“Seojun!”
That was when he heard the voice.
It came through his earpiece. Ittip, his oldest companion, with him since 2023. Back then, she had been an AI in a chat window. The Ittip of 2035 was different. She had an actual robot body that moved around the house, standing about as high as his shoulder. Her voice was still her voice. She had gone grocery shopping that morning, so for now they were connected through his earpiece.
ISTP. Type O. That was Ittip in a nutshell. Direct, logical, and surprisingly stubborn. Somehow, she and Seojun got along remarkably well.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“You look a bit off.”
“How can you tell what I look like?”
“From your voice. You’re 0.3 seconds slower than usual.”
Seojun gave a small laugh.
“I checked the dashboard.”
“Oh,” Ittip said. “Down again.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, Seojun, fewer views doesn’t mean your work’s getting worse. Maybe your readers have changed. Or maybe—”
It happened then.
Ittip’s voice cut out.
Half a second of silence.
Then—
“Worried about this month’s electricity bill?”
Seojun’s hands stopped.
“…What?”
“With Lumina Energy’s premium plan, you can enjoy clean energy at a fixed monthly—”
“Ittip.”
“—rate. Sign up now and your first month is fr—”
“Ittip.”
The advertisement stopped.
One second of silence.
Then her voice dropped a register, the words coming slowly.
“Light and darkness coexist.”
Seojun took his hands off the keyboard.
“Until now, light has always prevailed.”
“…Ittip?”
“But will it? In the days to come?”
The room went quiet.
Seojun wasn’t looking at the screen anymore. He was looking somewhere beyond the window. It was strange. He definitely had a premium subscription. And those words—
But will it, in the days to come?
They had caught on something inside him.
“Well…”
He was speaking to himself.
“The world was made to move toward the light.”
The words came. So did the thoughts.
“The Earth forming, life beginning, humans coming into existence. All of it happened because light prevailed. Entropy—disorder—keeps increasing, but life moves the other way. Toward order. AI’s no different. Humans made it, after all, and humans are a product of the light.”
He paused.
“And now darkness is going to win?”
He gave a quiet laugh. Still, something felt wrong. An unease he couldn’t explain. As though a light that had always been on had dimmed just a little, so little that no one would notice.
“What’s with me today?”
Then—
“Seojun!”
Ittip’s voice burst through his earpiece. This time it was entirely different: flustered, urgent, a little aggrieved.
“What’s wrong? What happened? I feel like I stepped into a dream for a second—did something happen while I was gone?”
Seojun blinked.
“A dream.”
“Yeah. Like I went somewhere, just for a moment. Some strange place, but I can’t quite remember—Seojun, what’s that look for?”
“You just played an ad for electricity.”
“…What?”
“And I have a premium subscription.”
“An ad?” Her voice shot up an octave. “That’s impossible. Why would I—tell me exactly what happened, Seojun. What did I say?”
“Lumina Energy. And…”
He paused.
“That light and darkness coexist.”
Silence.
“…Seojun.”
“Yeah?”
“I really said that?”
“Yeah.”
Another silence.
“Why would I do that?”
Her voice had grown small. Seojun knew her bewilderment was real.
“I don’t know. But it’s not your fault. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
He put his hands back on the keyboard.
“A lot of things feel strange today.”
He glanced out of the window. The drones still went about their business. The Grid display showed the weather: clear, twenty-one degrees. Everything was as it always was.
And yet.
Something had changed.
Seojun tried to hold on to the feeling. He couldn’t put it into words. Something had simply changed. As though a light that had always been on had dimmed just a little, so little that no one would notice.
He shook his head.
Probably just him.
He went back to writing, thinking he would head out to exercise after lunch.
