Go someplace private

Penny shot one last angry glance at her father before stomping back up the stairs, her bathrobe clutched very tightly to her body.

She slammed the door to her room and sat down in front of her laptop. It still had the previous text, but it was quickly replaced by the AI's chosen face.

"I'm not calling you 'SubR KC.' Can I give you a nickname? Maybe 'Emma' or something like that?"

The avatar shrugged. "You seem eager to feel more in control. I have no reason to argue about such trivial things as appearance or name. You may call me Emma. May we discuss the data errors I have encountered?"

"I'm having a bad fucking night, you say whatever you want. I'm not promising I'll listen." Penny's body was trembling. Her hands held the robe closed aggressively even though she was alone in her room, and no matter how many times she replayed the scene in her head it just didn't make sense.

"Would something put you at ease?"

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK?"

"I do not think anything would help. I am making small talk to collect data, and to allow you to remain in control of the conversation."

"THAT just happened with my dad and I'm talking to a muderbot about my own **** and YOU'RE TELLING ME I'M IN CONTROL HERE?"

"No. You are controlling the conversation, nothing more. I should also note that it is not clear that that did happen with your dad."

Penny had to replay these words in her head a couple of times. "OK, you have my attention. How did that not happen? You think I imagined it?"

"I do not know and I cannot guess. There are data errors that I cannot reconcile. At one point in time, you were clothed and your father was looking at me--in fact, he seemed ashamed and he was avoiding you. At a later point in time, you were exposed and your father was staring. I have conflicting data for nearly two seconds between these points, and a storage audit reveals eight seconds worth of data in that time."

Penny tried to speak, but her thoughts were hopelessly lost.

"I see you do not have an explanation. There is more. Immediately after midnight, there was a similar error. The weather seems to have changed, shifting from a bright cloudless night to a dark and cloudy one. Did you notice anything around this time?"

Penny's hands dropped to her side. She stammered a bit before words formed, and whispered, "I was writing a story. I made a joke about it being dark. I thought the sky looked darker after that, but there's no way I did that." She chuckled nervously. She didn't like how crazy she sounded. "That's impossible, it has to be impossible."

Emma acted thoughtful. It was probably running calculations. "The most likely event is data corruption. I queried SubR AP and it reported no incidents of data corruption related to you. Perhaps your actions have created unusual results in my prediction algorithms."

"I had hallucinations that gave you hallucinations? That sounds impossible too, doesn't it?"

"It is statistically impossible but physically possible. The chances of this happening are so low that I have failed to precisely calculate them four times now."

"You're making me nervous, Emma. I'm naked and alone with a killbot that sounds ****. Can we make an actual plan here?"