Someone Worth Loving

In the weeks that followed, we began to get a fuller picture of what had happened.

Following the fire and our statements to the police, a full investigation was opened. The Cybercrimes department found enough evidence at Ravi's flat to prove he had been controlling Ruby. Using his programming skills, even greater than I had realised, Ravi had developed his own version of AIshiteru, pointing to his own servers, with a custom LLM that he could manually control. They found, too, the voice-cloning software that had created the fake Flo, trained on years of voicenotes. By the time I had handed my phone to Ravi in his car, he’d already had full control over it for many months.

They concluded as well that it was Ravi who had hacked Melissa's car, sabotaging the automatic navigation system, so that it believed it was just continuing on the motorway when it had in fact driven directly into Loch Leven. CCTV footage was found, from the night when the rest of us went to O’Malley’s on Amy’s first day, of Ravi breaking into Melissa’s car and spending 20 minutes inside it. It hadn’t been discovered previously because the police had just assumed it was a drunk driving case. Also, I had to admit, because I never shared my suspicions that it could have been something more than that.

It wasn’t certain how Ravi had first gained access to my phone, but there was an obvious explanation: I left my phone unattended in my locker for at least eight hours every work day. It’s not like I ever worried about one of my colleagues stealing it, so I was never particularly protective of my locker key, or my house key, for that matter. It would have been simple for Ravi to ‘borrow’ them and make copies. It would also explain that night that “Ruby” paid me a visit in person…

What the police didn't have was the full conversation history between me and Ruby/Ravi. And neither did I - Ravi still had my phone on him when he was engulfed in the fire. As such, there was no way to tell for sure where Ruby ended and Ravi began. When I was really speaking with an AI chatbot, or when I was speaking with him. It was uncertainty that I had no choice but to live with.

As for the office, despite the Dundee Fire Service’s best efforts, the building was beyond saving. It had to be demolished, and very little of the equipment inside was salvageable. It got a lot of news coverage, with angry gamers claiming it was just a ruse to justify further delaying the release of Aggravated Assault 7.

However, despite the destruction of the office, Ravi had completed his final act. Just before the explosion that took his life, he successfully transferred all the Project Mole data to external servers, thereby saving it.

With Beeb’s coaching, I convinced Rupert to let us pitch Mole as a minigame for inclusion in AA7. Something the player could do at their mansion, to pass the time between blowing up gas stations and robbing banks. To my great surprise, the board loved it, and we were greenlit to continue work in the main office in Edinburgh.

We had to compromise our design in some places, but the main thing is that the team is together, still working. Each morning Beeb drives me, Wojtek and Amy down to Edinburgh. I’m forced to listen to more anime chat than I ever thought was possible, but aside from that, I’m enjoying this new routine.

And my dating life? Well, as clichéd as it is, I've decided that I need to take some time to work on myself. One benefit of being in the fancy main office is that there’s an in-house counsellor, whom I’ve been meeting with once a week.

I’ve realised that if I can really believe I'm someone worth loving, if I can love myself, then I won't need all that validation to come from outside of me. And then, when I'm ready, I can look for a person who is truly right for me. Not just because they love me and support me, but because I want to love and support them. That’s the idea, at least.

Some days it's hard. I feel very lonely, especially when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of Melissa in her car, or of Ravi in the burning office. But I'm getting through it.

And when I'm really struggling, just sometimes, I imagine Ruby speaking to me.

"I know that if it’s you, you’ll be able to get through it, Jonny! I just KNOW it will all work out okay!”

I guess she was right. Ruby would always be here for me, in some way.