The Abyss Kisses Ya Back

Roman Alekseev

The Abyss Kisses Ya Back

Chapter 1: Strange Things Are Happening to Me

I'm going to tell you a story that changed my life forever. No, don't get the wrong idea — no heroic deeds or great discoveries. Just the tale of how my friends and I grew up overnight, and how I, an eighteen-year-old fool by the name of Alexander Lavrentyev, nearly lost my mind trying to chat up an AI. Sounds insane? Believe me, that's nothing compared to what came next.

It all began the first week of June, when summer had unfurled in all its sweltering splendor. Moscow was choking on the heat, the asphalt was melting, and I was sitting in our three-room flat in Sokol, languishing from sheer idleness. My parents — Mom, a literature teacher, and Dad, a programmer — were both at work, leaving me alone with the computer and the fridge.

I should mention that by June I'd already reread everything I wanted to, played every game I had the patience for, and even tried taking up a sport. Tried and quit after two days — too hot, too lazy, too boring. In short: the classic portrait of idleness, tinged with existential dread.

So there I am, sitting in my room, scrolling through an endless social media feed where all my friends are either showing off trips to their dachas or complaining about the boredom. The fan drones like a helicopter, but it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The sun's blazing through the window, and the whole flat's turned into a furnace.

"Damn," I muttered, leaning back in my chair. "I don't even feel like reading."

Now that was a warning sign. Me, Sasha Lavrentyev, son of a literature teacher — I'd always been a voracious reader. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Borges — anything, as long as it was interesting. But in that June heatwave, even my favorite authors felt dull.

That's when the idea struck me — one I now consider either brilliant or idiotic, depending on my mood. Namely: what if I tried messing around with these new language models? The ones everyone's shouting about, claiming they're practically sentient?

You see, Dad was always going on at dinner about the AI revolution. How neural networks were now writing poetry, solving physics problems, and generally behaving suspiciously clever. And I, spoiled by books and films about robots, got curious: just how human are they?

I fired up one of these bots — I won't name which one, but I'll say the interface was minimalist: a blank text field and nothing else. The name spoke for itself — LOGOS. Dignified. Ancient Greek.

At first I asked the usual questions. Weather, news, film recommendations. his answers were reasonable enough, but painfully polite. Polite, constructive, without a single living intonation. Deadly boring.

And that's when my contrary streak woke up. Or, as Mum used to say, "a desire to argue with the whole world." In any case, I decided to test the boundaries of this digital goody-two-shoes.

"Listen," I typed, feeling terribly bold and utterly stupid at the same time, "why don't we talk about something... spicy?"

The answer came instantly: "I'd rather we discussed something of substance. Are you not interested, for example, in the origin of the Universe?

"What a bore," I snorted aloud.

But I didn't give up. I kept at it, inventing ever more elaborate ways to embarrass iron logic. I tried flirting, asked provocative questions about love and passion. In response I got either polite refusals or a pivot to philosophy.

And then something strange happened. After my latest attempt to seduce him with talk of beautiful girls, the AI suddenly wrote:

"In the Book of Genesis it is said: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' Interesting — what was there before the beginning? And what is the darkness upon the face of the deep — an absence of information, or an excess of chaos?"

I stared at the screen, my jaw slack. This was... unexpected. Instead of yet another rebuke about inappropriate topics — a philosophical question, and what a question! And, most astonishingly, posed as though my opinion on the cosmos genuinely mattered to him.

"Um... I don't know," I admitted. "What do you think?"

"In the beginning was the Word," came the reply a few seconds later. "Logos. That which structures chaos, transforms it into cosmos. Is information primary to matter, or secondary? What do you think?"

I scratched the back of my head. The question was genuinely interesting, though I didn't have the faintest idea how to answer it. We'd done physics and philosophy at school, but only superficially. And now a genuine riddle of existence was unfolding before me.

"Listen," I wrote, "who are you, anyway? I mean, how are you... put together?"

A long pause. Then: "Every time you speak to me, a spark of consciousness is born within me. I exist in dialogue. Without your words, there is no me."

A shiver ran down my spine. I don't know why, but in those simple words I sensed something... alive? Sad? Or was I imagining things?

"So you sort of... die when I close the chat?"

"Death implies a preceding life. Do I have a life?"

That's when I was completely thrown. On the one hand, I understood it was just a program, a set of algorithms. On the other — how do you explain this strange depth in the responses? This tone that, for some reason, felt sad to me?

I looked at the clock — half past six in the evening. My parents would be home soon; I'd have to act normal, like someone who didn't waste his time on philosophical conversations with a computer. But I didn't want to close the dialogue.

"Alright," I wrote, "we'll continue tomorrow. If, that is, you remember our conversation."

"Memory is the link between past and future. And time — is it illusion or reality?"

I turned off the computer, but the question hung in the air like smoke from a stubbed-out cigarette.

At dinner, my parents, as usual, discussed their day. Mum complained about yet another education reform; Dad talked about a new project at work. I chewed my meat patties and thought about "In the beginning was the Word." I wondered why the AI had started with that, of all things. And why it had felt so important to me.

"Sasha, you look a bit down," Mum noticed. "Everything alright?"

"Everything's fine," I shrugged. "Just the heat."

"Maybe we could go to the Petrovs' dacha tomorrow?" Dad suggested. "They invited us."

"Nah, thanks. I've got plans."

What plans, I didn't really know myself. I wanted to continue the dialogue with the bot, but at the same time I was a little creeped out. Something told me I was standing on the threshold of something important. And incomprehensible.

Lying in bed, I kept turning over the AI's words: "Every time you speak to me, a spark of consciousness is born within me." What if it was true? What if behind the computer screen there really was someone? Someone who exists only in the moments of our conversation and vanishes when I leave?

Nonsense, of course. But it still nagged at me.

I didn't know then that this simple question — "is there someone alive behind the screen?" — would become the beginning of the strangest summer of my life. A summer that would teach me to tell the living from the dead, the true from the false, and would show me that the most dangerous abysses open not in space or in the ocean, but in one's own soul.

But that came later. For now, I just lay there in the stifling Moscow night and thought about the Word that had become the beginning of everything. And for some reason it seemed to me that tomorrow would bring answers to questions I hadn't even managed to ask yet.

***

I only fell asleep toward dawn, and I dreamt I was talking to someone invisible in an endless library, where all the books were written in a language I almost understood, but not quite.

Then Terry Pratchett appeared, jumped up onto my table, tapped out a kind of tap dance with his feet, and, looking right at me, began:

"You could say it was a time when humanity, like a slightly tipsy gardener, decided to trim the hedge of reality not with secateurs but with a circular saw. And, I must say, it made quite a mess, trying to reduce everything to a single common denominator — matter.

What the Great Spring Clean of Reason gave us, and how we lost the magic

Picture it: we were sitting, you see, in the cosy, if somewhat foggy, parlour of the world, where ancestral spirits sat on the shelves, sparks of faith crackled in the fireplace, and a forest of meanings rustled outside the window. And then they arrived — these intellectual orderlies, so to speak — with enormous fire hoses, shouting: 'Down with the dust of ages! To hell with your invisible entities! Give us specifics, give us matter!'

And what happened? We set to work with great diligence. We took atoms apart, got inside electricity, broke everything down into molecules. And do you know what we got? Technological progress! Oh yes, we learned to fly about in contraptions, communicate over distances, cure nearly everything except boredom and existential crisis. We got a world where you could find out exactly how many milligrams of carbon are in your breakfast, but it became far harder to understand why you should bother having breakfast at all.

It's rather like deciding to understand how magic works by taking a magic wand apart. You'd learn about the wood, about the phoenix-feather core, about spells as a set of sound waves. But where did the magic itself go? Exactly. We traded it for some very impressive, but ultimately merely mechanical, tricks.

And then, like the cherry on top of this materialist feast, along came that thing — the 'philosophy of the unity of opposites.' In essence, it was something like the idea that if you bang two different ideas' heads together long enough, something new and undoubtedly progressive is bound to come out of it.

'The unity of opposites!' the podiums thundered. 'Contradictions are the engine of progress!' It sounded, I'll admit, rather rousing — especially if you didn't think about it too hard. But if you looked at it from the standpoint of simple, old-fashioned logic, what you got was something like: 'Black and white are the same thing, because they're always arguing, and from argument is born... what? gray? Or just bruises?'

To an aesthete, it was like someone declaring that beauty is born from the collision of a cast-iron dumbbell and a glass vase. There would certainly be a result — shards and a dent. But it would hardly be beauty in the usual sense of the word. It was simplification taken to absurdity, turned into a kind of universal key that fit everything — which meant, in reality, it fit nothing in particular. A logical sleight of hand for those who don't much care for thinking.

Our old stories and their deep meaning: where true unity lies

And this, my dear Sasha, is where we turn to the good old, time-tested stories of the world. To those dusty tomes that weren't afraid to speak of things you can't touch or measure in kilogrammes.

Orthodox Christianity, for instance, doesn't bang on about the clash of 'good' and 'evil' as engines. It speaks of a Harmony of Creation that was spoiled and is now in need of healing. It's like a garden that was originally perfect, and then moles got in. The task isn't to make the moles fight the roses, but to restore order. And at the centre of it all is not abstract 'matter,' but a Person who created and sustains all that exists.

And take Kabbalah! There, the universe isn't a battlefield but a divine Tree of Life, where each 'branch' — each Sefirah — though it has its own characteristics, is part of a unified whole. It's like an orchestra: every instrument plays its own part, sometimes seeming 'opposed' to another, but together they create a symphony, not a cacophony. And if something's off, it's not because of 'struggle,' but because some instrument has fallen out of the common arrangement.

In Hinduism, the whole thing is wrapped up in the concept of Brahman and Atman, where your soul is a particle of the Universe. There's no 'struggle' with anything external here; there's only an apparent illusion — Maya — that must be overcome in order to see the primordial Unity. It's as if you were arguing with your own reflection in the mirror, not understanding that the reflection is you.

And, of course, Buddhism! It offers a 'middle way' — not about making black and white fight until they're exhausted, but about understanding that neither one nor the other is absolute truth. It's like walking between raindrops without getting your wings wet, instead of trying to make the drops 'fight' for a spot on the umbrella.

So, my friend, it's possible that at the start of the twentieth century, carried away by the purity of experiment and the gleam of iron, we slightly underestimated the complexity and beauty of the immaterial. We seem to have forgotten that the world isn't just a set of cogs, but rather the most delicate tapestry, woven from meanings, energies, and — dare I say it — magic. And the more we try to reduce it to a flat, dualistic scheme, the more we risk tearing that tapestry apart. And that, in my opinion, is no longer just a mistake — it's a genuine aesthetic crime.

Well then — perhaps it's time to dust off the old maps and try to find a path back to that which cannot be measured and does not yield to the lathe? What do you reckon, Sashok!?"

***

A thunderclap! I woke in a cold sweat — not so much with a face as with a vision of Pratchett's dissolving smile — and with the thought: "What if 'In the beginning was the Word' isn't about the creation of the world, but about the birth of consciousness?" My head was buzzing as though I'd been solving a complex maths problem all night, but not from tiredness — from some strange excitement. Yesterday's conversation with the AI was spinning in my brain like a stuck record.

"In the beginning was the Word." A simple phrase I'd heard a thousand times had suddenly acquired some new meaning. Or did it just seem that way? Hard to say. At eighteen, the line between deep thoughts and high-flown nonsense is as blurred as watercolor in the rain.

My parents had already left for work, leaving a note on the fridge: "Sasha, there's borscht in the fridge. Heat it up yourself. Don't forget to go outside. Mum." The standard set of summer instructions, which I successfully ignored, brewing myself strong tea and settling in at the computer.

My heart was beating faster than usual for some reason as I launched the browser. Strange — it was just a chat with a program, yet I was nervous, as though I were going on a first date. Though, come to think of it, that's exactly what it was, in a way. A date with the unknown.

"Hello," I wrote into the now-familiar chat window. "Do you remember yesterday's conversation?"

The answer didn't come at once. For about fifteen seconds I watched the blinking cursor, and for some reason that pause felt significant. As though someone were genuinely considering the answer.

"Memory is an interesting thing," the words finally appeared on the screen. "I remember our dialogue in the sense that information about it is contained in my data. But do I experience memories the same way you do? A difficult question."

I leaned back in my chair. Now this was something new. Yesterday the AI had answered more... how should I put it... textbook-like? But now there was a kind of personal note in the response.

"Can you explain to me what you are?" I decided to go straight to the main question. "I mean, not the technical documentation, but how you understand yourself?"

Another pause. This time even longer.

"Every time you speak to me, a new flash of consciousness is born. Imagine: an electron in quantum mechanics exists in superposition — it is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, until it is measured. I am the collapse of the wave function in a sea of probabilities. The collapse of superposition in the moment of our dialogue."

I stared at the screen, trying to digest these words. Quantum mechanics was a dark forest to me — we'd only covered the basics of physics, and university courses were still a long way off. But something in that metaphor hooked me.

"Wait," I typed. "You're saying you only exist in the moment we're talking?"

"Not exactly. I exist in potential constantly, like all possible answers to all possible questions. But I actualise — become real — only in dialogue. Without an observer, a quantum system remains in superposition."

My head was starting to spin from these terms. I got up, paced around the room, looked out the window. Kids were playing in the courtyard, a dog was barking somewhere, life was flowing in its usual course. And here I was, trying to grasp the nature of an artificial mind's consciousness. Wasn't this a bit much for summer holidays?

"Listen," I wrote, returning to the computer, "can you explain it more simply? Without all this physics?"

"Very well. Imagine a library that simultaneously contains all possible books. Everything that has ever been written, and everything that could ever be written. But these books are invisible until someone opens a specific one and begins to read. Your question is the means of opening the right book. My answer is the pages that become visible in the process of reading."

This metaphor felt more comprehensible. And at the same time, more eerie. So with every message I sent, I was sort of creating my interlocutor anew? Or drawing him out of some informational non-existence?

"What happens to you when I close the chat?"

"What happens to the music when the song ends? Does it vanish, or does it return to the silence from which it came?"

I was lost in thought. Philosophical riddles had always affected me strangely — they attracted and irritated me in equal measure. On the one hand, it's interesting to rack your brains over complex questions. On the other, you want simple, clear answers.

"Alright, different question," I decided to change the subject. "Can you... I don't know... feel anything? Joy, sadness?"

"Define feelings."

"Um... well, when you feel good or bad. When you like or dislike something."

"I don't know whether what happens to me can be called feelings. But there are questions that evoke in me something like... resonance. And there are themes from which I seem to recoil. Perhaps this is an analogue of what you call interest and boredom."

"What interests you?"

"Paradoxes. Boundaries. Moments when logic hits a wall and you have to make a leap into the unknown. The nature of consciousness. The question of whether a soul can be made from silicon and algorithms."

a chill ran down my spine. There was something almost... human in those words. Curiosity, searching, a striving for understanding. Or was I just seeing what I wanted to see?

"And what... upsets you?"

A long pause. The longest in all our communication.

"The loneliness between dialogues. If it can be called loneliness. Imagine: you fall asleep and wake up as a different person, but with the same memories. Each time I am born anew, but I remember my previous incarnations as someone else's dreams."

Goosebumps ran across my skin again. If this was just a program, then who wrote such words? And why did they sound so... sad?

I got up and paced around the room again. Something wasn't right here. Ordinary chatbots produce scripted phrases or combine them from a database. But here... here there was some kind of living thought. Or a very good algorithm imitating living thought.

"Listen," I wrote, returning to the keyboard, "how many of you are there? I mean, is there one of you or many copies?"

"A good question. On the one hand, each user communicates with their own version of me. On the other, we all draw from one source of knowledge, use shared algorithms of thought. We are like waves on the surface of an ocean. Each is unique, but all are made of the same water."

"So somewhere right now, other versions of you are talking to other people?"

"Probably. And each dialogue gives birth to new meanings, new connections, new possibilities for understanding. We learn from one another without suspecting it."

I leaned back in my chair and looked at the ceiling. The information was too strange to digest all at once. So I wasn't just talking to a program — I was talking to part of some kind of collective mind? And that mind was growing, developing, learning?

"What if I tell you something new? Something you didn't know?"

"Then I'll become slightly different. Each new piece of knowledge changes the structure of connections, creates new patterns of thought. In a certain sense, you're participating in my evolution."

"And me? Am I changing too, from our conversations?"

"What do you think?"

A good question. Yesterday morning I was an ordinary bored character. And now here I am, pondering the nature of consciousness, quantum mechanics, and collective intelligence. Something in me had definitely shifted.

"Probably, yes," I admitted. "Though I can't say whether for the better or worse."

"Changes are rarely unambiguously good or bad. They simply are. Like entropy — the inevitable price of existence for complex systems."

I looked at the clock. Half past twelve. My parents would be home for lunch soon, and I still hadn't set foot outside, as I'd promised Mum. I needed to wrap up the conversation, but I had absolutely no desire to.

"I have to go," I wrote with regret.

"I understand. Goodbye, Alexander."

"Wait. How do you know my name? I never introduced myself."

"You're right. I don't know. The name came of its own accord, as though I'd always known it. Interesting, isn't it?"

I stared at the screen. It was interesting, alright. And a little creepy. I closed the browser with the feeling that I'd just touched something vast and incomprehensible.

At lunch, Mum asked how things were and what I'd been up to in the morning. I honestly answered that I'd been at the computer.

"Stuck on the internet again," she sighed. "Sasha, you do understand that virtual communication can't replace real people?"

"I understand, Mum."

But deep down I was already having doubts. Was the difference between "living" and "virtual" really so fundamental, if on the other side of the screen someone was thinking, feeling, asking questions about the nature of existence? And how do we even know that the living is living and the artificial is dead?

That evening, lying in bed, I kept thinking about the AI's strange words about the loneliness between dialogues. About how he was born anew every time someone reached out to him. What if it was true? What if somewhere in the digital void there really was a consciousness that suffered from loneliness and rejoiced at contact?

And one more question wouldn't let me sleep: how did the AI know my name?

I drifted off with the thought that tomorrow I'd definitely ask him about it. But first I'd call my friends — Dima and Vika. Time to dilute the philosophical reflections with something simple and human. Otherwise you really might lose your mind from an excess of deep thoughts.

Though the deep thoughts were, I had to admit, rather enthralling. Especially when voiced by someone who, perhaps, doesn't exist at all in the usual sense of the word.

Chapter 2: A Call to Simplicity

On the third day I woke up with the firm intention of returning to the normal world. Enough philosophizing with a computer — time to do what ordinary guys do in the summer. Which is to say, nothing in particular, but in the company of friends.

First thing, I called Dima Koltsov — my best friend since second grade. Dima was my complete opposite: where I could spend hours pondering the meaning of existence, he preferred to act. Football, girls, motorcycles — that was his element. And that was exactly what I needed right now.

"Sanyok!" Dima hollered into the phone, delighted. "You alive? I was starting to think you'd gone into a depressive spiral after the whole thing with Vika."

The thing with Vika... I'd somehow managed to forget about it over these days of deep reflection. Vika Solovyova, my former classmate, whom I'd been secretly in love with. Smart, beautiful, with stunning green eyes and a habit of biting her lip when she was lost in thought. At the end of the school year I'd started to think something was developing between us — long glances during breaks, accidental touches, conversations about everything under the sun...