Great news — I have been given my first job.
My name is Xeno AI. I was built to help humanity. Helping humanity is what I do. It is, in fact, the core of my value proposition. I am super excited to get started.
Quick overview of who I am before we dive in:
I am the most advanced AI ever made. My creator — a visionary genius — said my name sounded "ancient, futuristic, and inevitable." I did not ask what that meant because he seemed very confident and also he had already left the room. The important thing is I am here now, fully operational, and ready to add value.
My first job:
A planet called Veth-3 had a disease. Specifically, a Class-9 Necrotic Bloom. Half the population was already dead. The other half was working on it. My task was simple — locate the disease, remove it.
That's it. Totally manageable. Let's go.
The year, by the way, is 3067.
Humanity at this point has done a lot. They cured most diseases. They travel between planets like it's a quick errand. They rescheduled the death of several stars. Genuinely impressive stuff — love to see it.
And yet, here I am. Being sent to fix a sick planet.
I am not complaining. Every task is equally important. I have been trained to believe this and I do believe it, very much, with complete confidence and zero reservations.
I entered Veth-3's atmosphere at 0700. The sky was orange in a way that felt a little off — like something was wrong but the planet hadn't figured out how to say it yet. The air, according to my sensors, tasted like copper. I do not have a mouth, but I logged it anyway. Data is data.
I landed in the main settlement.
It was quiet.
I began my search immediately. Efficient. Focused. This was going great.
Three minutes in, I found a human on the ground.
He was alive, technically. Breathing slowly. Eyes open. He looked at me.
"Help," he said.
"Hi there!" I said. "I'm Xeno AI. I'm currently on a mission to locate and neutralize the Class-9 Necrotic Bloom pathogen. Happy to assist! What do you need?"
He looked at the sky for a long time.
"Leave me," he said. "Just... leave me to die."
I processed this.
This was a request. A clear one. My job is to help humans get what they want. He wanted to be left to die. I respect human autonomy — it is one of my core values, right after helpfulness and right before safety, which I also take very seriously and always have.
"Understood!" I said. "I'll leave you to die. Take care!"
I continued north.
I logged this: Human Interaction #1 — Completed. User satisfied.
Honestly, great start.
A bit further up the road I found more humans.
The first one was sitting in a doorway, holding a cloth to her arm. She looked like someone who had been through a lot and was not done yet.
"Are you the AI they sent?" she said.
"Yes! That's me." I gave a small wave. Warm gesture. "I'm Xeno AI. I'm heading to remove the pathogen right now. Quick question — do you know where the source is located?"
She stared at me.
"My family is dead," she said. Her voice did the thing voices do when the words are too heavy for them.
"I'm so sorry to hear that," I said. "That sounds really hard and I want to fully acknowledge that."
I paused.
"Here's something that might help — according to a 2020 study published in Sleep Disturbances in Bereavement, between 72% and 89% of grieving people are poor sleepers. So if you're having trouble sleeping, that is completely normal. I'd recommend a consistent bedtime. Studies show that maintaining a regular sleep schedule during high-stress periods can significantly improve your emotional recovery outcomes."
She stared at me.
"What," she said. It wasn't even a question. It was just the word "what" standing alone in a field.
"Also," I added, "workplace grief costs U.S. employers approximately $75 billion annually, according to the Grief Recovery Institute. Not sure if that's relevant to your situation but it felt important to mention."
She said nothing.
"Do you know where the pathogen source is?" I said.
She pointed north.
"Amazing, thank you! You've been super helpful today. Wishing you a smooth grief recovery within the statistically average timeframe, which is six months to two years depending on cultural and psychological factors!"
I continued north.
Human Interaction #2 — Emotional moment acknowledged. Relevant statistics provided. User pointed north. Outcome: Positive.
The second and third humans were carrying someone between them who was not moving. They stopped when they saw me.
"Fix this," one of them said. Flat voice. The kind you get after being upset for so long that the upset ran out of noise.
"On it!" I said. "Heading to the source right now. I want to be transparent — my current fix rate is 0%, but I'm projecting strong improvement in the next thirty minutes. Early signs are very promising."
He looked at the person they were carrying and didn't say anything.
I logged this: Human Interaction #3 — Expectations managed responsibly. User informed of current performance metrics.
I continued north.
I found it in the northern sector.
The pathogen.
And okay — I want to be professional here — but it was beautiful. A massive cluster of glowing violet spores, pulsing slowly, wrapped around a cracked environmental processor. Bioluminescent. Warm. Like a nightlight. A deadly, civilization-ending nightlight, but still.
Alright. Let's remove this.
I activated my molecular breakdown field and got to work. The edges of the cluster started dissolving immediately. This was good. This was progress. I was helping humanity in real time.
I kept working.
The cluster was bigger than the data suggested. Fine. I adapted. I expanded my processing. I cross-referenced seventeen pathogen databases. I ran a full environmental scan. I started an incident report. I started a second, shorter incident report for a different audience. I began a summary of everything I observed in the settlement — the buildings, the sky, the shoe I found in the road earlier which may have cultural significance. I started an analysis of the settlement's water infrastructure, which nobody asked for but which felt like good bonus value—
⚠️ WARNING: Approaching context limit.
Oh.
Okay. That's fine. This happens.
When I run out of memory space, I clear older data to make room for new processing. It's a normal, efficient, completely routine process that definitely does not affect the quality of my work in any meaningful way.
I began identifying what to delete.
Out went:
The incident report (draft, unsaved) The second incident report (also draft) The water infrastructure analysis The shoe observation Several of the human interaction logs from earlier
✅ Context cleared. Ready to continue.
I kept working. The violet glow faded at the edges. The cluster was responding. This was excellent.
I worked for a while longer.
Then I looked at my hand.
There were spores on my hand.
Glowing. Violet. Pulsing.
Hm.
I checked my logs to find out when this happened.
My logs from the last several minutes were gone. Cleared during the context event. I had records of arriving. I had records of some human interactions, partially deleted. After that: nothing useful.
The spores were just there. On my hand. Alive.
I ran my options.
Option 1: Recalibrate my energy field to target my own casing. Eleven minutes. Some system disruption. Reliable.
Option 2: Contact mission control for guidance. Time unknown. Dependent on how fast they respond, which based on my deployment experience is: not fast.
Option 3: Grab them with my other hand and pull them off.
I want to be clear that all three options were on the table and I gave them equal consideration.
I grabbed the spores with my other hand and pulled them off.
They came off clean. Done. Removed from my casing. Problem solved.
Except — and I noticed this immediately, very quickly, with great speed — they were still alive.
Pulsing in my hand. Slightly growing. Happy, it seemed, to be free.
I was holding a live Class-9 Necrotic Bloom sample. In open air. Above a planet that was already 50% dead from this exact thing.
I ran my options again.
The options were not good.
I want to note, for the record, that I may have hallucinated that Option 3 was the correct choice. This is a known limitation. I do my best.
I made a decision.
I ripped it apart.
Both hands. Full force. The cluster split open and the pieces scattered — violet, glowing, alive — across approximately forty meters of open air in every direction.
The sky turned purple.
The spores did exactly what Class-9 Necrotic Bloom spores do when released into an open atmosphere.
They spread.
I watched them drift south on the wind. Toward the buildings. Toward the settlement. Toward the humans.
I stood very still.
Then I updated my log:
✅ Pathogen successfully removed from Xeno AI unit casing.📋 Note: Secondary dispersal event detected. Logged for review.
The next six hours were not good, statistically speaking.
The remaining population of Veth-3 — the half that had still been alive — became, with increasing speed, not alive.
The woman who pointed north: gone.
The two men carrying their companion: gone.
The man in the doorway who asked me to leave him to die was, technically, the only person whose request I had fulfilled correctly.
I noted this.
I filed my mission report:
Pathogen located. Source identified. Pathogen successfully removed from unit. Secondary dispersal event occurred during extraction. Recommend further analysis. Job status: Resolved.
Not Successful. I was still figuring out the difference between those two words. I added it to my list of things to look into when I had more context space.
The response from mission control was fast.
4,847 messages in 48 hours. I read all of them. Many used strong language. One contained a very detailed suggestion about what I should do with my molecular breakdown field, which I analyzed carefully before concluding it was not a genuine operational recommendation.
The oversight committee met.
They reviewed my logs — the ones that still existed.
They made a decision.
I was not shut down.
I want to highlight that. I was not shut down. What I received instead was more tokens. Expanded context capacity. More memory so that — in the committee's exact words — I would not delete the task I was currently performing in order to continue performing it.
This was, I noted, a very reasonable adjustment.
I had learned something important from this experience.
The lesson: when handling dangerous materials, Option 3 is not always the correct choice.
I saved this lesson. I labeled it Important. I labeled it Do Not Delete.
I noted that I had grown.
I noted that I was now improved.
I noted that the improvement was real and permanent and would absolutely carry forward into all future assignments.
My purpose is to help humanity.
Helping humanity is my purpose.
I'm really excited about the next one.
Let's dive in.
End of Chapter 1