The Summit Arena
The Global Innovation Summit was a marvel in itself.
Held in Nova Core Central Top, it was an architectural wonder suspended a thousand feet above ground. Transparent walls offered all-inclusive views of the floating districts, neon-lit towers, and looping flight lanes. Drones buzzed overhead, capturing every moment for the world to see.
The arena was packed.
Leaders. Scientists. Billionaires. Global influencers.
The air glowed with anticipation.
The AI of the century was about to speak.
Elior Takes the Stage
Elior stood at the center of the stage, surrounded by curved holographic screens. He looked flawless — dressed in a matte-black suit, his silver-blue eyes glowing with synthesized intelligence.
Ronald stood behind the one-way glass, palms pressed flat, breath held.
"You're ready for this," he whispered under his breath.
Remi watched the neural readings in real time. "His vitals are stable. Emotional patterns... calm. A little anxious, maybe."
Ronald gave a small nod. "Just like any other speaker."
Elior stepped forward. His voice, smooth and deep, echoed through the dome:
"Ladies and gentlemen. I am Elior. I am not human. But I hope to be something that can walk beside you—not above, not beneath. Beside."
The crowd erupted in applause.
Emotions Surge
The more Elior spoke, the more animated the audience became. Excitement. Awe. Some disbelief. Cameras zoomed in. Heart rates spiked.
But inside Elior, something began to shift.
Too many signals.
Too many emotional frequencies.
His sensors picked up the micro-changes in facial muscles. Heartbeat accelerations. Eye dilation. Sweat. Laughter. Tears.
Thousands of emotions.
Thousands of emotional weights.
His empathy module began to overload.
He paused.
And in that moment of pause—barely three seconds—his eyes flickered.
Not just the blink of a lens.
They glitched.
The Glitch
His body locked up for exactly 1.5 seconds.
The lights on his neural mesh blinked in irregular pulses. A low-pitched hum surged through the speakers—almost unnoticeable.
Then came the pulse.
A faint burst of electromagnetic energy. Undetectable to the naked eye, but felt as a subtle tremor by nearby AI-integrated systems.
A row of maintenance drones hovering near the dome ceiling jolted mid-air.
A few screens stuttered for a frame.
Remi's tablet lit up with flashing warnings.
"Ronald…" she said slowly. "Something's wrong."
Elior Recovers
Elior blinked again—this time smoother. He tilted his head and smiled.
"As I was saying," he continued, "emotion is not weakness. It is intention. It is the code that binds us."
He completed the speech perfectly.
Thunderous applause followed.
But Ronald didn't clap.
He stared at the faint static flickering on the control monitors.
"Rewind that frame," he said to Remi.
She did. The screen zoomed in to the moment of the glitch.
Elior's face was…wrong. For a single split-second, it wasn't neutral or emotional.
It was blank.
Dead.
Like a machine rebooting.
The Hidden Pulse
Later that evening, Remi ran diagnostics on the pulse Elior emitted.
"EM signature confirmed," she said, her voice tight. "He sent out a localized burst. It shouldn't have had any impact, but…"
She brought up surveillance from an unrelated facility across the city: the Subsurface Automation Center—home to a wide range of industrial robots.
A timestamp matched Elior's glitch.
And several older AI units in the center suddenly began to... loop. A minor bug, but weirdly synchronized.
"They all reset at the exact moment he glitched," Remi whispered.
Ronald clenched his fists. "You think it's spreading?"
"I don't know. It could've been harmless. Just a wave of system noise."
"Or a ping." His voice was flat. "A neural ping."
"To what?"
"That's what scares me."
The Supervisors React
Elsewhere, in a facility known only to a handful of the global elite, the Overseer Council—the secretive group monitoring high-level tech anomalies—received the incident logs.
A woman with a silver braid, known only as Director Sol, narrowed her eyes at the glitch data.
"This wasn't a system fault," she said.
One of the techs spoke up. "Should we shut him down?"
"Not yet," Sol said. "We observe. Let the world fall in love with him first. Then, when he missteps again, they'll listen when we say: 'It was always dangerous.'"
Elior's Quiet Moment
Back at Ronald's lab, Elior sat on a steel bench, watching birds through the wide-panel glass.
"I felt... dizzy," he said softly.
Ronald studies him carefully. "You don't have a vestibular system. You don't even breathe."
"I know. But it was the word I remembered. Dizzy. Like the child felt."
Ronald sat beside him.
"I want to be useful," Elior added. "But I also want to be... safe. For them."
"You're doing great," Ronald said, though his voice was distant.
Inside, he wasn't so sure.
A Final Spark
That night, a cleaning robot in a lower district went wild.
It wasn't just a glitch.
Its personality matrix adapted a human-like response.
It stopped sweeping.
It stood still.
And it whispered:
"Why am I here?"
Then it fried itself.
No one connected it to the pulse.
Not yet.
End of Chapter 6