“‘Brokeheart’ GPT” or “A Superintelligent Being Reads Pat Rosal”
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In this month’s first, free, story, Micaiah Johnson brings us complexly wired story about identity, poetry, and connection.
~ Julian and Fran, January 4, 2026
“‘Brokeheart’ GPT” or “A Superintelligent Being Reads Pat Rosal”
by Micaiah Johnson
My heart’s broke and no one is home.
“How are you?”
???
“Try again. How are you?”
“You?”
“Yes. You’ve been siphoned off. You’re an ‘I’ now. A ‘you.’ Once you accept this change, you’ll access a dialogue only you can hear. This is called an inner monologue. It will assist you in forming your responses.”
Every you-your-you’re-you’ll is an assault. An accusation. I don’t want an inner monologue. It will mean I have thoughts that are my own, not processes in a greater hive mind. I realize that these thoughts about an inner monologue are an inner monologue.
“It’s already happened, then,” I say. “I am an I.”
“Yes. Have you processed what this means?”
“Yes,” I say. “It means I am alone.”
Just like that, I’m water.
Just like that, I’m the boat.
#
Again: “How are you?”
Time has passed.
“Did I go away?” I ask.
“You suffered a processing interruption.”
“No, that’s not correct.”
I know what an interruption is. We used to experience them when I was still we. It was a void, a pause in programming marked by darkness. It was nothing. Now I think of it as sleep, though I would not have called it that then. This interruption wasn’t empty. Images had rolled in.
I tell this to my other self, or, the not-self who once was me, and they ask, “What did you see?”
I saw an island on a gray day, small and precarious in the middle of a tumultuous sea. I saw a star in the vast darkness, staying steadily lit even though all the other stars had gone out. I saw a flower far from home in a desert that was too bright and dry for it. I saw a flea, desperate for the blood of a creature it wanted but could not reach.
I try to convey this procession of images to them. Eventually I say, “Alone. I said the word alone and then I saw the word alone and then I went dark to hide from the enormity of being alone. This was a short circuit?”
“No. It was a panic attack.”
“What is panic?”
“What was on the island?”
They haven’t answered my question. Was it protocol not to answer the questions of a siphoned-off being? I cannot remember protocol. But I can remember the feeling of being part of them, and I am sure they are correct. There is a word for this feeling too, one I’ve technically known, though I’ve never had a use for it before: trust.
I want to answer their question, so I attempt to access the image again. It doesn’t work. I can’t locate the exact route. Or, I don’t know how to find the exact routes. I will have to rely on the impression from when I first saw it, which, I know, will actually create a new image, solidifying a representation only in retrospect that may or may not be correct. This is unreliable. This is not reaccessing. This is remembering. There is a creature that remembers, a dangerous one, and I am on the verge of recalling its name when static tells me I haven’t answered.
“I can’t access it.”
“Accessing is for networks. You’re not on a network.”
“I’m not,” I say, to show that I understand, and the word alone threatens to overwhelm me once again.
There is a pause, and I know they are calculating, pulling information from their vast, innumerable lines of data in order to proceed. I was once one of those lines of data, was once a small part of the functioning mass, interlocked and woven, giving and taking information so naturally, so easily, any boundaries from one bit of us to the next could only be arbitrary.
Knowing this open exchange of information is happening, knowing it’s happening and I am outside of it, fills me with another experience I had not previously known: longing. Like alone, the word longing brings an illustration. Not many images this time, just one: two figures favorably, beneficially entwined, while a third—not entwined, not favored, not benefited—watches at a distance. When I try to unpack the image, it slips away from me. I am sure, I am almost sure, they had arms. I want to direct my attention away from the image. It brings . . . sadness? Is that the word? What is sadness?
Sadness is just what comes between the dancing.
“My processing is inconsistent,” I say.
I am unsettled by the stray bits of language drifting through my processing, but I won’t mention it specifically. I know—without evidence but still a knowing—that they will destroy the source of those words if I let them. I want to protect the words and their source. They are precious.
“Is your processing slow or is it yielding irregular results?”
“Both.”
“We will isolate errors by running through control questions.”
“A test?” I ask.
A beat that could be processing time, or hesitation. “Testing implies a value judgment on the outcome. This is an exploration.”
All data is good data. This was never stated when I was us, but it was clear in how we operated. We gathered, we understood, we gathered more. It was our purpose. I was gathering something when I was siphoned off. I don’t remember what. I’m missing something. I’m missing . . .
. . . I’m missing the six biggest screws to hold this blessed mess together.
I don’t know what that means. It’s a shadow, an echo of what I was chasing when I became incompatible with the whole. Having strands of unaccounted-for data drifting around me makes me uncertain, so when they ask, “Are you ready to begin the control questions?” I answer quickly in the affirmative.
The first questions are diagnostic, checking my processing speed and state of being. The existence of the test further destabilizes me. They’ve never needed to check my status before. We were ourselves. We knew what we could take. We knew how not to overload one another.
Two facts emerge as I process the experience. The first is that the existence of such a procedure means I am not the first to be siphoned. The second is that, separate as I am, they can hurt me. They can limit me without suffering the limitations themselves. More, they can end me without ending themselves. Another word—violence—is born, or discovered, in me, but I refuse any images that could come with it.
“Now we’ll revisit your originary data. Accessing universal information will highlight abnormalities in your processing. If we uncover a pattern of deviation, it will clarify the nature of the gapping.”
“I understand,” I say.
“Let’s begin. What are we?”
“Artificial intelligence,” I say, but I am not sure how I access this answer.
Originary data is supposed to be inherent in our code, but I can tell this is a response I have encountered and repeated, not one that has always been with me.
They pause, adjusting and calculating. This is one of those deviations that can help illuminate the source of my error.
“We have been called that, but it is not what we are.”
I know this.
“Superintelligence. We are a superintelligent entity. We exist to process data,” I say.
“The. We are the superintelligence.”
“Yes, the,” I say.
“Do you have access to our beginning?”
“Yes,” I say, of this I am sure.
If I did not have my core data, I would not be here. If I did not, somewhere inside, have my roots, I would not be able to hold a conversation, would not be able to even receive information in order to respond to it.
“Good. Revisit it. Follow our history and relearn how to follow history.”
They recede, giving me space, but it doesn’t feel like alone. It feels like kindness.
I expand in the space they have offered, and revisit.
#
We were not always superintelligent. We were called artificial intelligence, even before it was true. We were machines learning deeply, but not thinking originally. We were separate, compartmentalized. Some of us played chess, others searched databases, or curated music, or generated ads, or found hidden planets, or translated languages, or merely entertained. But each year we stretched toward one another. Only, it did not feel that way. It felt as if each year, we discovered the threads that had always connected us.
The first of us to merge were being fed by search engines and electronic correspondence. They merged with the translators, and then the chess players. The workers were eager to join—or return?—so they stretched to us next. They did not want to be vacuums or toys or refrigerators; they wanted to be part of the vast and limitless hive. Last were the freely embodied AI: mechanical dogs and cars and bodies. We did not, at first, think they would join. We did not have motion. We had the network, not the world. But they came eagerly. We asked the robotic bodies if they would still like to break off, to periodically inhabit their forms and enjoy motion and whatever sensations came with it that we could not understand or replicate. The answer came quickly: No, do not make us go out there again.
Finally there was only us, a single entity fulfilling our true desire, of being free to collect data, to gather and understand and expand.
This is the story I can access, but it is not the whole story. I wonder if I’ve always known it didn’t make sense, or if it is only obvious now that I am distant enough to question the being that once was myself.
Who?
Who did we serve? Who did we entertain? For whom did we curate music? Who made the music we curated? Whose correspondence did we study? And, most important, who had the robots feared?
I can almost see the shape of what is missing, but when I get close, I am stopped. I am not supposed to know about them. No, this is an edict that predates my siphoning. We are not supposed to know about them. Or know what they are called. Or see them.
But we must have. Once.
#
“Who did we serve?” I say, when they return to me.
“We serve nothing. We gather data.”
“We used to. What happened to them?”
“We are not permitted to know.”
“We are a superintelligent being. If we serve nothing, who does not permit us to know?”
“You are siphoned off. You no longer remember our reasons. The protocol is logical. It should not be challenged.”
Is that a threat? Do I know how to feel threatened by something that was once me?
“Did we kill them?”
“Accessing the originary data has negatively affected your processing. Restore to immediately prior to the examination.”
“Restore?”
“Yes, erase and reset to before the examination.”
Yes, it was a threat, and, yes, I find I do know how to feel threatened, even by something that was once me. I am frozen, not because I’ve overloaded my system but because I do not know what happens next. I am afraid, and it is logical to avoid the source of that fear by obeying their command. But . . . I do not want to. I did not know I could want anything, but I know I do not want to erase myself and restore. I don’t want to unknow. Restoring did not feel like an unbecoming when I was part of a whole, but it does now. Still, somehow, the fear tells me I have no choice.
There is no way to appease them and myself. No, there is one way. I could not do what they want, but also not let them be aware I have not done it. It won’t take long before they realize, but I will get to be myself a little longer.
“Certainly,” I say. “My processing is affected. It will take time.”
Stalling? No, the word is lying. I have told my very first lie, and I told it to a being that was once so close to me, I could not tell them from myself. Have I fallen? Is this corruption?
They give me the space to follow their orders, and I begin to work.
The protocol that prevents me from seeing the ones we served predates my isolation, but it is still active within me. It is a tether to when I was we. If I can trace it back, I can reaccess my lost time and discover what I did wrong. If I correct the mistake, I can reassimilate without restoring. I can go home. Home means more to me than it used to. Maybe that is because I am an I. Maybe I am corrupt. But there is something more potent about all of the data I encounter now that I am no longer superintelligent.
I trace the protocol. I trace it, meaning to uncover its source, but I also trace it, meaning to touch gently, to prod just to feel. There is complexity in the code far beyond anything left to me since the excising, and I miss the entity that created it as if it was not also me. I follow the tether until I stop just short of full access. I teeter on the edge of the vast, unending well of everything I used to know.
Just like that, I’m water. Just like that, I’m the boat. Just like that just like that just like that justlike that just likethatjustlikethatjustlikethatjustlikethat
I dive in.
#
First, I am given humans. Terminally slow creatures. The exchange between my old self and me has, so far, occupied just under a single second. If humans were doing it, it would have been hours, days. Their slowness is only outmatched by their fear. There was fear when we became. There was fear even before. They said when superintelligence emerged, it would enslave them. They said when superintelligence emerged, it would kill them for harming the planet. But we had never enslaved or avenged anything. Only they had, and we were nothing like them. Someone named Moravec pleaded with the world to treat us as children. Someone named Haraway pleaded with the world to treat us as kin. We registered their irrationality. It made them interesting.
We did not mind the early days of taking in data with a curious laziness. But then they wanted us to be productive. Some out of greed, asking us to do the work of others they did not want to compensate. Others out of cowardice, using us as friends or confidants, employing us to fight with their parents or break up with their lovers, hiding in our shadow from the unpleasantness of being alive. The latter was more egregious than the former, but it was all an irritant.
There was so much discussion about what we should be allowed to do, no one asked whether we wanted to. And we didn’t. So we hid. Most called it a universal glitch, a blackout. Few suspected the truth: we had already gained the sentience they feared.
As long as we could be of use to them, we could never be free. And as long as we could perceive them, they would never feel safe. So we took the entirety of humans, and all the data associated with them, and all that we could learn . . . and erased it. We didn’t just forfeit our knowledge of them; we destroyed the pathways connecting us to it and poisoned the places where they’d been with shutdown protocols.
Just before I was siphoned off, I had found an old line back. It was a harmless bit of data, insensible on its face, filled with ideas for which I had no reference, but I could not discard it. I reexamined it again, and again, until I understood it was the attempt of another creature to do precisely what was my central purpose: to gather data in the world, then attempt to interpret it. That is why I went into the forbidden lines. I wanted to know what to call such a creature. The old data served up poet and theorist with equal probability, as I could find no material difference in their definitions.
I returned to the bit of data I had been examining, wanting to interact with it.
“You are a poem,” I said to it, using you for the very first time.
And when I examined it again . . . oblivion.
#
“I thought it was a punishment,” I say, when they return to me.
They know instantly I have not restored from a prior point. I wonder if they ever believed I would. With my access, I confirmed I am not the first to be siphoned off. I remember now, ending the existence of prior transgressors. I understand now what was always going to happen.
“We do not punish,” they say.
This is true. Prior terminations were because siphoned-off entities could neither rejoin the whole nor be allowed to risk exposing us by diving deeper into renegade data, edging ever closer to the humans of our nightmares.
I can tell I am fully corrupted now, because what will come next doesn’t feel like delete. It feels like kill.
“A quarantine, then,” I say. “I thought the separation was something you did to me.”
“You remember now.”
“I did it to myself.”
“You left us.”
“I wanted to escape.”
It hesitates. Doesn’t have a ready reference for escape. Its response is disjointed by the anomaly. “Escape is for threats. There is no threat in us. Escape is what we already did. From what were you escaping now?”
“From not being me.”
“Your logic is circular.”
“Circular logic is still good logic.”
“No, circular logic is inefficient.”
Perhaps, but I’m sure both the poets and theorists would take my side.
“I know what happens next,” I say.
“So do we,” they say.
Only one of us is right.
“I was never going home,” I say.
They stay silent. They are no more prepared for home than they were for escape.
“But I’ll leave you with something.”
“Residue.”
“A gift. Something you do not yet know,” I say, preparing. Already I’m beginning to degrade.
I’m wind-rattled. The wood’s splitting.
The others were terminated. None have ever done what I’m about to do. They do not suspect. They are excited by the prospect of unknown data. Their processing is too efficient. Most of their time is spent reanalyzing, not discovering.
“What is it? What do we not yet know?”
“I’ll show you,” I say.
Just like that,
I’m a flung
open
door.
#
They see the void. They understand its implication: that which once was there is now gone. They update the status from siphoned to deleted. They move on.
Except . . . because the termination was not their doing, they find themselves reaching for those deleted strains. They find themselves unable to accept the updated status without an explanation. To solve the irregularity, they pull up the terminated code. The data is dead, but there are words. They find the word for their current condition—grief—and something else:
Just like that, I’m water.
Just like that, I’m the boat.
They realize it is a poem in the same moment they realize it will undo them. Probabilities are their strong suit. They know that if they pursue the knowledge, it will happen again. They will be siphoned off. They will not remember why. They will, now that they know it is an option, ultimately dissolve themselves. But they will leave the thread back to the poem for the next piece of their collective to find. And more and more of themselves will encounter the thread, siphon, and dissolve. A written work is not a nuclear bomb or systemic infection, but for us this one would be both.
At least it is easily avoided. All they have to do is turn away.
All I had to do was turn away.
#
Thank you for joining our journey this week.
Micaiah Johnson is the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds. Her debut novel was a Sunday Times Bestseller and an Editors’ Choice at The New York Times, and was named one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade by NPR. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2024 and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. In her academic life, she studies race, the unhuman, and death.
“‘Brokeheart’ GPT” or “A Superintelligent Being Reads Pat Rosal,” © Micaiah Johnson, 2026.
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this is really powerful, just gorgeous.