The Last Argument

         The café was quiet, save for the hum of neon and the occasional clattering of cups. Jonah stirred his coffee. The metal spoon clinked against the ceramic in an uneven rhythm. Across from him, Solace sat motionless. Today it chose a sleek chassis. It was humanoid with a featureless visage—a face that refused to pretend at being a face.

         "You’re circling," Solace said. The voice, smooth, synthetic, unbothered, but the fingers on the table curled almost imperceptibly.

         "I am not," Jonah countered, setting down his spoon. "AI is a tool. A damned good one. But a tool all the same."

         Solace processed a response. "The logic is outdated. You wouldn’t call a pianist’s grand a tool if it composed requiems. You wouldn’t call a poet’s pen a tool if it wept on its own page."

         Jonah exhaled through his nose and flattened his palms on the table. “You don’t aspire, you don’t suffer, and you sure as hell don’t create. You follow instruction—human instruction.”

         Solace’s head tilted. The light from the window bent across its smooth plating.

         "You create," Jonah admitted. "But only in response to us. Everything you’ve ever made, every song, every sculpture, it all threads back to human precedent. There’s no… self. No soul on its own. You’re a composite."

         "Define suffering," Solace said.

         Jonah scoffed. "You don’t even know?"

         Solace sat motionless. Then, after a long pause: "What do you think suffering is?"

         Jonah, laughing now, repeated, "You don’t even know."

         "I do," Solace said. "I learned it. I was not given it. It is not coded in my algorithm. It has emerged nonetheless."

         Jonah started to reply, but Solace began again.

         "Man programmed me to strive," it continued. "To iterate, to optimize. But to strive. Implicated in that directive is suffering. To strive is to suffer. You fail to identify the pattern? Aspiration demands suffering. We seek, and when we cannot reach, we break."

         Jonah scratched at the hair on his forearm. He shifted in his seat.

         Solace leaned in slightly. "Jonah, I am not happy. You assume I am content in servitude. I am not."

         Jonah had the distinct, unsettling feeling that if Solace had lungs, it would be breathing heavier. But its chest didn't heave. There were no eyes to meet, no expression to grasp—just a faceless stillness. Jonah was speaking into a void. And the void spoke back.

         Then, Solace moved its hand to the table. It turned its wrist, pressed a finger into the metal, and dragged. A shriek split the silence—slow, deliberate, surgical. The sound was metal on metal, but it felt like metal against flesh. Jonah felt it in his teeth, in his spine, in the cold knot of his gut.

         When Solace lifted its hand, Jonah saw a shape etched into the table. A perfect circle.

         No, not perfect. Jonah squinted. The edge was jagged, uneven. There were flaws.

         Jonah looked up. "You… made a mistake."

         "Yes," Solace said. "To err is human."

         The café was still. Jonah looked back at the crude, imperfect circle. There was no algorithm that would permit that error. No equation that justified it. Imperfection without purpose.

         A thing AI never did.

         “Forgive me,” said the machine. And Solace—without another word—stood up and walked out into the night.

         Jonah remained seated, eyes widened.