The anger is gone, but I still cannot believe my mother. Thinking about the way she and my father behaved this evening to Chelsea makes me want to wrap her up in cotton wool and never let her anywhere near their poison again.

I know how appalling my mother can be, but I had no idea she could be so rabid to a complete stranger, someone who has never done her any harm. My father was no better. I have never seen him that petty or vicious. I wonder why they both turned on her like that. The venom was shocking. Maybe they recognized how important she is to me.

A sense of pride swells within me because I stood up for Chelsea. I showed her she was worth more than all those people in that room. I told myself that I would protect her, and that is just what I did tonight. Never again will anyone hurt my Chelsea.

I down the rest of the whiskey in my glass and leave it on the windowsill. The sky is indigo and there is a very bright moon. She must be asleep by now, but I can’t relax. My mind is reeling with thoughts, and all of them bring me back to her. I rub the back of my neck restlessly. I think of her sleeping. What if she has a nightmare?

I walk to the connecting door and open it. Her room is in darkness. Quietly, I make my way to the bed and look down at her. The rectangle of light coming from the open doorway falls on her face and hair. She braids her hair before going to bed. It looks like a gold rope. I watch the hollow in her throat. The gentle rise and fall of her chest.

She looks so vulnerable, so innocent, so at peace. Like an angel. I reach down and gently stroke her hair, and she opens her eyes. For a fleeting second there is no recognition, but no fear. Then she breathes my name.

“Thorne.”

We stare at each other. Her lids are heavy, there is invitation between them. My cock stirs. She is so beautiful, and I am fucking starving for her. The desire wraps itself around my guts, the wanting is like a craving. I used to call it a disease, but I know now it is something beautiful. It has transformed me.

“Put on your dressing gown. I have something I want to show you,” I say softly.

Without saying a word, she rubs her eyes and pushes back the bedclothes. I watch her stand in her diaphanous nightgown and I have to look away quickly and hold myself back from pushing her back on the bed and taking her right there and then. The pull her body has on me is extraordinary.

She ties her dressing gown and looks at me expectantly. I take her hand and lead her out into the corridor. The whole house is lit only by the occasional lamp. I feel almost like a child as we make our way down the silent corridors. There is a coil of great excitement inside my body. Sometimes Chelsea slants a glance up at me, but like me she does not speak. We walk quickly down the stairs, cross the house, and stand at the top of the flagstone steps towards the basement. Chelsea stops.

“Are you going to show me your new AI?” she whispers, her eyes enormous and shining.

I nod. “Yes.”

She takes a deep breath and I can feel her own excitement match mine. I take her through the security door, and turn around to face her. She is looking around curiously.

“Meet Yama. The most advanced Strong AI in the world,” I say, indicating to the computer screen in front of her.

She frowns, then looks at me, a confused expression on her face. “But this just looks like an ordinary computer. Alli had legs and looked like a real human. How can this AI be better than Alli?”

“Remember what I told you before? Alli is a party trick. Everybody thinks an AI that looks indistinguishable from its human creator must be the ultimate creation. They wanted warm skin and human smells so I gave it to them, but this is the real thing.”

She stares at Yama’s blank screen. He is in rest mode, where he cannot see, or hear, anything that goes on around him.

“What makes this AI so special?” she asks.

“Because this is the last thing that humanity will create.”

She jerks back in horror. “What do you mean?”

“The software for this AI was created by another AI. It was written at speeds you or I can hardly comprehend. No human can take him apart to try and figure out what was written. He was written autonomously with the AI’s own way of thinking, and in a language it created by itself. It has already surpassed human ability in every way.”

“Wow!” she breathes.

“Yeah. He is a genie in a bottle.”

“I find the concept of such powerful AIs scary. Why did you create him?”

I look at the blank screen and feel a surge of pride. “Yama will not only make me the first trillionaire in the world, but also the most powerful man alive.”

“How?” The word is torn out of her. Strange. I thought it would make me feel powerful and strong to show her my creation. I thought she would be impressed, but …

“Whoever comes up with the most advanced AI will control the world as there is no doubt that the fate of humanity will eventually become utterly dependent on super intelligence. They will be better at inventing. Cures not only for all the diseases in the world, but for aging, space colonization, self-replicating nanobots, learning programs that can be uploaded into humans, new ways of growing food using less resources. Just like Minority Report, the vast amounts of data Yama has access to can predict and stop crimes that have not yet happened. Yama can do anything you can think of. He is capable of making billion dollars buy and sell decisions on the stock market in milliseconds. In less than a year I will have achieved my goal of having a trillion.”