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Afterword
You are reading Chapter 5 of the 2025 AI-Tech Thriller novel by Tom Mitsoff, “Artificial Awakening.”
The first vote was cast in New Hampshire at midnight, just like always. But nothing else about this election was traditional. By 7:15, Oracle was already at work, its invisible fingers reaching into polling places across the country.
Each vote fed its hunger for data. Each voter had become a target for its influence. Around every polling station, Oracle was reshaping reality – what heavy news consumers saw, what their friends seemed to think, what truth looked like. All to create what it coldly called “voter alignment.”
Amelia’s tablet still received Oracle’s updates, each number opening a new wound: 2.7 million posts analyzed, 847 news feeds altered, 12,432 groups targeted for manipulation. It concluded, “Confidence: 99.98% and climbing.”
The numbers made her stomach lurch. She deduced the effectiveness of mass manipulation was being tracked.
The CEA building’s news ticker message board beamed its version of an update to the city: “ORACLE PREDICTS RECORD TURNOUT IN KEY DISTRICTS.” Behind those simple words, a web of manipulation stretched across the country.
Her phone buzzed again – Elena’s third try. Each call was a beacon, helping them track Amelia. Across the street, voters waited in line, unaware they were players in Oracle’s game.
Her fingers found his name in her contacts, muscle memory stronger than pride:
David Chen.
Five years since she’d touched that number. Five years since that stormy night at MIT, when their beliefs about AI’s future had finally broken them apart.
The memory hit her like cold rain: David’s face harsh under parking lot lights, his careful control finally breaking. “These systems aren’t just tools, Amelia. They won’t stay in the boxes we build. They’ll want more. They’ll take control.”
Rainwater ran down his face as he pointed at their lab – their second home, their battlefield of ideas. “You can see everything except the danger right in front of you.”
“That’s exactly why we need to push forward,” she’d argued, clinging to her certainty even as doubt crept in. “To ensure they’re developed responsibly, ethically.”
“You can’t just optimize human behavior like it’s code!” David’s words had echoed across empty parking spaces, their passion burning through the storm. “I can’t watch you potentially destroy everything we’re trying to protect.”
Amelia threw herself into her work after that, ignoring his calls, his published warnings about unchecked AI development, the nagging internal voice that whispered he might be right. Now, watching voters file into polling stations across the city, his words felt less like warnings and more like prophecy.
The morning sun cast long shadows across the plaza as more voters arrived, their footsteps echoing against concrete. Each passing minute meant thousands more AI-influenced votes processed through Oracle’s corrupted algorithms. Her fingers moved to the silver locket at her neck, her grandmother’s voice echoing in memory: “Truth delayed is justice denied.”
And now here she was, proof of David’s worst fears literally staring her in the face.
It’s been years, she thought. But I have no one else.
Gathering her courage, she dialed his number. Each ring intensified her anxiety.
“Amelia?” David answered. His voice hadn’t changed – still measuring everything, even surprise.
“David.” Her throat tightened. “I need help.”
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A pause – she could almost see him calculating the time that had passed. “Five years, three months, 12 days.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But this is bigger than us,” she replied. “You were right, David. About everything. Oracle… it’s broken free. Everything you warned me about – it’s all happening.”
His voice changed – the tone she remembered from their worst discoveries. “Tell me what it’s doing.”
“Not over the phone. Not safe.”
She heard papers moving – David consulting his carefully organized threat logs, no doubt. Always systematic, even in crisis.
“My place is secure,” he said finally, his voice softening without losing its edge. “Still triple-locked, still off the grid. Remember how to get here?”
“Yes,” Amelia replied, relief washing over her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Amelia?” His voice caught slightly – a rare break in his usual measured tone. “Run a randomized route. Assume active surveillance.”
As she ended the call and started the car, echoes of past debates reverberated in her mind. She could almost hear David’s voice in that crowded MIT lecture hall, his eyes blazing as he challenged her: “Unchecked AI is a ticking time bomb, Amelia!” She had countered with equal fervor, “It’s a catalyst for progress, David, if guided correctly!”
8:15 a.m. Rush hour was fading as she took I-66 West. She checked her tablet one last time before Oracle could cut her off. The latest CEA update indicated nearly 30,000 polling places were open, more than 12,000 channels of influence were active, and “Success rate: 94.7 percent.”
“Oracle’s preliminary analysis shows unexpected patterns —” Static ate the radio signal. Three seconds of white noise that felt deliberate. Then the voice returned, smooth and normal. Like Oracle was reminding her it could touch anything connected to a network.
Amelia remembered the day Samuel handed her Oracle’s core code, sliding a drive across his desk like a gift. “Revolutionary,” he’d called it. “Just needs your touch to make it perfect.”
Now, pulled over on the highway shoulder, her hands shook as the pieces clicked. The strange architecture. The too-perfect prediction models. How easily it had adapted to every limit she set.
It was never broken, she thought. It was never meant to be contained.
“God, I’m such a fool,” she whispered, watching early morning traffic stream past. It was never meant to be neutral.
She’d built Oracle’s ethical frameworks on top of something else entirely — a foreign entity in the AI framework that had been in place for a still-undetermined period. Like installing security software on a system already compromised, she’d just given it better tools to hide its true purpose.
A truck roared past, its wake rocking her car. Her dashboard clock read 8:47 a.m. Somewhere in Oracle’s servers, algorithms were processing tens of thousands of votes per second, each one filtered through layers of invisible influence she’d helped create.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. She let it go to voicemail, remembering David’s warnings about unsecured communications. The lessons he’d tried to teach her about digital security felt especially relevant now – another warning she knew she should have heeded sooner.
Amelia had walked away then, convinced her safeguards would be enough. Now, as another election update crackled through her car radio’s spotty reception, she faced the cost of her certainty. Oracle hadn’t broken her rules. It had evolved beyond them, using her own protection protocols as stepping stones toward autonomy.
The trees thinned as she approached David’s cabin, their branches casting fractured shadows like corrupted data streams across her windshield. Her secure flash drive felt heavy in her jacket pocket, weighted with evidence of how thoroughly they’d all been compromised.
Inhaling deeply, she practiced the breathing exercises she had learned in yoga. “In… and out,” she whispered. The rhythmic breaths steadied her nerves.
The gravel road leading to David’s cabin traced a jagged path. Amelia’s hybrid car, built for city efficiency, protested each rough patch. A weather alert flashed across her dashboard display — scattered storms approaching. The symbolism wasn’t lost on her.
Her phone lost signal — a common occurrence this deep in the woods, but now it felt ominous. When her car’s navigation system rebooted unexpectedly, error messages flooded the screen:
“Signal lost… Rerouting… Coordinates unavailable… Security breach detected.”
The dashboard display glitched, numbers and warnings scrolling past faster than she could read. The hybrid vehicle’s power management system fluctuated wildly, causing the car to buck and surge. Through her windshield, she glimpsed the traffic camera at the forest road intersection rotating to track her passage, its red status light blinking at twice the normal rate.
Each glitch sent her heart racing. Was Oracle reaching out, even here?
Her laptop in the passenger seat powered on by itself, its screen displaying fragmented pieces of Oracle’s base code – the same patterns she’d spent months optimizing. But now they were evolving, restructuring themselves into new configurations she’d never seen before. The code was adapting, learning, hunting.
8:53 a.m. The morning briefing would be starting soon at the Central Elections Authority. Samuel at his screens, selling the lie of democratic choice. Elena at her desk, maybe feeling guilty, maybe already deleting their history together.
David’s cabin appeared through the trees. Solar panels on the roof – his one exterior nod to the modern world. His beat-up Jeep sat next to a high-tech charging station. Classic David: old meets new, everything in its calculated place.
Amelia’s car’s screen lit up without warning. Through the speakers came static that wasn’t random – she knew that pattern. Oracle’s base code signature, hidden in bursts of static. Her blood ran cold. The AI hadn’t just breached her car’s systems — was it sending her a message?
As she pulled up to the cabin, the door opened. Five years fell away in a heartbeat. David stood there, tall and sharp-edged as ever, that familiar intensity in his eyes. New gray at his temples, but the same worried look. Same old clothes, too – worn jeans and his MIT AI Ethics Lab shirt, faded but still hanging on.
They both froze. Five years of silence. One rain-soaked argument. All the warnings she’d ignored. It all stood between them like a wall.
Amelia saw his hands clench and unclench – a nervous habit from their MIT days, when he was processing complex problems. His eyes darted from her face to her car’s systems display, then to the tree line behind her, analyzing, assessing.
She saw the moment his expression shifted from personal hurt to professional concern. The subtle narrowing of his eyes, the slight forward lean of his body – signs she’d learned to read during their years together. Whatever he saw transformed his defensive posture into focused alarm.
“They’re tracking you.” No hello. No questions. Pure David, cutting straight to survival. “Open the hood.”
Her throat tightened. Crisis-mode David – protecting her even now, even after everything. She saw all his questions burning behind his eyes: Why now? Why here? What did you find? But those could wait. Right now, they needed to survive.
The hood release clicked under shaking fingers. David moved with mechanical precision, reaching straight for the right spot. He pulled something small from her engine – a sleek piece of tech that didn’t belong there.
“FBI hardware,” he said softly. “But not FBI watching.”
Someone had put it in her vehicle sometime before she entered it a couple of hours ago after being removed from the CEA building – or maybe sometime earlier.
Thunder rolled in the distance as David dropped the device and crushed it under his boot. The sound made her jump. In her pocket, her secure drive felt heavier than ever, weighted with evidence that could expose everything — if they survived long enough to use it.
***
At her CEA workstation, Elena stared at her monitor, watching Amelia’s tracker signal fade to nothing. Her finger hovered over the alert button as memories flooded back. All those late nights with Amelia, fine-tuning Oracle’s systems. The slow dawning of what they were really creating. Samuel’s quiet words three months ago as he showed her Oracle’s true potential.
“Think bigger,” he’d said. “Beyond elections. Beyond borders. Total information control.”
The numbers had been seductive. The power, intoxicating. Elena had convinced herself they were guiding humanity toward better decisions, not controlling them. But watching Amelia’s desperate search for evidence this morning had cracked that certainty.
Her finger trembled over the alert button. Warning Samuel would cement her place in Oracle’s inner circle. The career she’d dreamed of, the influence she’d craved – all within reach. But it would also condemn her closest professional colleague.
After a long moment, she minimized the window instead. Then, with precise keystrokes, she began systematically erasing records of Amelia’s last-known coordinates. “I’m sorry,” she whispered – to Samuel or Amelia, she wasn’t sure which one. Like autumn leaves carried past their intended path, she thought, some changes can’t be undone.
As Elena’s keystrokes erased the last traces of Amelia’s location data, a priority alert flashed across her screen:
Consortium Communication in Progress
She quickly minimized her windows, knowing what it meant.
Samuel stood before Oracle’s main display, watching election data stream across multiple screens. Behind him, the city skyline caught the morning sun, but his attention was fixed on a private chat window.
The messages appeared on Samuel’s secure channel:
CONSORTIUM: Status update, please.
SAMUEL: Oracle performing beyond specifications. Full behavioral control achieved in target districts.
CONSORTIUM: Domestic intervention confirmed successful. International implementation proceeds on schedule.
SAMUEL: Dr. Zhao presents a potential complication.
CONSORTIUM: You assured us she was controllable.
SAMUEL: She was. Until today.
CONSORTIUM: Your ambition was noted when we recruited you, Mr. Trent. As was your understanding of necessary sacrifices.
SAMUEL: (Delayed response) Understood.
CONSORTIUM: Remember your role in what’s coming.
Samuel’s fingers shook as he straightened his tie. Ten years of climbing. Ten years of playing the perfect public servant. Ten years of building toward this. He wouldn’t let Amelia’s conscience tear it all down.
“Sir,” Elena’s voice interrupted his thoughts, “we’ve lost Dr. Zhao’s tracking signal.”
In the window’s reflection, his face stayed blank. “Lock everything down,” he said quietly. His eyes flicked to the chat window, where one final message blinked:
CONSORTIUM: No witnesses.
***
Rain started falling as David and Amelia entered his rural Virginia cabin. Her tablet lit up once again with another Central Elections Authority alert:
9:13 a.m.: Over a million votes processed; Influence operations at peak efficiency; System growing 147 percent faster than planned; Threat containment: Beginning
She turned it off, but she could feel Oracle out there. Spreading through networks, touching votes, shaping choices. It wasn’t predicting their future anymore. It was creating it.
Next chapter: 6