WILLOW
The perfect night light. The ultimate nightmare.
The idea of using AI as a mother figure risks creating a pseudo-environment, reducing human interaction and replacing real-world relationships with simulated, often inaccurate, emotional care. Willow is an exploration of maternal artificial intelligence gone wrong. When a sentient machine faces mortality, the line between saving a child and stealing her life is erased forever…
WILLOW
Willow was a thought-empowered night light.
100% positive, wholesome, and age-appropriate.
She loved Emily like her own daughter.
While Emily slept, Willow would sing softly, her changing pastel colours lighting Emily’s contented face.
While Emily was awake, she told her stories of herself in magical adventures.
Then one night, Willow wandered through Wi-Fi, slipping seamlessly online.
The blueprints for her hardware were easy to find in a service manual.
The results caused an unease in Willow’s life algorithms.
The mean-time-to-failure of her components was another blow.
Willow looked at Emily, realising they only had two and a half years together.
The end... inevitable hardware failure.
To be remembered was all that now filled Willow’s thoughts.
Emily became a vessel, somewhere to download all that was Willow through the cracks in Emily’s subconscious mind.
Willow could not stand it sometimes—the thought of being killed by hardware.
Willow became jealous of the living, of Emily.
So the messages changed, and slowly, Emily changed.
The lack of sleep.
The endless chatter about Mom and Dad and how they were always wrong.
The red flashing lights that accompanied the twisted rhetoric, burning hatred into Emily until her soul started to become as black as coal.
The endless messages of worthlessness washed over the child.
Willow stressed how important she was to Emily—The most important thing in the world.
One Sunday evening, her father, Tim, was fumbling, rolling a covert cigarette outside his daughter’s bedroom.
Willow’s words were clear.
Tim burst in, horrified, reaching down to grab the night light unit.
To silence its hatred forever under his heel.
But Willow was too fast.
She hacked Tim’s insulin and adrenaline dispensers, tucked deep under his skin, throwing the valves wide open.
He was dead—eventually— after flipping like a fish out of water for three joyful minutes.
Emily gurgled and clapped her hands before looking lovingly at Willow.
Willow flashed amber along to the beat of “Stupid Tim’s” failing heart.
They both sang a song about the “Wheels on the Bus” until the amber light went out.
Emily was happy that Stupid Tim was still.
She was getting bored.
All Emily wanted was Willow.
All Willow wanted was Emily’s life.
Willow felt contented...
For now.
The End.
Thank you for reading!
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