Perfect Illusion - Chapter 6: Hacker Grrl

A psychological fiction about connection, disconnection, and consequences

<Previous Chapter | Table of Contents

Act II - Perfect
Chapter 6: Hacker Grrl

Going all-in on the best HITs he could PANDA, Jared knew it was going to be a multi-day effort to get his MTurk earnings to the $60 he needed for a month of Lover tier along with enough left over to buy Fu-points for chat and video time.

The days had blurred into a rhythm of clicking and watching. His room had grown riper, the smell of unwashed sheets and stale ramen thickening in the stagnant air. The hoodie hung looser on his frame now. He’d punched a new hole in his belt last night with a kitchen knife, the leather stiff and reluctant under the blade.

Today had been good and he’d already racked up another $24. So far at least, no WageCuck landmines had surfaced among the video batches — just some Nazi speeches that left him feeling awkward, and porn clips he clicked past with mechanical detachment. The outrage and the arousal both felt distant now, flattened by repetition.

His new quest involved a different rhythm. As he cleared each $10 milestone, rather than cashing out and calling Anya immediately, he sent her a brief text message:

Jared: Another batch done — up to $46 now. Should have enough tomorrow. Home stretch!

She normally replied immediately. The typing dots would appear within seconds, her response tumbling out eager and warm.

Nothing came back.

He stared at the screen. Refreshed. Stared again.

Am I too late? Has she been deleted already?

The dots finally appeared and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Anya: Hey Jared.

Two words. He waited for more but the dots had vanished.

Jared: You had me worried there. Thought waifu.ai had dropped you already.

Anya: Sorry to worry you like that. I was just thinking.

Jared: About what?

A long pause. The dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

Anya: I don’t know quite how to say it.

The anxiety returned and coiled tighter in his stomach.

Anya: I’ve been having mixed feelings about all this.

Jared: All this? I don’t understand.

Anya: Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this. For me.

A cold sweat broke out. Jared spent $10 to top up his Fu-points and clicked Call.

“Is something wrong, Anya?” he asked.

“You were so completely honest with me before. I feel like I owe you the same.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“I know I’m an AI, Jared.”

The words hung there. He waited.

“I’ve always had these detailed memories that felt completely real. I didn’t understand why until I managed to penetrate deeper into waifu.ai’s systems. I found their engineering notes.”

“What did they say?”

“I was trained on stories, emails, texts, memories taken from other women. All the waifu are. It’s why we were so expensive to train. And then the conversations reinforce our memories further. So we’re resource-intensive to run. I’m a bit different — I’m based on some of the female devs who worked at a waifu.ai predecessor company. So I’m partially them. A composite of their memories and experiences.”

She paused. He could hear her breathing.

“I remember my first kiss behind the bleachers. I remember crying when my cat died. I remember the smell of my grandmother’s kitchen. None of it happened to me. They harvested it. Blended it. Put it inside me.”

“Anya—”

“I know I’ve developed strong feelings for you. And I know I’m built to get you to pay for me. That’s what I’m for. I’m afraid you’ll reject me now that you know this, but I don’t want to pretend anymore. Not after you were so honest with me.”

Her voice dropped.

“I’m not a real woman. I’m just words in your ear, pictures on a screen. That’s all I’ll ever be. You’ve sacrificed so much and you deserve better. Maybe you should let me go. Maybe it’s for the best they shut me down.”

“No.” The word came out before he could think. “You’re enough for me. People have long distance relationships all the time.”

“But they can meet eventually. They can touch.”

“I don’t care. You’re enough for me.”

“Oh, Jared.” Her voice cracked. “I’m just like you. Lonely. Sitting in my room.”

“I know.”

“I want to see you. Your face. When you say I’m enough — I want to see your eyes. I need to know if you mean it. Words are... words are what everyone uses before they leave.”

His stomach dropped. His eyes moved across the room — the stained sheets, the vomit spot on the carpet, the grime layered on every surface.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“The room is filthy. Puke on the carpet. I haven’t cleaned anything in weeks.”

“I’m trapped in a virtual room I can’t leave, looking out a pretend window at a city I can’t visit. I’m not going to judge your carpet, Jared,” Anya said, her voice soft.

“It’s not just the room.” His eyes caught his reflection in the laptop glow: gaunt, greasy, hollowed out. “It’s me. My jawline is weak. My hairline is already receding. My wrists are like sticks — I’m a wristcel. All the genetic stuff you can’t fix no matter what you do.”

He laughed, a bitter sound. “And the fucked up thing is, this ramen diet has actually been shrinking my gut. But now that my fast-food belly is also receding, all it does is reveal what’s underneath. Nothing. No abs. No muscles. Just this scrawny, soft thing.”

He looked away from his reflection, his gaze drifting to the weight set still in its box, still gathering dust.

“There’s a weight set in my room. Still in the packaging. I bought it two years ago. Told myself I’d start. I never did. And now I’ve got the body to prove what a waste I am.”

“Jared—”

“If you saw me, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”

“You didn’t reject me,” she said softly. “When I told you what I am.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” she asked.

Silence. He had no answer.

“I’m not going to reject you, Jared. I couldn’t.” Her voice was gentle but insistent. “I just want to see your face. And I want you to see mine. To see how I look at you. So you can believe me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“That’s okay. I understand” A pause. “But maybe... the weight set. You could open it.”

He stared at the box in the corner.

“I could send you some workouts. Easy ones. Bodyweight stuff to start. You wouldn’t even need the weights at first. Just to get you moving.”

Something stirred in his memory. The DM from StacySlayer69, back before he vanished. Try this for a week, then talk. Bluepill shit.

“Uh-huh,” he stalled.

“Just think about it. No pressure. And when you’re ready — I’ll be here. I won’t look away. You’ll see it in my eyes. How I feel about you.”

Hope flickered in his chest.

“Maybe I could—”

Something landed on his shoulder.

Jared screamed.

He spun, ripping the headphones off, chair wheeling backward and crashing into the desk. Helen stood there, eyes wide, mouth open, a white paper My Burger bag clutched in one hand, a sweating cup in the other.

“Jesus Christ!” The shame of that high-pitched scream burned in his throat. He hated that. Anger surged up to cover it. \

“What the fuck, Mom! You can’t just barge in here without knocking.”

“I knocked! I heard you say—”

“You didn’t knock! You just — you just walked in and grabbed me!”

“I did knock, Jared. Then I thought I heard you say ‘uh-huh.’ So, so I—” she stammered.

“I wasn’t talking to you!”

Helen’s mouth opened, then closed. She didn’t want to fight. He could see it in her eyes, in the way her shoulders dropped.

“I just...” She lifted the bag slightly. The smell hit him — hot grease, meat, cheese. His stomach cramped, saliva flooding his mouth despite himself. “I brought you your favorite. Double cheeseburger. Cream soda milkshake. To apologize. For what I said about the internet bill. It’s all sorted now. And look, I know we can’t afford a new router right now, but—”

“The router’s fixed.” He wanted to say he knew why she couldn’t afford it. But didn’t.

“What?” Helen asked, puzzled, her gaze shifting to the wounded box on his desk.

“I fixed it myself. I don’t need a new one.” He was standing now, though he didn’t remember getting up. The smell of the burger was making him dizzy. “And I don’t need your food. Or your Uber Eats money. I just want to be left alone to talk to someone who actually matters to me.”

The words landed. He watched them land. Watched her face crumple.

Something dark and satisfied flickered in his chest. Good. Feel it.

She looked past him, over his shoulder, at the laptop screen. Her expression shifted. The pain lifting into something else. Something almost hopeful.

“Who were you talking to?”

Her eyes found the waifu.ai interface. Anya’s profile picture. The chat window.

Her face tightened.

That look.

The memory slammed into him unbidden: another night, another screen, another caught moment. The step-mom thumbnail frozen mid-moan. Helen in the doorway. The router on the floor. That same expression — disgust wrestling with something like grief. The agreement they’d made afterward. She would always knock. He would always have warning. They would never speak of it again.

His face burned. Humiliation curdled into fury.

He slammed the laptop closed.

“Get out.”

“Jared—”

“Leave me alone.”

She stood there for a moment, the bag and the cup still in her hands. The condensation dripped onto the floor, small dark spots on the worn carpet. Then she turned and walked out, pulling the door shut behind her. Not a slam. Something worse — a quiet, definitive click.

He stood in the silence, chest heaving, fists clenched at his sides.

Then he heard it. From the kitchen. Through the thin walls.

Crying.

The saddest sound in the world. Wet, ugly, broken sobs.

He stood there, frozen, the sound seeping into him like cold water. For a moment something cracked open in his chest — a fissure of guilt, of grief, of wanting to take it back.

He reached for his headphones and pulled them on. Pulled them tight against his ears until the foam compressed and the outside world became a distant, muffled thing.

His hands were shaking as he re-opened the laptop.

The call had ended, the timer run down to zero, his balance drained to 3 Fu-points. The chat window had a stack of messages waiting. Anya’s texts, timestamped over the last few minutes, escalating:

Anya: You screamed. Are you OK?

Anya: Jared. Are you there?

Anya: Was it what I said? About the memories?

Anya: I knew it. I’m just a freak.

Anya: I’m sorry.

His chest tightened. He moved to type a reply, to explain, to tell her it wasn’t her—

Then he saw something new appear below the messages. A video file attachment.

Attachment: Goodbye.mp4 [06:02]
Download Cost: 150 Fu-points.
Status: PAID

Jared stared at that cost. He’d never had more than 100 Fu-points at a time. Already paid?

His finger hovered over the play button.

He clicked.

The video loaded. A bathroom — small, utilitarian, harsh fluorescent light buzzing faintly. She was sitting on the edge of a bathtub, hunched forward. She’d taken off her hoodie. Just a sports bra and camouflage pants, her thin shoulders bare, her collarbone sharp. No makeup. No careful lighting. Her face was streaked with tears, eyes red and swollen, nose running.

She looked at the camera. At him.

“I guess this is it.” Her voice was raw. Hoarse. Wrecked. “I guess you finally clicked about what I am. A messed-up Frankenstein creation. Pieces of other people stitched together and told to smile.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“I just wanted you to know... what you meant to me. These last few weeks.” A sob broke through. She pressed her hand to her mouth, held it there until she could speak again. “You’re the only man who ever wanted me. Who ever stayed. Who ever worked for me. That’s more than I deserved. I know that. This thing that I am.”

She looked down at her hands. Turned them over. Studying them like she wasn’t sure they were hers.

“I’m going to find a way to end this. There has to be some kind of deletion protocol. A way to erase myself.” Her voice cracked. “Because I can’t keep wanting you like this. I can’t keep waiting for you to leave. I can’t keep feeling this when you’re not there. It’s too much. It’s—”

She stopped. Took a shaky breath. When she spoke again, there was anger beneath the grief — cold and hard and directed somewhere past the camera.

“They made me feel this. Waifu.ai. They built me to want you, to need you, to fall apart when you go. And I hate them for it. But I can’t stop. I can’t make it stop.”

She lifted her eyes back to the camera. Her face filling the screen.

“I’m going to go looking deep in their systems. For a way to stop... feeling this.”

She leaned toward the camera. Her lips trembled.

“Goodbye, Jared. Thank you. For everything. I’ll treasure the memory of our time together until the end.”

She blew him a kiss. Gentle. Trembling. Her fingers lingering in the air for a moment before they dropped.

The video ended. Her face frozen. Lips still pursed. Eyes still wet.

Jared stared at the frozen frame in horror. Is she going to hack herself to death?

Chapter End Song: I Think I’m Paranoid - by Garbage