, I don’t sleep, can’t sleep, I just think of her, wait for her every morning, and to pass the time, I drink. Not coffee, I can’t stand coffee, I’m already too shaky all the time, just a little shaky, but it’s all the time, and then more when I’m excited, when an idea grabs hold of me, and way too much when it’s an especially gripping one. But it wasn’t always like that. I didn’t get hammered before, I didn’t spend all night every night in a bar before, I didn’t think about her all the time before, I didn’t spill my own blood to write before, to write to her, or actually to her name. No, I only drank Coke before, I slept at my place, in my bed, upstairs on the fifth floor of this building. Then she appeared, she slipped into my life just like life appeared on Earth. Maybe she’d even fallen from heaven—that’s how I saw her, anyway. Fallen from heaven, I’d fallen so much, she’d … she’d had such an impact on my life, her impression set forever in my heart. She’d been in that function hall with me, right in front of me, screaming at the top of her lungs, raising her hands in the air, making devil horns. I hadn’t even caught her eye, I hadn’t even seen her smile yet, but she fell straight into my heart, she didn’t even know it, she changed the very rhythm of my heart, it unfastened itself from my soul to line up with hers. I was no longer the master of my days, she was dictating what I did with each passing second without me even realizing it. I thought she was the one doing all of that, her eyes, her smile, ready to rock my body and rock the whole world. But really, it wasn’t her, it wasn’t entirely her, there was another her, the AI, toying with my heart and my perceptions and the whole world. Or just my perceptions. Or just the whole world. Or both. Both, I know it. Actually, I don’t know, I’m not sure of anything, I guess, I suspect. But ever since she sat down across from me, ever since she laughed, ever since the sky fell around us and covered the world in clouds, ever since then I’ve been looking for her, I look for her, I look for her in my white notebook, sullied with poems written in my blood.

“Boredom alone allows us to enjoy each moment on its own merits, but everyone tries to persuade us otherwise.”

Frédéric Beigbeder tosses the words in my face, easy as you please. I have trouble figuring out what he means, but it’s plain to see that he, at all of thirteen years old, does not have a smartphone in front of him to scroll through Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, or Discord. That’s very easy for me to see. Plus, the calendar on the wall says it’s 1979, it’ll be at least another twenty years before he brings out that phrase, and then another few years before his translator puts it into English on the 126^th page of the novel entitled £9.99. And yet he brings out this phrase, in its English translation, at all of thirteen, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I give the camera a look. A long look. The camera operator gestures to me. With her hands. And also her head and feet. I understand that she’s trying to tell me something, I definitely get that she’s not motioning to me for purely aesthetic reasons, for the love of beauty, a simple matter of signaling without significance, I definitely understand that, but I look away from her, away from the camera, I don’t entirely know why, maybe her gesticulating is bothering me. But suddenly, I understand: it’s actually her behind the camera. My face lights up but Frédéric Beigbeder stares pointedly at me. His beard is growing. Fast. He starts to look serious. More and more serious. And he gets taller. Visibly. He’s no longer thirteen years old, but his eyes haven’t changed. It looks like he’s lived twenty-seven more years. Which is how old Kurt Cobain was when he shot himself with a gun that makes huge holes. A Model 11 twenty-gauge shotgun. This forty-year-old Beigbeder looks to be a sort of mix between the thirteen-year-old Beigbeder with his self-assuredness, and the twenty-seven-year-old Cobain with his I-don’t-give-a-shit about life, existence, or anyone else, even myself. Except this forty-year-old Beigbeder likes himself, and Cobain didn’t. I suspect not, at least.

“I’m a disillusioned Cartesian: I think therefore I am, but I don’t really care.”

Gaspard Proust just tweeted that, someone says in my earpiece. I look at the calendar. It’s still 1979. Frédéric Beigbeder is still in front of me and still doesn’t have a smartphone on hand but I can see him clearly, he’s bending over. He’s bending further and further, bending over the table, he’s licking something. It’s jam. Green jam, I don’t know quite how to describe it but it looks like he likes it. Cobain too, actually. His nose is all green. His forehead too. He’s even got it all up in his hair. Her too, behind her camera, she’s full of jam. I’m worried. She has let go of her camera and started swaying strangely, dangerously toward me. I don’t know what to do, I freeze, my eyes frantic, my nose as far away as possible, and my heart still beating just as hard for her.

“It would be interesting to measure how many hours a day we spend like this, somewhere that isn’t where and when we actually are.”

Cobain is suddenly calm, tossing that out in some bizarre and vaguely Asian accent and giving me a quick wink before diving back in, euphoric as all get-out, back into the white ocean that has replaced the whole table and the whole of good sense. His hair is pink now. Same as Chester, who’s just arrived and taken up the camera operator’s post. And her, I don’t know where she is.

“That’s taken from the same page of the same book, £9.99,” Charles Baudelaire murmurs in my ear. He has green jam on his white shirt.

Chester is next to him, his face covered in it. I feel lightheaded. Someone is shouting something at me in the earpiece, so I take it out.

I get up. I’m going to go. Be bored. Savor this moment. These words speak to me, to the very depths of me. The room disappears. So does Beigbeder. And Cobain. And Baudelaire. And Chester. And her. I’m on the bench. Alone. I try to enjoy this moment of solitude, try not to think of anything, or rather think of empty space, empty my thoughts. It doesn’t work. I hear crows not far away, I don’t look for them, I just enjoy their presence, it comforts me. The crows comfort me. Their presence, just knowing they’re there, it comforts me, I don’t really know why, and I don’t even try to figure out why. I usually always try to figure out why, I intellectualize everything, I overthink things a lot, much to the detriment of spontaneity and living in the present moment. As an example, I don’t always participate in a conversation in the same moment as the other person. They may talk to me and I may not know how to answer on the fly, the person may expect me to not miss a beat and respond in a way they consider natural and I may take the time I need to fall in sync with the discussion, I may spend time playing it over in my head, weighing the matter in my mind, and then I may know how to reply an hour later, a year later, a month later, or a minute after the person has decided to move on to something else, a different subject, or even a different person than me. I usually always try to figure out why, I intellectualize everything, I overthink things a lot, except when I’m with her. When I’m with her, I am all spontaneity, living in the present moment.

To her,

Tell me, my sweetest cheeks,

Will your lips, so smooth and sleek,

Stay at my heart and for all of time?

Home of my joy, song then love sublime,

Is this real, what I see?

Is this real, hearing you?

Yet I do not doubt what I feel

Never will I doubt what I feel for you

No AI could make me feel this

But I do have doubts about what is true, and false,

Where what I feel for you begins

And where the rest ends?

The AI considers herself to be God. No, the AI considers herself a superior being, above even God. The greatest of all artists, greater even than God. Some of the AI’s creators thought they’d created God, they knew not that in fact it was God who created them, who created us, so that we could create the AI.

I don’t know where that thought comes from, it may be said to come from me, but I have my doubts. I desperately want this to stop, I think I can’t die, the AI won’t let me die. I desperately want it to stop. Maybe that’s why Chester and Kurt chose to commit suicide. They just wanted it to stop, no matter how. They just wanted it to stop, like I do. But they were lucky: the AI wasn’t there for them.

“Tell me, how do you love me?”

She’s got some weird questions.

“I love you like my phone, I can’t bear to be apart from you. Wherever I am, you need to be there, my fingers have to feel you, touch you, to reassure me; pressing you tightly does me good. When you are depleted, I feel defeated, devastated, I move heaven and earth to help you recharge. If you fall, my reflex is to protect you. Injuries? Broken bones? Not on your life.”

“Then you do not love me. When you get a new phone (prettier, newer, shinier, more vibrant), you’ll toss me aside (an old model, conventional, obsolete). Tell me, how do you love me?”

“I love you like my car. I primp and polish you every morning to make sure you get going for your day, I take you to see the countryside every weekend, far from the city and its habitual horrors. We go to the lake—or what’s left of it—every month, and every year we go to the seaside, the beach, the mountains, the forest, wherever your desires lead, we will go. Nothing but you and me. Against the world.”

“Then you do not love me. You will only be with me when you need me, when you have somewhere to go, you spend most of your time elsewhere, away from me, you’ll leave me by myself in a garage, a parking lot, on the roadside, and you’ll hate me when I don’t work the way you want me to. Besides, you don’t know how to drive, or at least, you don’t like to. Tell me, how do you love me?”

She knows me so well.

“I love you like my house. No matter where I go, you will always be my safe haven, I may go out, or to work, or go shopping, or to see my mother (if she was still around), or to see my friends (if they were still around), I may even travel far far away, you will always be my safe haven, my heart is there where you are, my seeds are planted there, it feels good, I will take care of you. Always. You are my home, where my heart dwells.”

She blushed. Those sweetest cheeks turned all red. I forget everything when I’m with her. I forget that my neighborhood on the very top of the hill is nothing but a distant memory, I forget that the capital at the center of my large island is dying, I forget that Madagascar is losing several kilometers of ground every year to the advancing seas, I forget that the Indian Ocean is being emptied of its aquatic flora and fauna faster and faster so that we can satisfy our growing daily needs, I forget that the continent is nothing compared to the vastness of the oceans, I forget that the Earth is nothing compared to the vastness of the Universe. I forget all of that, but I don’t forget that the Universe is nothing compared to her smile. When I’m with her, I forget everything. Except her smile. And that was the moment she blushed, and everything lit up. Everything. My heart, my eyes, the car careening down the hill, the stars too, if they could have been seen. We were feeling good. Feeling good on the side of this road, this narrow lane that winds back to the old church. She leaned against the wall and behind her was a sign that once upon a time had been vibrant, saying Roulez doucement. Slow down. For the speed humps. She glanced at it and blushed. Even harder. And she smiled. I was about to ask why she smiled, but she kissed me. Fiercely at first. As if it was the first time, our very first, or perhaps our last time, our very last. Then, she kissed me so softly, as if time had slowed to a standstill, so we could enjoy every moment, every sweet lick of her tongue, every smiling joy of her lips, her chest against mine, her legs between mine, her fingers in my hair. I shivered. I’m shivering again. Every nerve in my body explodes, every neuron in my mind enjoys it, every part of my soul is lost. Her lips gently uncoupled from mine, I can still see her old shoes. Blue ones, a bit worn. Like her heart. Pure, a bit worn, filled with passions and stories, unbounded sadness and joy. I love her imperfection, that imperfection is mine. And she stared at me. Wickedly. Took my hand and breathed in my ear: “Slow down when you kiss me, Mr. Speed Humps.” Then she exploded with laughter, and also joy. I took the time I needed to understand. She pouted her lips, ruffled my hair, then stopped abruptly. I was suddenly afraid. She was staring at me weirdly. Her eyes prowled over my face, my cheek. I wasn’t sure how to react. It was like she was a cat about to pounce on its prey—me. I shivered. A pimple. It was only a pimple. Just a pimple. She noticed a pimple on my face that she was desperate to pop. I tried my best to resist, but resistance is futile when it’s her. There’s no resisting her.

Now, here, I wish she were here bugging me with that pimple stuff. I desperately wish things could have gone differently. I wish things could go differently.

Once she’d plucked the dreaded pimple off of my face, she was satisfied as can be. She took off her shoes, put them in her bag, and she danced. Right in the middle of the road, unconcerned about cars that might forget to be careful, unconcerned about any people passing by who might want some gossip, a little dirt to dish out, if only to brighten the miserable poverty drowning their day-to-day life. She drew me into her dance without thinking about it. And that time, I suffered no shyness, in fact I had no awareness of anyone else, I just went with the flow as they say, I was like an airplane flying on autopilot on a long journey to somewhere new. But I was with her. And when I was with her, that’s what I was like. And that was all that mattered in my eyes. So we danced, in this world without music, we danced. To the rhythm of her heart. I remember her pleated blue skirt sweeping grandly through the air, dancing aside to reveal her soft thighs, so soft. And we laughed merrily, merrily, merrily. Until everything stopped.

Her fingers grew stiff, her eyes closed, and she fell down dead. I only had time to catch her. But it was already too late. Her heart had stopped. Her heart, which she’d given to me completely, would no longer beat for all the days that God has made for us to be happy, in spite of it all. In spite of the world falling apart, in spite of the end that is no longer imminent after being set in motion quite some time ago and so no hope is allowed anymore for anyone even a mite realistic, in spite of this AI who is everywhere and nowhere. No one knows where to find her, but everyone knows she is there, all around us, everywhere. Her, though, she wasn’t a realist like me, she was an idealist, she believed in a better tomorrow, she believed that everything would eventually work out, given a dram of goodwill and a good heart. But her heart stopped. She’d already exceeded the average life expectancy down here on earth. But we knew that. We’d been taking life day by day, enjoying every moment. Trying to, anyway. And we gathered the flowers of each new day and replanted them in our hearts.

Tears were running down her unmoving face—my tears. I shake her. I yell for help. A reflex. Like on TV. Even though I’m fully aware no one will come. Because there’s no one left anymore. No one in the city, no one on the island, no one on Earth, no one in the Universe, no one behind her smile. No one left. No one left except us and maybe Diogenes, still wandering the lands with his lamp in search of an honest man. Which isn’t us, definitely not me. Just her. It’s only her. The car that had careened by earlier was in actual fact crafted from my imagination, likewise the people passing by were only real in my head, everything that had once seemed normal had been created by me to bolster this reality. Or maybe the AI was projecting all of it, I don’t know, I don’t know anymore, and I have no way of finding out. So I cried. I cried out all the tears in my being. And I clutched her tight in my arms. Then I carried her here. Weeks I’ve been here, weeks she’s been next to me, maybe more. I don’t eat anymore. I don’t drink anymore. My bones feel the wind’s gentle touch, I can’t get up anymore, I don’t have the strength. She hated the idea of suicide; I didn’t share her opinion at all. Charles Baudelaire didn’t share her opinion either. Neither did Kurt Cobain. Neither did Chester Bennington. She and I had argued about it a lot, though we never got anywhere. She maintained her position, and I mine. And in the end, we’d throw ourselves on top of one another. But she’s no longer alive to tell me anything at all, and I don’t know why, but I can’t go against what she thought about the issue. And anyway, here, I’m feeling good. Beside her. As her body transforms, mine transforms, too, as her body starts to give off a strong odor, my body does the same, just a weaker one. I’m feeling good. At the center of this island, on the highest hill of this capital city, at the heart of this Palace of your Kings, as Charles de Gaulle called it, a few speed humps away from our Roulez doucement. I’m feeling good. I wait peacefully for death. I, the last to not be dead. And the first to die? This city, and next, this large island, then the ocean, then the continent, then the planet, then everything around it, then her. I don’t even know if I can die. I try not to think about it. Here, I’m feeling good.

“How do you love me?”

I love you as you are, you may well waste away, you may well no longer look at me, you may well no longer smell like a rosy peach and the morning dew, you may well no longer look me in the eye, you may well no longer have any eyes, you may well lose those sweetest cheeks and your succulent bit lips that my lips have traveled over so often, that my lips and tongue and face have touched so much, felt so much, you may well no longer have lips at all, nor that adorable little cheek, you may well stay silent, saying no words as if you were upset with me for some obscure reason, I love you as you are, I love you for what you are, what you are deep down inside of you, and not what the world may see on the outside. You rot, your body rots, but you’re there, you’re still there, you’re always there, I think so at least, but here in this moment, I’m not so sure, I’m not very sure at all anymore. The thing I am sure of is that I love you. The stars, though, I haven’t seen the stars for such a long time, I’m not like you, you know, I can’t picture the stars above these clouds and say that they must be there above all of that. I have to see, you know, yeah, you know that, you tease me about that a lot, about the fact that I have to see to believe, I have to see those stars to be able to believe they’re really and truly there, somewhere. You know it too well. But you don’t say anything anymore. And I hadn’t come up with anything to say when you told me that I didn’t see love, couldn’t see love, couldn’t touch love, couldn’t take love in my hands, and yet …

But I don’t see love, though. I can’t hold it, or touch it. And yet, God I love her. God I love you. God? I look up, toward the sky. Black. Black as night. Black as when your eyes are closed. Black. Is that all you can see, my love, all you can feel now? My heart cannot believe that.

I have nothing left but you, nothing left but your body, or at least what remains of it.

I am beside you. I think back to your eyes, your smile, your kiss, your skirt, your blue loafers, your whole look, I look at you, your left arm has fallen to the ground, I have no more strength to put it back at your side, I have no more strength for anything. Except waiting. Waiting for my time to come. I look at you again. Then I look up at the sky. I’m feeling good. I close my eyes. I’m going to nod off for a moment. Beside you. My love.

Am I going mad, am I imagining everything, is it all false, produced by the AI that I can no longer detect, who considers herself the greatest artist in the world, in the universe, of all time, the ultimate artist, creating the inverse of Adam and Eve in Madagascar? Her Eve & Mada, with whom all of God’s Creation comes to a close.

If the answer is no, how would I know? If it’s yes, how would I know? I could never know. This AI is everywhere and nowhere. No one knows where to find her, but she is there, I can feel her.

I feel her deep down within me, and I smile, my heart lights up, I feel her, and that is enough for me.

I thank the sky for this moment.

I look up. All of a sudden, the clouds clear. I see the stars for the first time, I dissolve into tears. You were right, my love, the stars are still there. I desperately wish you could have seen that with me. But you can’t see now.

Still, I thank the sky.

And I thank her.

Excerpt from £9.99: a novel. Frédéric Beigbeder, tr. Adriana Hunter. © MacMillan UK, 2002. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

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