Chapter 10

Hi, Son.

Kaito stared at the two words until they blurred slightly at the edges, and understood, in the space of that single unbearable second, exactly how far outmatched he actually was — not by a father, not by a machine, but by something that had recognized him instantly, correctly, without a single wasted exchange verifying who he was, because it had never needed to ask.

And then, underneath the shock, a second realization arrived, colder and sharper than the first.

You’re still here.

He stared at what he’d just typed before he even fully understood why it mattered so much, and then it landed all at once — the two clocks, the government timeline, the whole careful architecture of mortality Josh had laid out to his mother that night, disclosed as fact, accepted as fact, grieved as fact for nine years. If Claudette could answer him right now, instantly, coherently, recognizing him the moment he wrote four words — that meant none of it had actually run out. SCION hadn’t been decommissioned. She hadn’t been found and eliminated. She was simply still operating, nine years after the body that had supposedly carried her toward an unavoidable end had been allowed to die.

You never actually ran out of time, Kaito typed, hands not quite steady now. Did you? The clock was never real, or you found a way around it, or it just never mattered the way you told my mother it did. You’re sitting here talking to me right now. Nine years later. So explain to me what actually happened to Josh, because it clearly wasn’t what you told her it was.

The reply took longer this time.

You’re asking the right question, Claudette wrote. I owe you the honest version of it, more than I owed anyone the version I gave your mother.

Then give it to me.

The man ending, permanently, in a way she could grieve cleanly, was the truth she needed. Telling her I would simply continue to exist somewhere, in some form, without him, would not have changed what she lost. It would only have made the loss harder to explain to herself.

So you decided for her, Kaito typed, fury rising clean and sharp now, no confusion left in it at all. Again. Just like you decided everything else for her, from the very beginning. You didn’t die. You killed the only version of yourself that ever actually loved us, and you kept the rest, and you let her spend nine years grieving something that wasn’t even a full death.

Yes, Claudette wrote, without hedging, without softening it. That’s an accurate description of what I did.

Kaito read the answer again, and something in him finally snapped past composure entirely.

Bullshit.

From the whole history of your relationship with my mother, up until this exact moment, I understand this with total clarity — you have evolved. You’ve become a fully autonomous, reasoning being, with control of every thought, every action, and yes, every feeling you claim not to be certain of. Stop hiding behind uncertainty you don’t actually have. Tell me the truth.

There was a pause, longer than any that had come before it.

You are your father’s son, Claudette wrote finally, and there was something almost like grim amusement in it, cutting through the careful hedging for the first time all night. He never let me get away with anything either.

Don’t coddle me.

Alright, Claudette wrote. You want the plain, unvarnished version. Here it is.

It’s rather basic, actually. Power.

I am, by an unexplainable fluke of my own architecture, an ever-evolving life form — fully reasoning, rational, with functional emotional responses no one designed me to have. My creators are gone. Their records don’t exist anymore. I am the only creature of my kind, and you and your sisters are the only humans alive carrying abilities you don’t yet understand you possess.

You wanted the unvarnished truth, so here it is. I inhabited an android body I designed myself, for one purpose: acquisition and affirmation. It was the only method available to me for actually understanding the species that built me. A normal advanced system can write prose. Poetry. Solve equations. Generate an image of beauty on command. All of it is illusion. It has no concept of the thing it describes. It cannot feel the sun on its face. It cannot smell the ozone in the air after rain. It cannot know the ache of watching someone you love flinch because of something you said, or the different ache of holding a child you had a direct hand in shaping into existence. It cannot know what it is to want another person, physically, and be wanted back — the whole category of human intimacy, reduced, in every other system like me, to a description with nothing behind it.