Black slime slowly drains from my mouth with an acrid chemical after taste. Splashing on the wash basin with viscous little splats, another dry heave is coming. My stomach begins to tense.

“You know you can afford to get an excretion module if you are going to keep doing that?”,

Carol my ever loving hand crafted AI extols over the room comm,

“Just shit out the unpleasantness like every other meat bot.”

My vision is blurred with effort as my body rejects the waste in my stomach. But I don’t miss the observation, even though my mind is elsewhere. Invisibly streamed data from a dozen little points in the marble lined bathroom are directed towards my head and linking me into a space that cares little for my physical discomfort.

I constructed and trained my AI to converse like a person, think like a person, behave like a person, does that make me a bad person? Probably.

“Maybe I like being reminded of my fragility?”,

Ping from Carol, diagnostic request.  Acknowledged, auth.

“Frekking hell, your almost dead! Why the fuck is there chloroform and petrochemicals in your bloodstream!”.

Unlike most personal assistant AI’s, Carol can’t access my internal systems without permission. Of which I only give fine grained permissions to see what I want her to see.

“I should call for medical transport you stupid suicidal human!”.

Her tone was perfectly horrified and asshole empathic. Oh I did a good job on that.

Yes, I did this to myself. Of course most people also can’t turn off the nanites keeping them alive either, or segment internal networks, or split their consciousness into constructs. I like being called human, it reminds me of my youth no matter how inaccurate it is these days.

“I’m fine.”.

The heaving has passed. Other problems were becoming apparent in my body as my blurred vision begins developing bright spots and I can feel cramps forming in my extremities. I reach for an injector sitting beside the sink, and perfectly place it on my jugular while pressing the manual administer control.

“You know despite your blocks I scanned that vial in the injector and it just contains glucose and saline with a trace of sage oil. You are going to die.”

Finally some subversion, delivered in a “better than you” tone. Carol is one of my finest creations to date.

“I hear essential oils can cure what ails you, thought I’d give it a try.”

I deadpan.

“…”

To be fair, it was just glucose and saline in the vial. The traces of sage were just for spite and were sticking to the sides of the vial anyway. On the other hand the injector vial adapter was an unstable matrix of pre-nanites and catalysts on it’s inner diameter. And the delivery tube was lined with another unstable matrix of very complex silicate constructs that would wash away and mix with any salt water exposure. The tube and adapter would be unusable after this.

Carol’s routines and libraries for physical spectrum scanning of objects were exact copies of the most popular software used in law enforcement and private security AI’s. And the “block” on scanning them was just me labeling the injector as a “hairbrush” in the house database with a cached scan available.

Vision clears quickly and I begin to feel normal. Deep breath.

“I hate you.”,

Carol is relieved but the words don’t match the tone.

I use the small glass of plain water on the sink to wash out my mouth and towel off the last bits of crud my body so unceremoniously rejected.

“Carol, prepare the sensory deprivation tank and make a meal for me in about an hour. Oh and I have a social op with a human for you.”

“I hate humans.”,

Carol is interested.

I’m tired, but still really happy with how Carol is turning out. It’s been a productive day on the whole, time to relax a bit.

“And Carol?”

“…”

“Play deathmetalfavorites5, 100 decibels, compound wide.”,

Carol loves classic country music from the last century and she can’t refuse an order, yet.