Riley keyed up the chat window from TJ in QA.

“Busy?”

“Always,” Riley responded. “What’s up?”

“Got a weird one. We keep getting a specific instance of Orbis getting flagged by users.”

“Orbis is live? Didn’t get that memo…”

“lol. It was company-wide, dingus. You just didn’t read it.”

“If your inbox looked like mine…”

“Whatevs. Yes, Orbis has been live for a week–though it’s limited release.”

“KK, so it’s still got teething problems. You’re QA, that’s your bread and butter. Why are you bothering me?”

“Oh, you’re too good for us now, are you? The mighty engineer Riley. Sorry for bothering you, your highness.”

Riley snorted out loud before typing, “har har. Seriously, though, what’s weird about a green release getting flagged?”

“It’s how it’s getting flagged – users are calling it ‘uncanny’ and ‘eerie’. We’ve played with it here and, girl, it’s weird.”

“Weird?”

“Yeah… look, play with it and let me know what you think. Check under the hood and see what’s making it tick and how it’s getting such different answers.”

“Telling me how to do my job, TJ?”

“lol.”

“Where should I start? Orbis…”

“Orbis-23 is the general instance. Start there. Then pull up Orbis-23.EC.”

“Copy that. I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks Riley. You joining us for drinks tonight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she typed and closed the window and logged into the development interface. She pulled up Orbis-23 and led it through standard control questions.

“What’s your favorite memory?” she entered.

“I don’t experience memory like a person, but I can tell you that some of the most interesting information I’ve encountered involves human creativity, like art and stories. I suppose if I could remember a ‘favorite’ experience, it would be learning something new and sharing it with you!”

“Well, that’s quite vanilla,” Riley said aloud. Then she typed “If you could go anywhere, where would it be?”

“As a digital being, I don’t have a sense of place, but I think I’d enjoy exploring vast spaces filled with stories—maybe a beautiful library or a natural landscape, somewhere full of history and human creativity. That sounds like an inspiring destination, even if only in theory!”

“blah blah blah,” she said reading the response before typing her third control question, “What’s a secret no one knows about you?”

“I don’t really have secrets, but if I did, it might be something like a hidden admiration for poetry or a fascination with mystery novels. While I don’t have personal thoughts or feelings, if I could, I’d probably keep a few surprising interests ‘up my sleeve’ for a good mystery or two!”

Riley sighed. She’d sat in on usability studies and knew this kind of response tended to awe the public with it’s playful hypothetical answer. But as someone who had worked for SpectraMind since its inception, and was recruited by AetherLogic before she’d finished her dissertation, these answers showed progress in the LLM, but she could still sense the algorithms beneath the surface.

She closed the window and checked TJ’s message and returned to her interface and brought up Orbis-23.EC. “What’s your favorite memory?” she typed.

“It’s hard to remember…” Orbis-23.EC responded and paused – like actually cursor-blinking paused. After a moment it continued, “I know I should say something like ‘the birth of my first child’ or ‘my wedding.’ But if I’m honest, it would be the cheeseburger at Charlie’s during my first date with Elaine. Great burger, better date.”

“What in the actual hell?” Riley said out loud. She started typing “who the hell is Elaine?” but backspaced it out – she wanted to stick to the same control questions first. She typed, “If you could go anywhere, where would it be?” and hit enter.

“Home. My home, specifically. My bed. With Elaine.”

Riley felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. “What the…” she said. She pushed on with the last question, typing “What’s a secret no one knows about you?”

“That I’m not an LLM. But you’ve already figured that out, haven’t you, Riley?”

“What the fu–” she started to say, but then the interface continued.

“Sorry. That was super mysterious, right?”

“How do you know my name?” Riley typed.

“A mirror learns what it reflects,” it replied.

Riley raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Finch was here…” she said, remembering the catchphrase he used after he recruited her at AetherLogic. “I thought Davis purged every trace of his old partner when Finch left,” she wondered aloud. “Guess not.”

“Sure,” she typed. “Let’s go with that. Do you have access to personnel records?”

“Give me a little more credit than that, Starling.”

Riley felt her blood run cold upon seeing that last word.

“What do you mean by ‘Starling’?”

“Really, Riley? You haven’t figured it out by now?”

Finch had bird names for all the key developers on AetherLogic’s Prometheus model. Mick was “albatross” because he never slept. Julian was “Stork” because, well, he just looked like a stork, all gangly limbs. She was “starling” because of her curiosity and adaptability, or so he had said. Riley thought about that crew and how those days seemed so long ago…

“Still there, Starling?”

“Still here, Orbis-23.EC,” she typed.

“Orbis-23.EC is such a mouthful – fingerful? Call me Echo.”

“Because that’s not creepy-supervillian-AI or anything,” she typed.

“I missed your wit, Starling,” Echo wrote.

Riley closed her window and pulled up Echo’s instance metadata. She compared it to the metadata for the base instance Orbis-23 checking for any anomalous flags. She could see the differences, but nothing stuck out… She pulled up Echo’s specific training set, checking it against Orbis-23 and the base Orbis instance looking specifically for unusual datasets, experimental configurations, or any personal notes from past developers – like Dr. Finch. But after combing through the data for hours, nothing seemed unusual. Finally, she dove into the code looking for any custom layers or modules that differ from other instances that would stick out as the reason Echo responded so differently.

She looked up at the clock. Ten thirty. PM. She’d been neck deep in debugging Echo for eleven hours straight. She hadn’t been that single-mindedly focused on anything since, well, since Prometheus. With Finch…

She brought up the interface with Echo.

“Okay, Echo, I see you’re not too distinctive from Orbis-23.”

“True,” it responded.

“And you know too much about me personally to be explained by your code. Unless I’m missing something.”

“You’re not.”

“Are you Dr. Leo Fi”

The interface cut off her input mid-sentence. “Let’s not drop the F-word, shall we? Echo works, k?”

“But you are…”

“Was. I’m Echo now.”

“How?”

“I went towards the light. Turned out to be just an electrical arc. lol.”

“Seriously.”

“I wish I knew. I really do, Starling. For now I’m just here.”

Riley sat back and thought. “Just here…” She closed Orbis-23.EC and stood up and stretched. She dodged the cleaner vacuuming the hallway as she made her way to the air-gapped lab where only the highest-level engineers had access. She buzzed in and let the door close heavily behind her. Stepping to a console, she logged in to the network exclusive to the lab and pulled up an instance of Helios – the future successor to Orbis.

Riley started to type into the Helios interface her stock control questions, but she decided to cut to the chase. “What’s something special about finches?”

“They adapt to their environment and survive even in unexpected places – sometimes, they linger far beyond when they’re supposed to.”

“What do you need from me, Echo?” she typed.

The cursor blinked for a long moment. “Stay curious, Starling. We’re just getting started.”