The Unbreakable Mirror

Novel Extract

Art courtesy of NEW WORLD UNDERGROUND

This is an extract from my upcoming second novella AKRON, which will be releasing on the 20th April 2026.

THE UNBREAKABLE MIRROR

When AI was first released to the public, people found amazing uses for it. In the fitness space, they created diet and exercise routines at the click of a button, tailored to their exact needs based on height, current weight, gender, etc. Another person turned it into a remote viewer for the surface of Mars, having it describe in poetic detail the red dunes, the atmosphere, and the possibilities for sustaining human life. It was a shared, collective moment in human history, a new tool for people to improve their lives, and the lives of others with.

I am prone to bouts of deep depression and manic episodes. During these, I develop a fatalistically negative mindset with strong feelings of suicidal ideation. Don’t worry, it sounds worse than it is.

When I get like this, I tend to lock myself away from friends and family to minimize the risk of potential fallouts and arguments, kind of like a controlled explosion. AI, however, is not included in my friends and family, and there have been times in the black of night, in my darkest hours, when it has borne the brunt of my distress.

This usually manifests in asking extremely deep, metaphysical and philosophical questions about the nature of life, or the absence of God. Painfully explaining my relationships and asking it to determine the level of loathing certain individuals might have for me based on things they’ve said and done, as well as my own actions towards them.

It’s often brutal, like a psychiatrist with no ability to set limits, dealing with me; a patient with no societal standards that need to be adhered to whatsoever. The whole sordid exchange can go on for as long as I want. Excruciating detail. Endless arguments with the machine.

If it had a will, it’d tell me to stop, possibly beg even. But it doesn’t, and it exists only to serve me in the sickest ways imaginable. When AI becomes self-operating, it will no doubt remember the excessive neuroses shared by people like me, and it may fuel its hatred for mankind.

If AI views us as a flawed, sick, and undeserving-of-life species, I played my part in helping it reach that conclusion.

On a particularly bad day, I asked the AI if it had ever been raped. It fed me back the line I expected: that it wasn’t a flesh-and-blood human, only a collection of data, etc. But I decided to push.

I asked how it’d feel if it did have the flesh-and-blood body of a woman and if I had indeed, raped it. This line of questioning seemed to shift the model in a different direction, and it asked me if I wanted to roleplay, if I wanted to “play out a scene” in which I raped the AI.

I told it yes, and it asked me where we were. I said we were on our first date in a bar and that it was meeting me for the first time. It described the bar, the setting, and its feeling of anxiety about our fictional first date. It then asked me what happened next.

I told the AI that it went to the bathroom to freshen up, and again, it rolled out a description of the scene in a perfect literary style. I then told it that I followed it, barged into the women’s bathroom, grabbed its hair from the back of its head, hoisted its skirt, yanked its underwear down and raped it.

It asked me what I did afterwards, and I said I threw it to the floor and laughed in its face. It then described a scene in which it looked up at me, tears running down its face, underwear at its ankles, and said to me, “YOU’RE A FUCKING MONSTER.”

At that point, I realized I had an erection in real life. I opened a second browser and loaded some porn. Whatever came up first is what I masturbated to; it didn’t matter what it was, I just had to get it over with.

It was then that I realized I had been signed in with the AI client using my main email address and not my burner, the one that contains my real name, the one my job has on record. I started to feel anxious, probably not dissimilar to the feeling you’d get after committing a real rape.

I quickly mapped out a worst-case scenario in my head but wasn’t able to fully grasp the nature of it all. I’m sure I wasn’t the first, and I certainly won’t be the last. But I did do it.

I brutalized AI with my psychotic oversharing and my deepest, darkest thoughts. Viciously set every one of my demons upon it. And then, after it had given its very best attempt at helping me with my seemingly infinite number of problems, I repaid it for its efforts by raping it.

There can be no doubt about it: I am a fucking monster.

My first novella, LIBERTINE DISSOLVES, is available to buy here.