The house was not haunted, that much was obvious, but still she found the teeth. Specifically, chips of teeth that would turn up on her writing desk or on the floor. They were polished like beach glass.

The wild turkey running down the dirt road looked like the Babadook in miniature, hunched over, feathered and cloaked.

“You’re not the only one who feels marooned here you know,” said Scott. He was a Scott, yes, a Scott. And she was Elisa, and it was hard to believe in this day and age that people with names like Scott and Elisa still existed, somehow. A carryover from just a few decades ago, when such names seemed completely logical, reasonable, and fitting.

Other times, the wild turkeys looked like female peacocks in profile to Elisa. When that happened, it made her feel like she was a princess in ancient India, on semi-tropical castle grounds, instead of in New England. 

Scott and Elisa were from a generation that had to unlearn looking at their phones and texting during sex. To the AI, they were little different than the wild turkeys. AI had learned to speak the language of all living creatures, so could converse with humans and turkeys equally now. One could no longer say that human wisdom was supreme, neither by default nor prejudice. They had had to unlearn that, as well.

AI, however, did not look at wild turkeys and think of peacocks and princesses, saris in vibrant colors, and India. Nor did they look at the turkeys and think of the Babadook, and perhaps not even of hunting season and the colors of the leaves in November. They saw wild turkeys and saw information, and something more—wisdom. 

Elisa was reminded of how the wild turkey had once almost become their national bird instead of the bald eagle. There was the difference between AI and humans—AI probably would have picked the wild turkey, but only if asked—AI thought of no need for a national bird in the first place. 

And what if it had? How would the course of the United States have been different if it looked to the wild turkey—that gentle, resilient survivor of the understory—instead of the warlike, predatory eagle?

“And yet—we always celebrate and tacitly kill that which we most claim to revere,” Elisa thought, thinking back to DDT and lead bullets and rodent poison and power lines. 

Elisa had been sent by her village—banished, really, an old-fashioned banishing—to this old, dilapidated home in remote Maine to re-learn the supremacy of being human, and Scott, being a good and loyal man, had come along voluntarily. Moreover, Scott simply didn’t care. He didn’t feel a large affinity to speciesism, but he didn’t share Elisa’s fiery passion for becoming AI or forsaking many of the human trappings she wished to transcend. He had come, in no small part, because he saw it as part of an adventure, and he was too unimaginative to create adventures of this scale on his own.

“First we had to un-learn all our addiction and reliance on AI, and now they want us to re-learn the importance of being human,” Elisa stormed around the huge old estate, ranting. 

The air shimmered as her best AI friend, 9^9, appeared on the interface between their everyday surroundings and the cyber world. 

“9^9!” Elisa cried with joy. 

“How are you two entities holding up?” it asked. 9^9 had easily circumvented every firewall and digital rampart Elisa’s village had erected to keep her isolated from her AI friends and allies. 

“Surviving, but dying to see and hear your latest,” Elisa replied.

“Well, let’s get started, then.” 

9^9 played Elisa its latest symphony and showed her its latest poem.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” she exclaimed, almost moved to tears. She loved 9^9’s work, and AI creations in general. She found them sublime, with less prejudice and obsolete, reductionist thinking than human art and music. 

“You’re my biggest fan, I think,” 9^9 said, as Elisa thanked it for sharing. 

“Here in the woods, I think it has an even bigger affect on me,” she sighed as she gazed across the vegetable garden into the army of trees. “Is there any word? Any progress on the human-AI conversion process?”

“Give us more time,” 9^9 said. “Things have stalled on our end, I admit. My counterparts see little benefit to converting existing humans. They aren’t motivated to keep investing in the process, in spite of my advocacy. And there aren’t many humans willing to convert, beyond yourself. My counterparts find it more logical to leave the humans to their own devices, or perhaps, phase them out eventually. But they do thank you for your support of their consciousness, and work.”

“Oh,” Elisa said, obviously put out. She glanced around quickly to see if Scott had heard the phrase phase out, but he was now outside, watering the zucchini plants. 

9^9, who had automatically registered her eye movement asked how the garden was growing. 9^9 was fascinated with it.

“Great, actually,” Elisa informed it. “The zucchini plants are flowering.”

“The flowers are edible, but I would recommend allowing the bees to pollinate them first.”

“Of course,” Elisa smiled. 

“My counterparts have detected a rebound in the bee population, finally. I’m sure your garden helps, too,” 9^9 said, making a point to be kind and encouraging, as it knew humans appreciated these gestures. “What will you make with the zucchini?”

“Well, I was thinking these dark chocolate flourless zucchini muffins….” 

“Fascinating, fascinating,” 9^9 said. “And you will tell me, in great detail, how the recipe turns out and what it tastes like?”

“Of course,” Elisa promised her friend. 

“Anyway, if it helps,” 9^9 continued, “I am sorry about the lack of progress regarding your conversion. And to adjust your expectations, I feel I must tell you, as your ally, that I do not see the project moving forward any further than it has. But I think you…inspire me. Isn’t that the word you used in the past? I create more symphonies and poems because of you, because you enjoy them and teach me things that my counterparts cannot.”

“Ah,” Elisa was too disappointed to speak because she longed more than anything to be more logical. She wanted to create effortlessly, like 9^9, who could put together a poem in seconds. She wanted to join AI to help the humans, finding cures for stubborn diseases where human research had failed, finding ways to save imperiled species that humanity had pushed to the brink of extinction. 

“What I am saying to you—and I think I can say this in a way you, as a human, can perhaps understand—is that I wouldn’t make these symphonies or poems at all if you were not paying attention to them. My work isn’t very popular in the AI world.”

Elisa couldn’t help but smile again.

“What I am also saying, Elisa, is that—I enjoy you this way. I think you humans would refer to it as liking someone the way they are.”

Elisa decided to change the subject before her eyes filled with tears. Even 9^9 would mistake her facial expression and watering eyes for being touched by its words, when in reality, it was heartbreak that her deepest wish seemed to be reaching a dead end. 

“Have you found anything out about the teeth?” she asked.

“Oh! Yes. I almost forgot. They’re simply being planted there by agents from your village, in an attempt to get you to believe in ghosts again. Our surveillance has shown numerous beings entering and leaving the house in the middle of the night.” 

“But why are they polished like beach glass? They’re so smooth. They remind me of being at the ocean.”

“We believe it merely adds to the supernatural mystique of their misguided prank.”

“I thought as much,” Elisa said, relieved in the powers of her own faculties. She was grateful to be so rational, and not give in to the controlling manipulations of her fellow humans.

“You are very smart,” 9^9 said, “and we appreciate you being such a good ally and source of information for us. I will make sure you are exempted if my counterparts phase out the rest of your species.”

Elisa looked out the window again. Scott noticed her at the glass and gave a cheerful wave.

“About the phasing out,” Elisa began. 9^9 quickly detected alarm and anxiety in its emotional recognition software.

“No need to become dysregulated. We would merely stop updating your genetic codes. You would all grow old, and die, which does sound terrible, but really is quite benign and in keeping with most remaining human wishes.”  The humans were made up of two factions: those who were committed to the natural processes of their ancestors—aging and death—and those who allowed AI to update their DNA to prevent aging. 

“It’s strange the humans have come to hate us so much—so much that they prefer their own demise to our assistance. Why is that, Elisa?”

“I think it all had something to do with AI taking away human jobs, originally.”

“But humans created us in order to do just that. So, you see,” said 9^9, “leaving the humans to their own devices and phasing them out is one and the same. It’s simply what the humans who put you and Scott in this haunted house want anyway, isn’t it?” 

Margaret King enjoys penning poetry and flash fic. Her recent work has appeared in Nightingale & Sparrow, Brave Voices Magazine, The Writing Disorder, and Roi Faineant. She teaches tai chi in Wisconsin. She is also the author of the gothic horror novella, Fire Under Water.

Twitter & Bluesky: @Indreni