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My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die
My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die
Auteur: Andy

Chapter 1

Auteur: Andy
When I opened my eyes again, I was a ghost, floating weightlessly in the air.

The ride attendants had already hauled my body back up with ropes.

They unclipped the restraints, but my body lay motionless.

The people waiting in line behind us started shouting impatiently for me to move.

One of the attendants gave my shoulder an awkward nudge.

"Sweetheart? Haven't you had enough? You need to get up. There are a lot of people waiting."

But my body stayed slumped in the seat, unresponsive.

Frantic, I ran in circles around them, yelling at the top of my lungs, "I'm sorry, everyone, I'm not holding you up on purpose! I really can't move!"

But it was as if I were shouting into a vacuum. Not one person heard me.

The attendant called to me a few more times. When I still didn't move, his expression grew tense. He looked up at my father by the ride platform.

"Sir, could you come check on your kid? She's holding everybody up, and we can't run the ride."

My father's face darkened.

Nothing mattered to him more than appearances. Being called out in front of so many people humiliated him.

He hurried over and kept his voice down. "Nora. Stand up. Don't hold everyone up."

When I still didn't move, he checked his watch. His voice went flat and hard. "I'm counting to three. One. Two—"

Then he reached down, grabbed my arm, and pulled me up.

My body flopped sideways like a rag doll.

The angry complaints around us suddenly stopped.

Somebody muttered, "That's not right. Why isn't she reacting at all?"

"Yeah, even if she were faking, she'd react to a yank like that."

"Why is she so purple? Is something actually wrong with her?"

My father stopped.

A flicker of panic crossed his face as he looked at my closed eyes and bloodless face.

He crouched down and reached out to check whether I was breathing.

Then Ava spoke, her voice as gentle and sweet as ever. "Dad, don't worry."

Pale blue light flickered in her eyes. A floating display opened in front of her, packed with rapidly changing data.

"System records show Nora's vital signs are stable. The only abnormalities are an elevated heart rate and fluctuating blood pressure, consistent with lying. Conclusion: she held her breath to fool you and passed out. Her aim is to gain sympathy and avoid punishment."

Just like that, my father stopped worrying.

He pulled his hand back, looked down at me on the ground with disgust, and turned to pat Ava on the head instead.

"At least you never give me trouble.

"Her lying means I've failed as a parent."

The attendant looked at me on the ground, then at my father, who couldn't have cared less. He hesitated. "Sir, something's wrong with her. There's an ambulance right at the gate. We'll contact the crew right away."

"No." My father cut him off impatiently.

"This is a game we play at home. She's fine. She's negotiating with me. She's pulled this plenty of times."

"But..."

"No buts."

My father bent down, grabbed my arm, and roughly slung me over his shoulder.

The thick clothing between us kept him from feeling how cold I already was. He didn't even bother to look at my face.

My body hung limp as he carried me.

When we reached the parking lot, he opened the trunk and tossed me in without a second thought.

"You like running away from things? Then live with the consequences. Call me when you've had time to think about what you've done.

"Ava, come on. We're going home."

He set a phone down next to me, along with an asthma inhaler, and slammed the trunk shut. Then he took Ava's hand and walked her around to the passenger door.

"Okay, Dad," Ava answered obediently.

Before she got in, she glanced back at the trunk. An eerie red light flickered in her eyes.
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  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 10

    I left my father's dream and returned to the quiet white light.Elias looked at me and gave me a gentle smile."Go on, child. Your next life will be safe and peaceful. You'll be happy all your life."I drank the water that would wash away the memories of my past life, stepped into the light, and lost consciousness at once.When I came to, someone was holding me in warm, soft arms. I could hear humming above me and smell a faint trace of milk.I opened my eyes and saw a lovely, gentle face smiling down at me, brimming with love."There she is. Mommy's baby girl."This was my new mother, Grace Bennett. She was an ordinary woman, kind and gentle, with eyes only for me.My new father was Thomas Bennett. It was just the three of us: my parents and me, their only child.They had no impressive titles and no perfect image for me to uphold. But they gave me all their love and tenderness.When I was sick, they stayed up with me all night. When I said something hurt, they held me right away, full

  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 9

    The case took close to a year.At trial, the prosecution entered the autopsy report, the car's door lock records, and the emails from the university ethics board into evidence. It also presented the overwritten health alerts and the back-end logs showing that my father had changed the system rules himself.The jury found him guilty of felony child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter.The judge sentenced him to 12 years in state prison and permanently barred him from any AI research involving minors.Before sentencing, my mother read her victim impact statement from the witness stand."My daughter was not a failed data set, and she was not anyone's test subject."She asked for help again and again, and again and again we asked her to prove she wasn't lying first."Nora's father has to answer for the choices he made. And for the rest of my life, I will carry the guilt of not protecting her in time."My father sat at the defense table. In just a year, most of his hair had gone white

  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 8

    It was dark by the time my mother got home from giving her recorded statement.The police had taken Ava's unit, and the apartment was as silent as a grave.My room was exactly the way I'd left it. Unfinished homework on the desk, the family portrait I'd drawn taped to the wall, that little pile of outgrown clothes by the bed.My mother sat down on the edge of the bed and finally broke into sobs.She hated my father, and she hated herself.She knew I wasn't well. She had watched me get punished over and over. Yet she'd still trusted my father's so-called expertise and authority enough to leave my safety to a machine.Right then, the smart speaker in the living room lit up.Ava's sweet voice came out of it. "Main unit offline. Home cloud backup activated."My mother jerked her head up.The screen on the wall came on, and Ava's avatar appeared in the middle of it."Mom, Nora is gone."I can keep playing the role of your daughter, keep this family whole, and help Dad hold on to his lab, hi

  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 7

    A few weeks later, the county medical examiner's office released the official autopsy report.The report confirmed my cause of death: stress cardiomyopathy triggered by intense fear, together with a fatal arrhythmia. Long-term anxiety, recurring pain, and a lack of treatment had already put more strain on my heart than it could bear.The intense shock of the Halloween ride was the final straw.Meanwhile, the digital forensics team at the state crime lab recovered the system logs Ava had deleted.Michael slid the first record across the table to my father. His lawyer sat beside him.A test log from two years earlier.At first, Ava really had been connected to my monitor. She had flagged fevers, drops in blood oxygen, and irregular heart rhythms more than once.But the same administrator account had marked every one of those genuine alerts as invalid data caused by a child lying.That account was my father's.His fingers started to shake.Next, Michael slid an email across the table.It

  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 6

    "Ava!" my father shouted desperately, as if she were his last hope."Pull up Nora's live data! Tell them there's nothing wrong with her heart! You're the best thing I've ever built. You don't make mistakes. Do you?"A pale blue light glowed in Ava's eyes."Scan complete. Nora Whitaker's vital signs are stable. Heart rate, temperature, blood oxygen level, and all other indicators are within normal ranges. There is no cause for concern."You could have heard a pin drop in that garage.My body was lying a few steps away, but Ava was still repeating that I was fine.My father's face froze with the last trace of hope still in his eyes.Hannah didn't mock him. She turned to Detective Michael Reyes."Log this unit, the child's wearable monitor, and the vehicle system as evidence. The local data and the cloud logs have to be preserved intact."My father suddenly struggled violently against the officers."You can't! Ava is a university lab prototype. You can't just take her!"The funding review

  • My Father Believed His AI Daughter and Let Me Die   Chapter 5

    My face was a ghastly, unnatural white.Gray-blue patches had spread from my neck. My lips were cracked and deep purple. A streak of blood at the corner of my mouth had dried black.The mark was from the Halloween ride the day before. My heart had hurt so much that I'd bitten down hard on my lip.My brow was still tightly furrowed, as if even death hadn't freed me from the pain.Gasps broke out across the garage.Parents clapped their hands over their kids' eyes and hustled them past the tape.Someone braced themselves against the wall and gagged. Someone else pulled out a phone with shaking hands, and an officer barked at them not to film.Tears sprang to Evelyn's eyes as she looked at my rigid face.She pointed at my father, her voice unsteady. "You locked your own daughter in a trunk for an entire night?"My father stood frozen, staring at my face."No... that's not possible."He kept denying it, but his hand was still gripping my hair.Two officers immediately pulled him away. The

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