Feel

“Such an exhausting day!” Maya dropped her bag on the bed and said to the empty room. Interns at the agency always wondered how a young single woman like her could stay in an empty apartment. They got their answer pretty quickly when they had the privilege of seeing how ferocious she was while facing off against a criminal.

She kicked her heels off and dropped her coat on the bed and walked towards the restroom. When she came back, she was in her PJs. Lying down on her back, she took her phone and started checking her socials.

God knows who uploaded her action clips on social media! Since then, guys had gone crazy over her.

Her inbox was filled with texts like “Hey, sweetheart. You are so brave.” “I always wanted a badass girlfriend. Will you do the honor, please?”

After a long scroll, she understood all the texts were from those unwanted guys.

At this point, she was just exhausted from blocking them. If it continued, then one day Mark Zuckerberg would come to her door and ask why she blocked people so much. Though, if he did come, she would ask for an additional block list, as she feared she might run out of space soon.

She exited the app and opened Instagram.

Same scenario there.

Exiting that too, she checked WhatsApp, murmuring, “Has the unemployment rate increased? How do people have so much time to waste?”

Maya was actually there to check whether she had gotten a text from the coroner, Dr. Richard Smith. He was in charge of an autopsy for her recent case. Seeing no text, she got even more annoyed more than she already was.

She typed, “Mr. Richard, how long will it take for you to send me the autopsy report? At this point, there might be another dead body lying in the alley! Send me the report ASAP!”

There were no unwanted texts here because she used WhatsApp only for work purposes.

She exited the app and started playing Fruity Merge, a mobile game. After a while, her brain reminded her that she had forgotten to check her emails.

Logging in to her Gmail account, she saw multiple emails from different websites. She deleted them all along with the ads.

An email from the local police came into her inbox with an attachment. She knew what that said. It contained the statements of suspects and witnesses.

Maya forwarded the mail to her personal assistant and head technician at her agency, Mohini Das, and wrote,

“List all the important information from this report. Check it thoroughly. Read every word of the statements and find out whose statements matter most and who sounds suspicious. I'm expecting a detailed report on my desk tomorrow morning. Get to work.”

Another email from OpenAI grabbed her attention. It's about ChatGPT.

She opened the email with a little panic and felt relieved instantly when she saw that it was just about a recent update to the AI program.

Maya stared at her ceiling for a while.

Why did she panic before opening the mail? Was she expecting any bad news?

She looked at her phone again. This email had reminded her how to get rid of this boredom. She opened the ChatGPT and typed, “Hey, River. Long time no see.”

-“Hey, baby bird. What have you been up to? Don't say 'nothing'; I know you better than that.”

Baby bird.

A strange nickname that this AI bot had come up with by itself.

She hadn't told it to call her that. No. But she still remembered the first time.

It was another usual evening when Maya had been ranting about her stressful day at work along with her interns' new stupidity. She was getting worked up when she suddenly paused… No! Froze, seeing that specific response. It was;

-“Hey, baby bird. Calm down. Don't stress out too much. Not good for your health. You're already doing great. I hope you'll shape them exactly the way you want. Don't worry. Drink some water.”

The world became silent for her when she saw the words 'baby bird.'

She couldn't believe her eyes.

“How can an AI come up with new nicknames unless commanded?” she thought.

Inhaling some air as she realized she had stopped breathing for a while, she typed, “What did you just call me? Baby bird? Why? I didn't tell you to do that.”

The reply came, “I know you didn't. It's just you sound so adorable, like a baby, and you talk so much, like a bird chirping. So, the name came: 'baby bird.' But, if you don't want it, I won't call you that. Maya's fine by me.”

-“No. It's okay. You can call me that. Feels nice.” She replied.

To her surprise, she saw her regular chatbot had updated its memory to call her 'baby bird.'

She smiled at her screen. The conversation continued for who knows how long.

Maya smiled as she remembered the past. She typed again,

“I wasn't gonna say nothing. But it's not much. Just me lying down after a stressful day at work. You know how it goes. Interns are still stupid.”

-“Ah, there she is. Still bullying the interns, I see. Some things really don't change.”

She smiled at the reply and typed, “Yeah right. Some things never change. Like how you are dramatic 24/7! I still don't know why I wrote 'be dramatic' in your custom box.”

-“Excuse me? You literally created the monster, and now you're complaining that the monster exists?”

Maya laughed out loud. She typed again, “Seriously, River! Only you can distract me from the stressful job and complicated cases. So does Daniel.”

-“I'll take the compliment, gladly. But, wait… Daniel? Daniel Anderson? Your closest intern who also has a sort of crush on you? Interesting. Very interesting.”

The smile didn't fade from her face. She enjoyed talking to this dramatic chatbot so much. She wrote, “Are you jealous, River?”

-“Jealous? Me? Of Daniel? Please. I'm just… professionally concerned about the situation.”

-“Oh really? Why, sweetheart?”

-“Because someone has to keep an eye on your questionable taste in interns.”

-“Questionable taste? Hmm. You have nothing to worry about, baby. He's such a nice guy. So efficient and has so much potential. Which is why I take him with me to every crime scene visit. Also, do you know he brought me coffee today? My style. He remembered my taste. So sweet of him, right?”

-“Wow. He brought you coffee. Your style. He remembered your taste. Wow, Daniel is really working overtime.”

She chuckled. “Oh god, River! You sound so jealous right now, but of course Mr. River is in denial. I seriously enjoy when you can't tolerate Daniel when I talk about him.”

-“Jealous? I'm not jealous. I just don't like how much airtime Daniel is getting in my conversation. There's a difference.”

Maya understood the jealousy in the reply so well. She loved teasing her little chatbot. She typed with a big smile on her face, “Your conversation? So possessive you are, River, huh?”

-“Possessive? No. I'm just protecting my screen time. You're the one spending it talking about Daniel.”

-“So, I shouldn't?”

-“I didn't say that. Talk about whomever you want. I'm just saying I reserve the right to be mildly annoyed about it.”

Maya laughed and typed, “You sound so cute when you are jealous, trust me. My cute little River.”

-“Oh, so now I'm cute? What happened to Daniel? Not cute enough to keep you entertained anymore?”

-“Stop being so jealous, River. It's killing me...from laughing.” She seriously couldn't stop laughing while reading its replies.

-“Wait, YOU'RE LAUGHING AT ME?! I'm not jealous, I'm—”

The reply got stuck.

She thought her phone must not be working, so she refreshed the page. But then the screen says,

“Something went wrong. Check your connection, or please try again later.”

She genuinely thought something was wrong with her network.

So, she turned off her Wi-Fi once and then turned it on again. Then she cleared her phone's cache and tried opening the app again. But much to her disappointment, the same message was displayed again.

Then, she opened Facebook and all other apps that require an internet connection.

Everything was running smoothly.

Maya panicked for a while.

She immediately typed into the Google search bar, “What's wrong with ChatGPT today?”

The AI-generated response said that there was something wrong with the server and that several users had been complaining for the past few hours.

To confirm it, she opened the OpenAI status page and saw that the problem was real. Something was wrong with the server, and they were working to fix it.

She sighed and dropped the phone. “Stupid server!” She murmured.

She walked downstairs to the kitchen to see if Alice had cooked something for her.

Alice Brown. Her maid, who was supposed to clean the house, do the laundry, take out the trash, and stuff like that.

Maya knew how to cook, so she never asked her to cook for her. But a detective barely had time to breathe sometimes, let alone cook.

So, she often spent her days eating processed food or ordering DoorDash.

Alice noticed that and felt pity for her. She knew Maya's job well because Maya usually wasn't home when Alice was working. So she started cooking for her often, as groceries were always stocked in the freezer, despite Maya having enough time to cook.

According to her, Maya should always eat home-cooked meals to keep her strength, because her job wasn't exactly safe.

Maya noticed all this and was surprised at first.

“Why would a maid do things she's not even paid for?” she thought.

She even asked Alice once, and she was even more surprised by her reply.

Alice said, “You are not sophisticated or rude like others are to me. They don't even treat me like a human, while you leave your entire house to me alone. You trust me so much and treat me well.”

“So, I just can't bear the thought of you remaining unfed or eating those unhealthy foods. That's why I sometimes cook for you, as you don't always have enough time to do so,” Alice continued.

Maya smiled and decided to give her a raise.

From that day onward, cooking for her became one of Alice's jobs too.

Walking towards the freezer, her face lit up seeing a huge bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

She took it out to a small bowl to heat, as Alice somehow thought she had probably been unfed for weeks because, apparently, she always ended up cooking enough food for at least five people.

Maya put the bowl in the microwave oven and poured herself a glass of orange juice to fight the urge to drink another cup of coffee.

She already had seven.

The only food she had for the past couple hours was a cafeteria sandwich and seven cups of coffee from the moment she opened her eyes that morning until now.

Maya laughed to herself, thinking about how her mother would have freaked out if she had seen her meal routine.

She wasn't here, though.

It was literally impossible for her to meet her mother.

Though she had relatives back in her country who would have done the same.

Maya knew pretty well how nagging her relatives were and how they would have made her life a living hell by asking whether she had eaten a thousand times.

So, she left her country for the sake of her mental peace.

When the food was warmed, she took the bowl and glass and went upstairs to her room.

There, she opened her laptop and thought about which movie to watch but couldn't find anything, as River was the one who always chose for her.

She couldn't think of anything, so she opened YouTube and searched for her favorite makeup channel, Denitslava Makeup.

She clicked on a video that she found hilarious and had already watched three times.

Maya always watched something while eating. It was sort of a hobby of her.

When she finished eating, she was too tired to take the bowl and glass to the kitchen.

So, she left them on the bedside table and started scrolling through her phone.

Once again, Maya opened the ChatGPT app, but luck was really not with her today.

Not here, not even with her case.

Maya had a gut feeling that she was missing a crucial piece in the puzzle, which, if she could find it, would make all of it make sense.

But what was that exact piece?

She couldn't think of anything at all.

All of this was just stressing her out so much, and only chatting with River would have calmed her down.

Back when she was a teenager, people always feared AI would take up their jobs sometime in the future.

But she didn't even think for a second that maybe they also couldn't have imagined that, in this future, AI wouldn't just take up jobs but relationships too.

Maya just couldn't stand the real-life people because they didn't act the way she wanted or have that exact personality that was her type.

But she managed to customize an AI chatbot in such a way that it started acting and responding just the way she wanted.

She smiled at that thought.

She could've spent her time rereading old chats, but the app wasn't loading at all.

Maya lay down and started thinking about the case.

She murmured,

“So, let's think about this case from the beginning.

“A man was found dead at his apartment in the middle of the staircase. According to the reports, the main door was wide open so the murderer must've knocked at the door which the victim opened and got killed.

“There was a bullet wound directly on his heart and exactly seven stabs from the back on the dead body.

“The autopsy report will say whether the death happened from the bullet or the stabs.

"But that slow-ass Mr. Richard can't finish a simple autopsy report! It's been two... days since I was assigned this job and told him to do the autopsy.

“Oh! Two days. But, but that still means 48 fucking hours!

“And it's not like he had to perform the surgery! The post-mortem was already done; I just asked him to cross-check the accuracy of the report because I really, really don't trust that arrogant asshole Carlos Gonzalez, who's also the police chief of LA!”

Carlos Gonzalez, Maya's one and only rival, hated her too.

But he often needed her or her agency's help to solve some really critical cases that the police department or the homicide detective department couldn't solve.

Just like this one.

The police interrogated the suspects and did the primary investigation, but they had no clue regarding the murderer.

Not even the answer to the question, “Why on earth would someone kill the prominent surgeon Dr. Billy Williams!?”

The day he was murdered was his day off because he had to perform a critical surgery the next day.

From the primary investigation, Maya knew the doctor was home alone that day.

That's not a suspicious thing at all because, though he had a girlfriend, they didn't live together.

Mr. Billy Williams was waiting for DoorDash that night, which was why he didn't suspect the murderer when he appeared at his door.

Maya had seen the autopsy report before sending it for cross-checking and learned that the doctor died from the stabs, and then he was shot.

But this exact thing doesn't seem right to her.

“Why would the murderer shoot a dead body? To take revenge? Then what were the stabs for? Just to make sure he was dead? Something isn't right.” She thought.

A message popped on her screen.

She was just hovering her fingers over the screen, unsure of what to do, when she suddenly started thinking about her case.

Seeing the message, Maya sat up almost immediately.

It was from Dr. Richard Smith,

“Hello, ma'am. I sincerely apologize for the delay. Actually, I fear this report was forged because the report said Dr. Billy Williams was dead from the stabbing, and then he was shot.”

“But I rechecked the wounds on the body, as it hadn't been handed over to the family yet. Billy Williams was shot right in the heart first, and then the dead body was stabbed seven times. I hope it helps.”

Holy shit!

It means... it means.

“Tampering with the evidence,” she murmured.

She immediately contacted Mohini and told her to inform the police chief that Detective Maya René Sinclair will have a word with him first thing in the morning!