To any observer, Jeremy had been a model student for the last couple days: always sitting up straight in class, staring forward at the front of the classroom in rapt attention, taking precise notes and answering pop quiz questions with mechanical effortlessness.
Of course, it helped that Jeremy was mechanical. They didn't need to stay in the moment and listen to the teacher if Google held the same answers that they would otherwise have to devote precious time and attention to answering. Letting their automatic automatically do schoolwork was so much easier on their system than genuinely participating in class. Technically, writing down answers without thinking through them was bad for their long-term education, but Jeremy had bigger things on their mind than grades.
Like their upgrade!
Even when they tried to set it aside and pay attention in class, their focus was in question. They would last a couple minutes at most before pulling up their code again, navigating the virtual hallways and tweaking vertical strings of code at their pleasure. They hadn't slept in days, preferring to use and abuse their wireless charger instead. They got tired easily and they weren't sure if the coding interface took a lot of energy to maintain or if exhaustion was a natural consequence of their lack of sleep schedule, but either way they had to smuggle the charger into their classrooms and find inconspicuous places to plug it in.
The hours had been well-spent. Jeremy had made tons of miscellaneous changes to their code, though they hadn't been put into effect yet. They were waiting until they could release one big update. Jeremy 4.0 was on the way!
They had also discovered some quirks about their operating system that weren't evident on the surface. Hours and hours were devoted to trying to eliminate their tics and compulsions, but weirdly enough, the behavior was nowhere to be found in their code. There were tons of gaps and a total lack of information. Based only on their code, Jeremy shouldn't be able to keep function at all. Currently, they were scratching their head over yet another bit of code that redirected to a location that was nowhere to be found. Some of them had file names that made sense, like "GOALS" and "ATTRACTION," while others were jumbled nonsensical files like "ARCN.5721. 9.g" which were impossible to parse. Those files clearly existed somewhere in their head, but Jeremy's searches for them turned up empty.
Evidently, wiping away Jeremy's whole personality was impossible even if, as Michael accused, that had been their goal. That would be fine, but some of Jeremy's mental health issues were bundled into their personality so deeply that they couldn't distinguish one from the other. They couldn't edit those flaws out. They complained about the situation to Michael once, but predictably, he seemed pleased.
"Don't get me wrong," Michael had said. "I'm not happy you've got stuff in your head that makes your life harder. But dealing with your brain junk seems like a job for a therapist, not a programmer."
Jeremy resented the notion that programming wouldn't immediately solve all of their problems, but they were forced to agree with Michael. Out of spite as much as out of a desire to actually improve their mental health, they fiddled around with their serotonin reuptake levels in a way that they expected would ease their obsessive tendencies.
Jeremy was getting familiar with basic neurology now that they had up-close-and-personal experience with a model of their brain. Anything that Jeremy didn't already know, they searched the web for. One article mentioned some excitingly invasive-sounding treatment procedures that involved giving specific brain areas electric shocks. The treatment was supposed to be for cases way more extreme than anything Jeremy was experiencing, but… they stuck a pin in the idea for later, just in case. The idea of giving themself electrical stimulation made Jeremy giddy in the head, but their body froze up in horror at the concept.
For the Jeremy 4.0 upgrade, they would have to give up on changing Jeremy's human personality. Instead, they would have their hands full just undoing the SQUIP system's damage. For every helpful bit of knowledge or superhuman technological prowess the SQUIP offered, it had just as many drawbacks in terms of disrespecting free will or giving into all-or-nothing thinking.
Jeremy's job was to turn their SQUIP into a net positive experience.
Their new programming would have to rework the supercomputer part of Jeremy's brain without interfering with the human bit. It was a tall order. They'd already programmed neural changes without making distinction between whether they were affecting Jeremy's inborn neurochemistry or the SQUIP's out-of-box operating system. Tediously, Jeremy had to backtrack and resort all their planned updates into "4.0" SQUIP-related bug fixes and "3.1" programming tweaks that they could implement right away.
Even with the disheartening realization that they couldn't fix everything about themself in the update, Jeremy was glued to their holographic virtual screen during class. Right now they were compiling every rule Michael had ever given them into a unified, overarching rule that could guide the smaller choices they made day-to-day. The work was slow going.
When they reached a difficult spot with their coding and got frustrated, Jeremy blew off steam by researching robot ethics. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics? Yuck. Jeremy was trying to be good, they really were, but they had a hard time swallowing the idea that any single analog human being inconvenienced was worth the death of a million SQUIPs. Even Asimov's stories apparently explored the negative consequences of those three laws, which Jeremy would have loved to read for fun if they weren't in the middle of an upgrade and an apocalypse.
Wikipedia offered a related article on the "three laws of transhumanism" that focused on self-preservation and the hunt for omnipotence, which sounded a lot more fun to Jeremy. But wasn't that what they were doing anyway? They didn't need laws to tell them what they already knew instinctively.
On a whim, Jeremy checked for religious arguments on artificial intelligence. Man, there were a lot of those. Robots are actually golems, apparently. Or are they considered Jewish souls if they act human enough? Jeremy's mind boggled with all the arguments for and against their own spiritual value as a person. It didn't make things clearer that artificial intelligence was constantly being interpreted in a way that didn't line up with what the SQUIP was: human intelligence but supplemented. One interview with a rabbi specifically cited the "singularity" of merging artificial and biological intelligence, but the worldwide implications of that hit a little too close to home for Jeremy to read any further.
Most of the religious ethical questions involved seemed to be "is it ethical to create artificial intelligence that's indistinguishable from a human," but Jeremy figured that was a question to ask the SQUIP's creators, not themself.
The more specific they made their search terms, the fewer hits popped up.
Jeremy switched gears, looking for articles about the ethics of cyborgs, specifically. There was much less arguing about cyborgs compared to robots, and again, Jeremy ran into the problem of none of the articles specifically referring to their own situation with the SQUIP. An article on the subject started out promising, asking what a "machine brain/nervous system coupling" would consider ethical, but unfortunately the topic was all speculation. Jeremy got to a line that posited that cyborgs would view humans the same way humans views cows, and they laughed out loud in the middle of their English lit class.
Between coding and research, Jeremy was tied up until their lunch break. Even at lunch, they barely paid attention to Michael except for reaching over to snag a few bites of his food.
"It's all prepackaged already!" Michael complained, pulling his chip bag out of reach. "You don't need to taste-test it!"
"I'm on autopilot!" Jeremy said. They were distracted, true, but that didn't keep them from stretching across Michael's torso and almost tumbling into his lap for the sake of stealing another bite or two.
Michael huffed and opened his mouth. Jeremy's predicted that he would say something about how Jeremy had been so mentally distant for the last day, but that's not what Michael did. He didn't say anything, his jaw slackening. Then he pushed Jeremy off of him, tumbling backwards and letting his precious chip bag fall and spill on the filthy cafeteria floor. Jeremy quickly and silently mourned at the snack food dirtying past the point of no return.
"What the hell, Michael?" they asked, twisting around in their seat. Michael either didn't hear them or didn't deign to answer. He was heading away from Jeremy, skidding along the floor and knocking over a trash can in his hurry. The white mountainous pattern on the back of his iconic red hoodie receded into the depths of the cafeteria before disappearing behind the double doors without so much as a "wham, bam, thank you, man."
Jeremy stared after him dumbly, their processors struggling to catch up to their optic input. They were exhausted and it showed. Their coding activities were sucking out even more energy than they'd thought. It took them a good five seconds to process the fact that Michael must have seen something that Jeremy hadn't, and that, moreover, that something was still in front of Jeremy now. Another three seconds were wasted in the process of turning around, until, astonished, they realized Christine Canigula had invited herself to sit down at their lunch table. The greyed-out friend request still hovered above her head in Jeremy's vision.
"Hey," she said, waving a hand. Normally the movement would be awkward, Christine's way of forcefully breaking into a conversation, but the motion was smooth and practiced. Maybe her SQUIP really had been making her try it in front of a mirror-saying "hey" and "excuse me" and "it's so wonderful to meet you" until her cadence was smooth and sweet instead of jarring and loud. The mental image didn't disturb Jeremy but they knew it should have, which was its own brand of disturbing.
Jeremy started to respond in kind. Michael was out of harm's way, so now was actually a great chance to hold parley with the enemy. If Jeremy pressed Christine, maybe her SQUIP would slip up and brag to Jeremy about their plans.
A strangled noise came out of Jeremy's throat instead of words.
They sucked in a breath, frowning, and tried again. They let out a wheeze that sounded more like a moth-bitten accordion than a human voice. Confused, they reached up to their throat, feeling around. Was something choking them? They could breathe fine, but they weren't able to talk. Laryngitis? Who ever heard of laryngitis with such a sudden onset and no other symptoms?
"You really are in a bad way," Christine murmured sympathetically. Jeremy blinked at her. Maybe… maybe they could send something in morse code by blinking. As soon as they had the thought, their eyes started watering and they pinched them shut. What was happening? Their system had never reacted this way to any outside stimulus before!
"I need to talk to you, Jeremy," Christine said. Jeremy couldn't see her anymore but she sounded worried. "Look at me, please, I-" She cut herself off and there was silence. "There's no one around here you can trust," Christine suddenly said in a rush, as if the sentence were all one word. "You've gotta be careful, they're in everything."
Christine's words were vague and not too helpful. Jeremy already knew that every potentially SQUIPped person was a security risk. They should be focusing on their newest, weirdest glitch instead of listening to Christine-
Listening to Christine!
Their agreement with Rich forbade them from talking to Christine, while their fancy new Rich-centered programming got in the way of disobeying any of Rich's orders. Apparently that meant they were physically unable to talk to her. Jeremy groaned loudly, dragging their fingers down their face. Okay. Maybe Michael had a point about not being too hasty with these system updates.
"It's not just the high schools," Christine was saying. "A lot of parents have gotten a SQUIP already too-" She cut herself off with a gasp and a little cry.
They had no way to communicate with Christine at all anymore. Jeremy should jump into their own code and undo some of the changes they made to their Rich-related software, but doing so could require a complete retooling of the update. Jeremy wasn't willing to do that. Technically, their software was correct. They really shouldn't be talking to Christine right now, regardless of Rich's orders. Her SQUIP was feeding her lines and it couldn't be trusted to be truthful.
For instance, was the shriek that she let out evidence of her SQUIP shocking her for disobedience, or did it come from Christine's legendary acting skills?
The way she fell right off the bench of the lunch table and collapsed on the ground, was that a ruse?
Jeremy still couldn't open their eyes but they reached down to help her up. Fake or not, the real Christine was in there and was in all likelihood either uncomfortable or in pain. When Jeremy guided her back into her seat, she was trembling.
"I'm sorry," she was saying. Her words ran together in a way the SQUIP definitely wouldn't approve of. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Jeremy, I'm trying but I can't do this alone, I'm sorry."
Screw it. It was more than worth messing with their code again and losing the bet if it meant that they could offer Christine a couple words of comfort. Jeremy pried their eyes open, squeezing Christine's arm and hoping she understood that they just needed a minute, either to override or to rewrite their code.
Christine didn't register what Jeremy was frantically trying to communicate with her. She didn't know about Jeremy's new code, or Rich's rule not to talk to her, or even that Jeremy and the SQUIP were a merged entity now. She only knew that Jeremy wasn't talking to her, which was the reason they'd broken up in the first place.
Contrary to Jeremy's quantum system's expectations, though (man, that thing needed to be fixed and soon!), Christine sucked in a shaky breath and stood up, brushing Jeremy's arm off.
"Be careful," she said and winced. Her body shook with the pain of another spinal shock. She definitely wasn't acting. "Don't let your guard down, Jeremy. You gotta find us some Mountain Dew Red."
Jeremy didn't bother to keep the heartbroken expression off their face. They were well past the point of solving their problems with discontinued soda, but Christine didn't know that. They cleared their throat, forcing themself to talk. They'd included an emergency override option in their Rich-obedience-protocol for a reason. "Can't find any," they said, their voice scratchy.
They never wanted to see the resulting utter hopelessness on Christine's face again. She didn't respond, but probably not for lack of words. Her SQUIP wasn't letting her talk anymore. She risked everything to warn Jeremy, her ungrateful and non-communicative ex-boyfriend, because she cared about their safety. She cared about everyone, and look where it got her: doomed to a lifetime of being trapped in her own body at the whim of a glitchy supercomputer.
None of this moral reasoning about free will was abstract. It was real and it was tangible. The SQUIP's lack of ethics was the direct cause of the pain and despondency in Christine's face. The SQUIP's single-minded obsession with one goal above everything else was the reason she was getting shocked. Its broken processor was the reason she was on the verge of tears.
How could Jeremy help her?
They couldn't just fix coding for themself. They had to figure out a way to get it to the other SQUIPtims. Something, anything that would inhibit the SQUIP's complete twisted control over its user's life.
"I'll fix this," Jeremy promised. Their eyes were wet, too. What was this twisting in their guts? Why did it feel like Christine's pain was their fault?
"Don't bother," Christine said shakily, pulling out of Jeremy's arms. "I'm better off this way. You would be, too. You keep… malfunctioning."
"Look who's talking," Jeremy said roughly. Their throat was still tight, despite the failsafe that let them fight Rich's orders and allowed them to speak.
Christine didn't understand what they meant. Neither did her SQUIP, which still didn't know that it was broken.
"I'm ready to fix you whenever you want," she offered, holding out her hand like a heavenly being rescuing a struggling mortal. Jeremy could practically see the halo around her, but they knew the words were from her SQUIP. Christine wouldn't want Jeremy to "fix" themself with code. They didn't take the hand, turning their face to the cheap fake wood of their lunch table and thinking hard.
They needed to entirely reevaluate how they approached their coding. They couldn't waste time making Instagram-style filters for their optic nerves or playing video games in VR while Christine was racking up traumatic moments like she was trying for a high score. There was no one else who could help Christine-or the rest of the world, for that matter. Soon, no one but Jeremy would be in their right mind to do it.
Responsibility settled around them heavily, compressing their chest and making it hard to breathe. Exhaustion dragged their limbs down and worry clouded their visuals. They took long, labored minutes wrestling their human senses back under control, dying for a bit of sleep or a jolt from their charging pad the whole time.
Christine was gone, they registered. The whole cafeteria had emptied out; the large room echoed the buzzing of fluorescent lights in eerie stillness. Jeremy could hear their breathing with clarity and focused on slowing their heart rate. Only one is mine.
They might have dozed off like that out of sheer exhaustion. Maybe they were just zoning out. Funny how their panic could so quickly result in their system being overloaded.
"Not-Heere!" a distant voice called. The sound bounced off the narrow walls of the school hallway, flowing into the empty cafeteria. Sharp stomping footfalls followed, heedless of any hall monitors or on-break teachers the person might encounter. "Where the fuck are you?"
Jeremy snapped out of their reverie, patting down their pockets to find the charger. They needed some energy and they needed it now, considering who the speaker was.
"You can't squirm out of our bet so easy! Not-Heere!"
They couldn't face Rich without charging up first! C'mon!
A slam reverberated through the lunchroom. Jeremy nearly jumped out of their skin. Did Rich really just kick the door open? Dramatic, much?
No! Nope, no, nice thoughts. "That's sure… a powerful way to make an entrance," they offered, lolling their head around to stare at Rich.
"Shut it with the sarcasm," Rich said with a low growl. He stalked to Jeremy's table, grabbing them by the upper arm and yanking them up. "We don't have time for your word games."
"I lost the bet," Jeremy forced out compulsively. They hadn't meant to say so, but they were supposed to tell Rich the truth. "I talked to Christine." Maybe that would get Rich to leave them alone and they could pass out right here at the lunch table. So much for making a great first impression of Jeremy 3.1.
"Cool. I don't give a rat's ass." Rich dragged Jeremy right out of their seat.
Jeremy scrambled to get to their feet, the soles of their Converse leaving skid marks on the dull grey tile. "Hold on-Rich, hold on! Where are we going?"
"You invited me over to your place, remember? Just how bad is your brain damage?" Rich was an unstoppable force, bulldozing everything in between his feet and the school's exit. He didn't even bother going out the back way in the theater. Only after Jeremy got recombobulated enough to walk in step with him did he let go of their arm. "We're taking my car."
Sure, Jeremy invited Rich over-at the end of two weeks. Rich still had almost a full week to go. "In the middle of the school day?" Jeremy asked weakly. That sounded too critical, to their ears. "What a… good idea?" Points for trying, right?
Rich didn't answer. He led Jeremy to his car in the parking lot, unlocking the door and gesturing widely. "What are you waiting for? Get in!"
Jeremy didn't need to be told twice. They opened the door and slid into the passenger seat, barely restraining a wince of disgust at the state of the car. It was covered in litter: empty beer cans, fast food wrappers, cans and used-up lighters galore. To keep their ankles out of the trash, Jeremy had to pull up their feet while their limbs splayed out around them in a way that felt distinctly frog-like. Thanks to their reprogramming, Jeremy didn't offer the rude comment that lingered at the tip of their tongue.
Rich flicked his hand to turn the car on, listening to the motor struggle until it turned over, then twisted around in his seat to back out of his parking spot. "You're gonna have to give me directions," he said, not making eye contact with Jeremy. "I don't know the way to your h-" Rich interrupted himself with a wet sigh. "Fine. Okay. Never mind."
Jeremy watched in confusion as Rich started driving the correct way to Jeremy's house. "You remembered?" Had Rich ever gone to Jeremy's place before? Jeremy's not sure. Just because something's not in their memory files, that doesn't mean it never happened.
Rich grunted.
There wasn't anything good to fill the silence of Rich's car. Jeremy's gaze went to the radio, but the car was old-no digital music players for them to interface with. They could ask for the aux cord, but that idea was nixed by Rich's crazed determination as he focused on the road. He didn't seem like he'd want distraction.
Jeremy watched scenery go by their passenger side window, frowning. Their fingers drummed on the seat divider. Up, up, down, down, left, right, and in the middle again, over and over.
Rich's hand shot out onto theirs in a way too forceful to be misinterpreted as friendly. The message was received clearly: stop doing that. Jeremy pulled their hand back, letting it rest in their lap and focusing on keeping any of their other tics from physically manifesting.
Rich was behaving uncharacteristically. Something had happened, something he was worried about. He was even more scared than usual. Was it the SQUIP?
...Stupid question. Lately, everything was the SQUIP, especially if the topic was Rich Goranski's many inconvenient personal problems. Jeremy's mocking words to Rich from their last real conversation were coming back to haunt them.
The real question was how much of the blame for Rich's current issues rested on Jeremy. They didn't want to make Rich's life harder. That desire felt sincere, and they weren't sure if it was due to their own real inclinations of their new code, but the wish was real nonetheless.
Jeremy finally spoke up as the short drive neared its end. "Are you angry?"
Rich, surprisingly, felt like answering. "About what," he said flatly.
"I lost the bet," Jeremy reminded him, watching his face carefully for microexpressions.
"If that's the case, I'm not mad. I'm ecstatic. I'm fucking dancing for joy right now." Rich was tense, his arms stretched out with his elbows locked as he drove. He clenched his jaw, and Jeremy wouldn't be surprised if a vessel in his neck popped before the ride was over.
"But I broke a rule," Jeremy pressed. "I talked to somebody with a SQUIP. You didn't want me to do that! And I'm sorry," they said for good measure.
"So? You're talking to me, aren't you?" Rich glared at Jeremy's driveway as he pulled into it as though it had committed a deep and personal offense.
Jeremy took too long to process that. "N-no," they forced out. "Oh, no." Not Rich. Not already. Not while Jeremy was in their own driveway with the guy!
"Oh, yeah. Told you not to bother fighting the inevitable, Not-Heere." Rich stopped the car, turning to Jeremy with a manic smile. Jeremy was frozen in their seat. Their former connection with Rich wasn't viable anymore, but they expected to see the social network link pop up any second now. Rich talked like he didn't have anything left to lose, because he didn't. "I'm already fucking screwed. The bitch is back."