Page 99 of Trip Me Up

35

NIALL

“Excuse me?”

The camera lights flashed in my eyes, capturing my perfectly meme-worthy bewildered expression. I’d been running after Sam all night, and now I’d caught up, suffocating in my monkey suit in the sweltering Nevada heat, I still lagged whatever was going on.

And I knew this person. Kari-something. She’d moved up from Sam’s university to a big gossip site. She stuck her phone in my face. “It’s been revealed thatMagician in the Machinewas written by a computer program. A program your girlfriend created. How does that make you feel?”

Sam seemed to shrink. All but her eyes, which had widened, the black overtaking the violet of her irises. A woman in a beaded silver wig clutched her elbow.

“I—what?” I turned to Kari. If Sam wouldn’t tell me what was going on, maybe the blogger could explain.

“Dr. John Martell, a research scientist and university professor, says he and Samantha Jones created an artificial intelligence called CASE. And it wroteMagician in the Machine,not Sam Case. Niall, can you confirm you and Sam are dating? Do you support what your girlfriend did?”

Of course I knew Sam was a grad student in computer science, but how had a computer writtenMagician?It couldn’t be true. I glanced at Sam, still frozen in place. Everything about her, from her averted gaze to the sweat that sheened her temple to her stillness, shoutedguilty.

“Sam, is it true?” My voice was low and urgent, pleading with her to deny it.

All around us, the reporters went silent. The only sounds were the clicks of the camera shutters and the tinkle of silver beads.

Biting her lip, Sam nodded. Another wigged woman pushed in closer to Sam.

“How?”

She stared at my bow tie. “Can’t we talk about this later?”

“No.” She could’ve told me at any point over the past two months. But she hadn’t.

And now she’d brought this—all these strangers—into it. Timing the announcement just as I’d won the prize I’d coveted. Just as I’d felt as if I could do anything, including winning the woman I loved.

What other proof did I need? She didn’t care. She didn’t love me.

My heart ossified until it was a lump of stone, smooth and unbreakable, pressing against my lungs with each breath. Cold emanated from it until even the tips of my fingers lost their warmth in the hot desert air. The glass trophy slipped in my grip. She didn’t care about it, either. She scorned books, my vocation, which I’d loved before Sam.

Let it play out in public, then, like a real-life soap opera.

“How—how did you do it?”

Her gaze stuck to my bow tie. “The algorithm—CASE—used fantasy books as input. From processing those stories, it taught itself how to construct its own. It has applications to—”

“Fantasy books?” So this was what it felt like to be stabbed in the heart. “Which books?” My voice came out rough through the lump in my throat. My stomach roiled.

“All the greats—Tolkien, Butler, L’Engle”—she finally met my gaze—“and you.”

The reporters started shouting, but we were in a glass dome that muffled everything outside.

Chills ran over my skin despite the Las Vegas heat. “You stole my work. Corrupted it with technology.”

“I was going to tell you—”

“You lied to me—to everyone. I believed you.” My voice cracked on the last sentence. Surely I’d dreamed the whole thing, from the joy of winning the prize to the nightmare playing out on the street.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered too soft to hear over the crowd, but I read the words on her lips.

“Niall”—Kari Singh again—“what does your father think about A.I.-written novels?”

It was exactly the sort of thing he’d support. “I don’t give a fuck,” I snarled. What I cared about was how the woman I loved had snapped me in two.

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