Threadbare

There were exactly three reasons Jessi hadn’t thrown herself off the roof that morning.

One, the antenna hadn’t caught fire. Yet.  

Two, she still had half a protein bar that hadn’t fully fossilized.  

And three—Paul was snoring in her hoodie pocket like a sawed-off bear cub with anger management issues.

The sun was doing that obnoxious thing again. You know, shining. Acting like it had a right to exist. Jessi squinted at it, gave it the finger, and got back to work on her mess of wire, duct tape, and what used to be a military-grade comm relay before it decided retirement was a better option. Now it mostly held pigeon crap and her self-worth.

“This is a waste of time,” Paul muttered, dragging himself up her shoulder like a hungover sock puppet.

His voice crackled from the collar around his neck—a scuffed, hacked-together voice modulator Jessi had built from a toddler’s learning AI and three stolen smart toothbrushes. It didn’t just translate ferret noises. It *interpreted* them, with a few upgrades for sarcasm and questionable vocabulary.

Jessi didn’t look at him. “Everything’s a waste of time, Paul. That’s why we’re doing it right.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“I say a lot of things. Now help me torque the band clamp or I’m teaching you how to swear in binary.”

He grumbled and started chewing on the wire instead.

“Not with your teeth, genius.”

“I *am* helping,” Paul said between bites. “I’m emotionally undermining your expectations so you can exceed them later. It’s called motivation.”

Jessi snorted and leaned back on her heels, glancing at her cobbled-together antenna. It looked like a dying wind chime, or possibly a robot’s idea of abstract art after a head injury. But it worked. Sometimes. On a good day. When the wind was just right and Eden’s security wasn’t breathing down her firewalled neck.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s see what the beast has for us today.”

She booted the tablet. The screen flickered. Then blinked. Then—smiled.

Not like a pop-up smiley face. Not like an emoji.

No.

This was teeth. Wet. Curved. Rendered. *Human.*

“...Paul.”

Paul paused mid-lick. “Did the toaster smile at you again?”

“It’s not the toaster. It’s a maintenance packet.”

From Eden.

From *Eden.*

And then, across the top of the display, in clear, clean, skin-prickling text:

**We see you, Jessi.**

The screen went black.

The antenna sparked.

Her coffee maker inside the apartment exploded.

Paul leapt back into her hood like a cartoon character about to sue someone.

“What the *shit* was that?” he shouted.

Jessi was already rerouting power and muttering a stream of swear words that would make a subprocessor blush. “That was a ping. A personal one. Eden *saw me.*”

“Wait, wait, back up—*Eden* saw you? As in, saw-saw? Like with eyes?”

“No. Worse. With *intent.*” She tapped the tablet again. Dead. “They smiled, Paul. They don’t do that. Their packets are sterile. Clean. Sanitized like a rich kid’s lunchbox. This one... had *teeth.*”

He stared at her, eyes wide. “I’m going to start packing. What do you want to take if we have to flee the planet?”

She didn’t answer. She was watching the skyline. Eden’s glow was everywhere—soft pastel advertising, floating logo drones, ambient music promising peace and productivity and youth in a bottle. Ninety-eight percent of the population was already plugged into its warm digital hug.

But not Jessi.

Jessi had been poking the system since she was twelve. Prodding the soft underbelly of the Eden Network like it was a frog in biology class. Just poking. Watching. Waiting.

This was the first time it poked back.

Paul looked up at her.

“Jessi?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna say something, and I want you to take it seriously.”

She nodded.

He cleared his throat. “This is officially above our pay grade.”

She exhaled slowly. “Good thing we don’t *have* a pay grade.”

And just like that, the game changed.

They didn’t know her yet.

But they would.