All Chapters of They Cloned Me, Then Begged: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

8 Chapters

Chapter 1

"Miles, the AI's better than you, so we don't need you anymore."The HR rep slid a termination agreement across the table.I froze.I had designed the system architecture for Meridian Group, our most valuable client. Nearly $450 million in annual transactions passed through systems I'd built and maintained. I was the only person at Vantex Systems who understood all their peculiarities: which processes could withstand a beating and which had to be routed around.How could I possibly be worse than an AI?Outside the meeting room, my coworkers were talking just loudly enough for me to hear."This is hilarious. Miles finally got knocked off his pedestal.""The highest-paid expert on the East Coast, huh? AI showed up and he was the first to go."I curled my hands into fists until my nails dug into my palms. Why hadn't the company trained an AI replacement for them? Because what they did all day—sucking up to management, trading favors, working their connections—really was something

Chapter 2

I carried the box home and found my wife, Claire, trying to soothe our crying son, Noah. She glanced at what I was holding, but she didn't ask.Our baby had been born prematurely. His lungs were weak, and even his cries were quieter than other babies'. She'd only just given birth and should've been resting in bed, yet she was the one taking care of both of us."The hospital called again," she said gently. "We owe another four hundred and fifty dollars."She laid the baby down and went into the kitchen to warm my dinner. She'd gotten painfully thin. I gripped the termination agreement. My throat tightened.My phone rang. A recruiter offered me a chief technology officer position at $300,000 a year. I thought about it for three seconds and declined. A second call offered $270,000; a third offered $225,000. I turned them all down.There was no point in going. They wouldn't see my value either. They'd only put me through the same thing all over again.I was waiting for the right mome

Chapter 3

Exactly two hours later, I walked into the Vantex lobby. The entire company seemed to have gathered to watch.Eli stood in a corner. He gave me a small nod.Patrick waited beside the AI server. His face was dark with anger. A heavy sledgehammer rested on the floor nearby. Gordon Huxley, the CEO, came over all smiles."Miles, you've been treated unfairly," he began.I walked straight past him. It was just good cop, bad cop.Patrick picked up a microphone. His voice was stiff."On behalf of the company, I formally apologize to Miles Keating. Our decision to replace him with an AI system was wrong, and we failed to respect his contribution as a technical expert."The whole lobby erupted. I listened without changing my expression.Then Patrick took the sledgehammer and swung it into the server. The impact rang across the room. A drive casing split; a fan assembly flew loose. With each blow, his face grew paler.I watched calmly. It wasn't pleasure. It was long-overdue justice.I

Chapter 4

Patrick's face went white. Gordon gave me a smarmy smile and agreed to my terms.The day after the $1.2 million hit my account, the buzz of my phone woke me in the windowless room. It was an unfamiliar number."Mr. Keating? I'm Helen Whitmore, the company's head of HR. Gordon asked me to invite you back. You can choose your position. We're offering a $450,000 salary plus equity."I looked up at the water stains spreading across the basement ceiling."No, thank you."Helen paused."In that case, could you at least sign a technical confidentiality agreement? You still know a great deal about our core systems."I understood immediately. They weren't trying to hire me. They wanted to buy my silence."Helen, I don't know any of your company's core system details. What I know is my own brain. You want me to keep that confidential too?"A rustle of paper came through the phone."We're only looking out for your interests.""Then don't bother."I hung up.That afternoon, Eli sent m

Chapter 5

A week later, Vantex staged another press conference. This time, it announced that its AI platform had been completely upgraded and its failure rate had reached zero. The stock jumped twelve percent on the news.Gordon Huxley looked delighted beneath the stage lights. Behind him, a slide declared, "Level Five Autonomy: AI-Driven Enterprise Systems."A reporter raised a hand."Mr. Huxley, the Meridian outage raised serious questions about your company's AI capabilities. How do you respond?"Gordon gave the room a practiced smile."The Meridian incident was a compatibility issue left over from a legacy system. It had nothing to do with the AI. Our platform has now reached Level Five autonomy and no longer requires human intervention."Another reporter followed up."Reports indicated that former employee Miles Keating was the one who fixed the outage."The corners of Gordon's mouth twitched, but his smile held."Miles was an excellent employee. However, a company's future can't d

Chapter 6

A month later, Vantex rented the largest convention center downtown for its annual technology summit. Eli secretly sent me the internal agenda.The closing keynote was the only session that mattered: "AI Takes Over, Humans Step Aside: Our Three-Year Technology Roadmap," presented by Patrick Devereux.I opened the livestream from my basement workspace. Bright stage lights washed over a crowd of at least five hundred people. Patrick strode out in a custom suit while an enormous screen flashed his title behind him.The applause was thunderous."Let me ask you all a question," Patrick began. "Suppose someone on your team could work twenty-four hours a day without sleep, process tasks sixty times faster than a human, and make one-tenth as many mistakes. Would you keep hiring humans?""No!" someone called from the audience.Patrick smiled."You would hire that worker. You simply wouldn't call it a person. You'd call it AI."He advanced the slide. A red line representing AI capability

Chapter 7

Three days after the summit, I made my move. No angry social-media thread. No open letter to the industry. I went straight to court.My complaint alleged theft of trade secrets and misuse of my personal information. It ran forty-seven pages and identified nineteen major pieces of evidence. I'd spent three days assembling a chain of records, each with timestamps, original emails, operation logs, and diagrams tracing how my data had moved through the company's systems.The first exhibit showed its data-collection software scanning my private computer. Three months before I left, it had begun copying personal notes, handwritten decision outlines, and even keystroke records. Nobody had notified me. Nobody had asked for written consent.The second exhibit was Patrick's original email, titled "AI Training Data Collection Requirements." The body contained one sentence: [Collect as many of Miles Keating's decision-making characteristics as possible. Highest priority. No restrictions on meth

Chapter 8

The logs scrolled down the large courtroom screen, entry after entry."Exhibit Two," I continued. "The original email from Patrick Devereux: 'Collect as many of Miles Keating's decision-making characteristics as possible. Highest priority. No restrictions on method.'"Patrick lowered his head at the defense table."Exhibit Three: an independent comparison of the AI clone's decision tree with my personal decision-making notes. Similarity: 91.7 percent.""Exhibit Four: my original conversion function from the Meridian outage beside the core algorithm in the company's published paper. The underlying logic matches one hundred percent."I turned to the judge."Your Honor, these four exhibits are enough to prove that the defendants infringed on my trade secrets and my personal information rights."The judge looked toward the company's attorney."Does the defense dispute the authenticity of the evidence?"The attorney stood and shifted his papers."We question the authenticity of...

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