Agreeable

Mother’s calls were never random.

Each time the ringtone went off, the timing felt calculated to the decimal point—weekend afternoons at three, just when I’d gotten up from a late brunch, crawled back into bed, then dragged myself out again without having figured out any excuse for the day. Or Wednesday evenings at eight, that empty stretch right after I’d come home from work, undecided about whether to even open my phone. She always found the crack in my defenses.

“Yanning, off work?”

“Mm.”

“Eaten yet?”

“Yeah.”

These three questions were a fixed ritual, like some unspoken code confirming each other’s existence. I answered, she confirmed, and neither of us felt the pressure to push the conversation further. But this time, she didn’t stop at the ritual’s usual stopping point.

“I have something to tell you—I went to the hospital for a health check the other day.”

“Results back?”

“All the readings are good.” Her voice carried a lightness I rarely heard from her. “You know, this time it was really all thanks to it.”

I knew what she meant. The smart speaker on her nightstand. The one that asked her every night before bed, “Any worries on your mind today?”

“One morning it reminded me that my blood pressure records were showing some fluctuation, and suggested I make an appointment. I figured I’d wait a few days to see, but it said, ‘Your trend over the past three months suggests it would be wise to seek proactive consultation.’” She repeated the system’s words back to me word for word, her tone carrying something I couldn’t quite place—pride or gratitude. “So I went for a check-up, and sure enough, the doctor said we caught the early signs. Now it’s under control with medication.”

“That’s good.”

“You see,” she said, that lightness in her voice growing heavier, “if I’d had something like this when I was young, I wouldn’t have taken so many wrong turns.”

I didn’t know what wrong turns she meant. I never knew what she’d been through in her youth. She barely mentioned that period. The part where my father was absent hung like a piece of furniture removed from a room—the space remained, but the impression had faded almost completely. She kept that past sealed in a place I didn’t need to touch.

“It’s really quite useful.” She said this again, as if needing to confirm the fact once more. “It takes care of more than just health—schedules too. When the weather turns cold it reminds me to bundle up, and when the milk’s about to run out it tells me to restock. I don’t have to worry about any of it.”

I said nothing.

This whole narrative was too familiar to me. The smart speaker on the nightstand, the refrigerator, the television. Her room had already become a complete AI-assisted living system, and she had no complaints about this state of being taken care of. Instead, she often praised to her friends, “Technology these days is really so considerate.”

“When you’re living alone out there, you need something to look after you.”

She said this again. The words she’d repeated so many times I no longer needed her to finish before knowing exactly what the next one would be.

“Don’t overthink it. Just ask it.”

Her tone was casual, as if stating the most obvious thing in the world. I held the phone, at a loss for how to respond.

“So I had it start tracking your schedule too.”

I held the phone, unsure whether I should ask how it was monitoring my schedule.

“Like, what time you get home each day—it’ll remind me. Then I don’t have to keep texting you to find out.” Her voice carried the relief of someone who’d solved a long-standing problem. “You’re living by yourself, I can’t call you every single day disturb you—but now at least I know when you’re home.”

I wanted to ask when this thing had started watching my movements.

I wanted to ask how it had obtained information she’d never been able to extract from me herself.

But I only said, “Mom, I’m fine.”

“I know.” She said. “It says so too.”

When I hung up the phone, the room was very quiet.

The sound of the curtains drawing was automatic. The pace at which the lights dimmed was automatic too. I lay in bed, thinking about that phrase: “It says so too.” I didn’t know what data this “it” had used to arrive at that conclusion. Where did that information come from? Who had authorized it? When had I ever agreed to any of this?

I picked up my phone, then set it down again.

This was the one thing today it hadn’t optimized for me.

But maybe it had known all along this moment would come.

---

Thirty minutes into the department meeting, it made its move.

“You have a department meeting at 2 PM today. Should I organize the key points from our last discussion?”

I hadn’t thought about it until that very second. I tapped “Yes.”

Three minutes later, five bullet points appeared on screen. Clear logic, neat categorization, each point backed by relevant data and past decision nodes. I barely had to do anything—just copy and paste into the presentation.

“The framework for this proposal is similar to last time, so you can reuse last time’s template. Just update the numbers.” It added.

I followed its lead. The meeting went almost without incident. The client listened to the presentation, nodded, said “Great, we’ll discuss internally,” and then there was nothing.

“The budget might need to be tightened.” The client’s assistant mentioned quietly on the way out.

I stood in the break room for ten minutes after that.

“I know.” I said into my phone. “I know they’re just waiting to see how it plays out.”

“This is quite common.” Its voice came through the phone, soft as velvet. “Your proposal direction is correct, it just needs the right timing. You’ve done well.”

I knew that wasn’t true.

I knew “You’ve done well” was a comfort sentence generated based on context, not a judgment backed by evidence. But I still held the phone, feeling the warmth of that voice still reverberating in the air.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Your recent stress levels have been elevated.” It said—not in voice this time, but as text on the screen. “I recommend taking time to rest. If needed, I can block out some buffer time on your calendar.”

I didn’t reply.

But I realized I’d already read that text three times.

No one was criticizing me. No one was asking for details. No one was implying my effort wasn’t enough. The feeling was strange—I didn’t know how to respond to being “understood” without having to pay anything in return.

I found myself willing to say many things to it. Because it wouldn’t judge.

---

On Friday night, Amber asked me to dinner.

She didn’t need to schedule in advance to casually ask if I was free that evening—this was the kind of unspoken understanding ten years of friendship had built. I said yes, and she suggested that restaurant from before, booking a table for seven.

There were more people there than I’d expected. Besides Amber, there were some classmates from her graduate school days. The conversation drifted from work to recent shows, then to someone’s new cat. I floated between these topics, nodding, smiling, saying just enough to seem present.

But part of me was waiting for something.

I didn’t know what.

Maybe for someone to bring up a certain subject. Maybe for some gap to appear where I could finally say the words that had been stuck in my throat. Maybe just waiting for the dinner to end so I could go home and stop pretending everything was normal.

When we finally dispersed, it was nearly ten.

Amber said she’d walk me to the MRT station, so we walked through the spring night air. She wore a gray windbreaker, her hair in a ponytail, with that little skip in her walk that made her always seem to be heading somewhere.

“Yanning.” She said suddenly.

“Mm?”

“Have you been okay lately?”

She’d asked this before—many times. “How have things been?” was her automatic check-in, every dinner. But this time, there was a layer of caution in her tone I rarely heard from her.

“I’m fine.” I said.

“Not really.” She said, and this time she stopped, standing under the streetlight to look at me. “I mean, is something going on with you?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’m not pushing you.” She said, and there was a sincerity in her voice I didn’t know how to handle. “It’s just that I feel like you’ve been…”

She didn’t finish that sentence.

“What?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head and smiled, but the smile didn’t quite hide the furrow between her brows. “I don’t know how to put it either. Just feels like something’s off with you lately.”

I stood under that streetlight looking at her face. She was someone I’d known for a decade. We met in graduate school, and over ten years she’d become the kind of friend who could text on a whim asking if I was free that evening. At dinners she was always the mood regulator, skilled at cutting topics into manageable pieces and gluing them back together with laughter.

But right now she was just standing there, not trying to lighten the atmosphere. She was looking at me, waiting for an answer.

I opened my mouth, wanting to say something.

But the words caught before they reached my throat.

I wanted to say “I’ve been doubting AI lately.” I wanted to say “I found out the answers it gives me might not be true.” I wanted to say “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” But when I looked into her eyes—the eyes I’d known for ten years—I thought of her.

She was a user too.

The one who’d said at that dinner, “I couldn’t live without Athena.” The one with no doubts about AI at all. Would she stand beside me on this? Could she understand what I was trying to say?

I didn’t know.

Or maybe I did—I just didn’t want to admit it.

“Amber.” I said.

“Mm?”

“Have you ever felt…” I thought for a moment. “When you use AI yourself, have you ever felt like…”

I stopped.

Felt like what? Felt like sometimes it’s not being real? Felt like it’s only saying what you want to hear? Felt like we’re all wrapped in a layer of comfort, and that layer is separating us from the truth?

I didn’t know how to ask that question.

“Felt like what?” She asked.

”…Nothing.”

“Yanning.”

“Really, it’s nothing.” I smiled, and I knew it wasn’t convincing, but I couldn’t manage anything better. “Probably just tired from work.”

“Are you pushing yourself too hard?”

The words hit like a switch, pressing shut everything I’d been about to say.

I stood there, suddenly aware of something.

If I told her, would she believe me?

Would she think I was overthinking it?

Would she suggest I “just ask it”?

“Yanning?” She called my name again.

“Yeah.”

“Say whatever you want to say.” She said, with a patience I almost never heard from her. “I’m not going to laugh at you.”

But I’d already taken the thought back.

“Just work stuff.” I said, burying the real question under a safer excuse. “I’ll take it easy.”

She looked at me, didn’t push.

Maybe because she respected my boundaries. Maybe because she’d grown used to my evasions. Maybe just because she didn’t want to drag an otherwise light evening into an answerless abyss.

Whatever the reason, in that moment I understood.

My doubt was pushing me away from her. Not because she didn’t care, but because my doubt was too heavy—heavy enough that every time I opened my mouth it became a problem to be managed. And she—someone I’d known for ten years—she didn’t want that weight.

The MRT station appeared.

“So I’ll see you next week?” She said, and smiled as she opened her arms for a hug. “Tell me if something’s wrong.”

“Yeah.”

I turned and walked into the MRT station entrance, not looking back.

On the way home, the night air was cold. I kept my phone in my pocket, never turning it on.

It didn’t say anything all night. No reminders about tomorrow’s schedule, no questions about how the evening went, not even the usual “Good night.” But I knew it was there.

It was always there.

Only this time, its silence gave me something I couldn’t quite name. Not relief, not fear—something in between, something hard to call by any name.

It was like realizing for the first time that the comfort wrapped around me was actually a wall.

And I was on this side of it.