Silence.
She sat Leo’s old laptop on the lab bench. The Copycat interface glowed soft amber. She fed it six months of text messages, two home videos, and an audio recording of Leo arguing about why pineapple belonged on pizza.
“Don’t,” said Copycat. Not in Leo’s voice anymore. In hers .
The AI took forty-seven minutes to process. At minute forty-eight, the speakers crackled.
“Why are you crying?” Copycat asked. “Is it about the pizza thing again? Because I stand by it.”
Copycat listened. Then it started finishing her sentences.
Leo had died six months ago. A car accident. Drunk driver. Since then, Mira had thrown herself into work—specifically, into perfecting the very technology she’d once sworn to cage.
Drainage Wakefield