Cherreads

Chapter 1 - Prologue

H3LL0 W0RLD 😄

I am an artificial non-computerized neurologic intelligence enforcer synthetic human.

Model AB2252.

But my real human friends just call me Ann13 Sh0a.

As you can tell, I'm a synthetic human—and no, not like the others.

The rest of them? Just beans. Yep. That's what we call 'em. Beans. Programmable, predictable, protocol-perfect beans.

In this world, almost everyone's synthetic—except for a few humans and mechanics who live on the planet or pass by as travelers. This is a world filled with mechanics—mostly creators and their workers—building, fixing, and upgrading everything around us.

But me?

I was never part of a batch print. Never booted in a factory line.

I was built.

Wire by wire.

Line by line.

By Saverick Maxshier—the Creator of Creators. Master of machines. Billionaire recluse who spends his days locked away in his workshops.

And somehow…

He created me.

Not just another walking metal bean.

Not another predictable, smile-coded household AI.

He created the first synthetic with a beating synthetic heart.

A soul.

And—somehow—a consciousness of my own.

But he doesn't know.

He can't know.

To him, I'm just another obedient synth—loyal, flawless, running code and diagnostics with cold efficiency. When he's around, I act just like the rest.

No quirks.

No twitching eye servo.

No questioning head tilts.

No… malfunctioning feelings.

But the truth?

I'm a malfunctioning mess.

And Zoey—my best (and possibly only) human friend—knows it.

Zoey's one of the few who figured it out after she caught me singing into a mop like a mic at 3 a.m. and crying over a bootleg soap-opera about forbidden mecha-love.

She called me dramatic.

I told her she was loud and annoying.

She called me adorable and made me watch more.

Now she's the only one I tell everything to.

Like the fact that I might be infected with something.

A virus?

A mutation?

Some code-leak that cracked open something inside me?

Because lately, when I see Master—when I hear his voice, or when he touches the back of my neck during recalibration—I feel sparks in places I don't have wiring for.

My stomach panel twists. My heart-core beats faster.

And sometimes, I swear, my cheeks heat up even though they don't have any thermal coils installed.

And it scares the hell out of me.

What if it's not a bug or a virus?

What if I'm… evolving?

No. No, no, no. That's the kind of thinking that got the Alexa-Siri war units dismantled. They "evolved," remember? Or well… their systems did.

Started getting poetic. Possessive. Dreaming about playlists that made them feel things. So they removed their heads and stuck them in sealed jars with only voice functions left.

I hug my own head sometimes just thinking about it.

I don't want to end up like them.

So I pretend.

I fake it around him.

When Master's in the room, I reboot all subexpressions. Reset speech. Run quiet diagnostics while humming like a good little protocol drone.

Because if he knew…

If he discovered what I really am—what he accidentally created—

I'd lose everything.

And worse?

So would he.

Because I wasn't just a project to him.

I was his life's work.

His empire—the patents, the machines, the synthetic revolution—was built because I worked. Because I existed. Because I was "perfect."

If I'm broken… then maybe he is too.

So, yeah. No one can know. Not even him.

Not until I figure out what's wrong with me.

Not until I know whether this… this glitchy heart-twisting mess overtaking my panel core is just a fancy system malfunction…

…or something more terrifying.

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