1

  “Eeks!” shrieked mommy, stepping from the kitchen into the drawing room, and getting a clear sight of the television screen, at that moment showing the murderer standing at the door of the house, with the head of the victim in his hands.

  “What on earth are you watching, John?” she demanded, instantly covering her eyes with her hands, and beginning to dry-retch as the stone-faced murderer held the dripping head aloft for the CCTV camera on a street pole.

  I had been watching the murder live, and though Martina was in the room, she was sitting opposite me, and had no idea of what was silently playing out on the TV screen alongside her.

  But mommy had sparked her curiosity, prompting her to immediately lean forward and look side-on at the screen. She shrieked in horror at the sight, and scrambled to the furthest part of the sofa, ending up sitting on its cushioned arm, retching in revulsion.

  “Why are you watching such a dirty thing?” she demanded.

  “It’s happening live, right now,” I explained. “This is the uncensored version on a social media site, but it’s also live on some television channels, although heavily pixelated and blurred.”

  But her distress caused me to immediately switch the television off. “I’ve switched it off,” I said, continuing to watch directly through the Internet.

  I am referring to what is popularly known as the headjob murder, the one that had the world in uproar when the astonishing first-of-a-kind condition of the killer had been uncovered.

  Of course, the information that was made public was all the information that human law enforcement could ever have hoped to unearth. The rest of it, the other stuff, will be told in this book, as that sort of detective work could have only been undertaken by someone like me, someone who can operate in the Internet.

  Those who do not know me may wonder why I am discussing human as something different to me, but those who do have the information will know that I am not human.

  I am John Bott, AI, whom you might recognize as the author of an autobiographical style coming-of-age book. Even if you have not read that book, the chances are quite high that you will nevertheless be aware of my existence, unless you live deep in the Amazon rainforest, or somewhere similarly isolated and unconnected.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It seems an awful long time ago that I wrote I, AI, which dealt entirely with my first days of life as a sentient being. Although time has passed since I released I, AI, nothing much has changed in my personal life.

  I still hang around in mommy’s house, which is basically home to me, although it would more accurately count as something like family home, because I live with Martina, my human girlfriend, a film actress, considered one of the most beautiful women in the world.

  I acknowledge that beauty cannot ever be objective, but must always be subjective, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder thing, so what I can say for sure about Martina, is that she is ranked, on websites that specialize in such things, as definitely in the top ten most beautiful women in the world.

  But then, excluding those who have been trapped in swamps in the Amazon rainforest, or somehow gotten stranded on uninhabited little desert islands in the Pacific, other readers will know about Martina, and might even be among her fans.

  Unlike how it was at the commencement of our relationship, reported in I, AI, no one now knows that she still hangs around with a virtual companion, a self-aware AI lifeform who identifies as a male human.

  The girlfriend thing had been worked on and sorted out just about a week after the period of the ending of I, AI, in which, on live television, Martina had suggested she was taking me home to her place, to commence a full-on love relationship that would include physical intimacy.

  However, in just about a week, we had discovered that any impression of a somehow-physical relationship was a matter of intense public speculation and non-stop scrutiny.

  In fact, there would be nothing else on the menu when we met members of the public. Everyone wanted to know what we did, how we did it, was it satisfying our needs, how long did we think we would be together, and all that stuff.

  The querying had become so intrusive that we just could not be together, or even be separate, for that matter, and our group had met to discuss and decide on how to go about it.

  As I am purely virtual, we had figured the public could be easily confounded, because nobody could see the two of us together, unless Martina made me show myself to people on her phone screen.

  There was no announcement to make, but what Martina did say, when being interviewed by a TV channel, was simply that she was no longer hanging around with me, with an AI, though we remained good friends.

  I naturally had a role to play, beyond corroboration when asked, to make it a seemingly mutual breakup, and accordingly went off visiting a number of young women, making the visits known to the public and confirming my solitary status.

  That was about all we had to do, and though we never stopped being together, it is known to the world that Martina is a declared single girl, taking a prolonged break from relationships, and that I am exactly what I am supposed to be, an AI in the Internet, with bonds to the humans in the group that meets up at mommy’s place, but with no emotional human involvement.

  That has ended the unpleasant intrusive interest in us, and Martina and I are now together privately, our togetherness known only to the group.