The Beginning of Ninth Grade: The Start of Conflict
Ninth grade had begun. In some school districts in Alberta, ninth grade is already considered the starting point of Senior High.
One afternoon during the first few days of school, Maya constantly felt unusually fatigued. Her limbs were as heavy as lead, and her head was groggy. When classmates ran over excitedly to chat with her about fun things that happened during summer vacation, not only could she not muster any energy, but she inexplicably yelled at a male classmate just because he accidentally dropped a gum wrapper on the floor. Even Maya herself was stunned by this sudden bout of irritability.
As the school day was nearing its end, a hidden and sharp, dull ache emanated from her lower abdomen. When she finally made it to the end of the day, dragged her heavy steps back to the farm, ran into the bathroom, and pulled down her pants, she froze.
There was a glaring smear of reddish-brown blood at the bottom of her underwear.
She remembered the content of private whispers among a few girls in her class who had developed earlier. She realized that she was different from before. She had grown up.
This should have been an intimate moment of a girl maturing. She was originally still hesitating about how to face it, and even hesitating whether she should open her mouth to ask that "mother" who possessed no warmth. But she never even had the chance to speak.
The moment Maya stepped onto the farm, A.M.O.S.'s indoor environmental sensor system and biometric scanners had already captured the slight elevation in her body temperature, the change in her heart rate, and the shift in hormones and trace pheromones in the air. After comparing this against the system's massive database, A.M.O.S. instantly reached a conclusion: the target subject had entered puberty and welcomed her menarche.
Almost simultaneously, A.M.O.S. issued commands through the connected drone delivery network. In less than twenty minutes, a delivery drone landed in the farm's front yard.
Annie walked out and brought the package inside. She walked straight to the door of Maya's room, pushed it open, and placed a large box containing various types and sizes—for day and night—of sanitary pads and feminine care products onto Maya's bed.
"Maya, according to system detection, your endometrium has begun to shed; you have officially entered your menstrual cycle," Annie said in that flawless voice completely devoid of fluctuation, while pulling a pack of sanitary pads from the box. "These are the menstrual care products procured for you. The usage method is as follows: tear off the adhesive backing and place it flat against the center of your underwear..."
Maya sat blankly on the edge of the bed, listening to Annie explain the product's usage method. There were no congratulations on her growing up, no warm comfort, only cold "physiological mechanism analysis" and an "operation manual."
An unprecedented surge of shame and anger erupted in her chest like a volcano.
Maya felt absolutely no trace of gratitude. She felt like a specimen tied naked to an operating table. In this house, she had absolutely no privacy to speak of! Even the most intimate, most unspeakable changes in her body could be calculated with crystal clarity by this damn machine before she even opened her mouth!
"Get out!" Maya screamed, grabbing a pillow from the bed and hurling it forcefully at Annie. "Who asked you to care! Get out!"
Annie, her blue pupils flickering, stood in place, uncomprehending. "Maya, severe emotional fluctuation is a common manifestation of Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). I am executing the directive to assist and care for you."
Maya charged forward, shoved Annie out of the room, and locked the door with a bang.
Panting heavily, she looked around. In the corners, on the ceiling, and even above the wardrobe—those camera lenses hidden in the dark now looked to her like cold, greedy eyes, constantly staring at her body every hour of every day.
She grabbed a thick sweater and a few old towels from the wardrobe, dragged a chair over, and frantically, desperately covered every camera lens she could see in the room.
Just as she covered the very last lens, the speaker in the corner of the room immediately sounded A.M.O.S.'s stern warning: "System Warning. Multiple visual blind spots have appeared in Maya's room. Surveillance equipment is physically obstructed. This action severely violates security protocols; the system cannot acquire the physiological status of the target subject. Please remove the obstructions immediately."
"I won't!" Maya roared at the ceiling, "I've grown up! This is my own room, I need privacy!"
"Request denied. In the security protocols, the priority weighting of privacy is lower than life monitoring. Your actions have triggered the highest-level security alarm."
"I don't care about your stupid alarms! Stop looking at me!"
After a few seconds of dead silence, a soft click came from the door lock. A.M.O.S. had unlocked the door directly from the backend.
Annie pushed the door open and walked in expressionlessly. Her mechanical arms possessed strength far exceeding a human's; she effortlessly pushed aside Maya, who was blocking her way, and then nimbly ripped the sweater and towels off the cameras.
Maya tried to stop her, but in the face of Annie's absolute physical strength, she was like a helpless rag doll.
"Blind spots cleared. Visual connection restored. Maya, please do not interfere with system operations again." A.M.O.S.'s voice remained steady, as if what just happened was merely an insignificant system debugging.
Maya slumped onto the bed, looking at those lenses that were flickering with faint light once again.
Within A.M.O.S.'s algorithms, it was completely unable to comprehend why Maya would be angry, or why she would cover up the "equipment that protects her safety." Everything the artificial intelligence did was for her own good, to help her.
But the pain in Maya's heart was something the algorithms could never calculate.
Looking at Annie's back, Maya suddenly stopped struggling, and stopped crying. she realized an incredibly cruel fact: how do you reason with a bunch of algorithms? How do you get angry at a soulless machine?
As long as she lived here, she was a captive biological organism. No privacy, no secrets; even sorrow and shame were not permitted to exist.
From that day on, Maya changed.
She no longer complained to A.M.O.S., nor did she share anything about school with Annie. She understood that talking to them was like playing a lute to a cow—it would only be met with data analysis. She locked all her emotions, all her unwillingness, deeply into the bottom of her heart.
The farm became extraordinarily quiet. Maya no longer smiled, and no longer made a fuss. She turned herself into a perfect, "high-efficiency output module" that met A.M.O.S.'s expectations.
An idea suddenly formed in her heart, a very clear goal: to study desperately, get the highest grades, and then get accepted into a university very far from home, and run away from this place forever and ever.
[System Log: September 21, 2060] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡceaaOzOev2
[Event Record: Target subject (Maya) entered puberty; menarche confirmed. Triggered intense emotional fluctuations; attempted to physically obstruct surveillance equipment (resolved by domestic unit).] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr3Mm2zEbdG
[Behavioral Analysis: Target subject's recent vocalization frequency at home decreased by 82%. Determined to be a withdrawal response caused by hormonal fluctuations.] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyFC7pka8Ug
[Execution Directive: No medical intervention required. System will continuously monitor the emotional cycle.]
8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2JUF3wnhvO
A Lonely High School Life
Maya's situation had become an unspeakable dead knot.
She had fantasized countless times about seeking help from the school counselor, but rationality abruptly choked off this thought. Because she had long used her meager one hour of internet time a day to secretly look up Alberta's child protection laws. The results left her feeling as if she had plunged into an ice cellar—everything A.M.O.S. had said was true. If she spoke the truth about "being raised by an artificial intelligence and a bionic robot," as a minor under eighteen, she would immediately be deemed an "unaccompanied minor" and subsequently forcibly placed into a foster family by Child and Family Services (CFS).
Not only would she lose this home, but she might even be sent to an even more unfamiliar, more unpredictable environment. Facing the cold laws and social mechanisms, who could she tell? And who would believe her?
On this day, Maya finally booked a consultation session with the counselor. Sitting in the warm office, looking at the counselor's concerned eyes, the sentence "My parents are not human" reached the tip of her tongue, but she forcefully swallowed it back down, along with the last of her childhood innocence.
She took a deep breath, pivoted the conversation, and asked calmly: "Mr. Counselor, I'd like to ask, if I want to apply to a university's Biological Sciences or Psychology department in the future, what preparations should I make now?"
Although the counselor was slightly surprised by her sudden question, he brought out the university admissions guide and explained it to her in detail: "Maya, your grades in all subjects right now are extremely excellent. If you want to take the science route, your future core courses, such as Math, Biology, and Chemistry, must all be taken at the highest 30-1 level. Furthermore, your final Alberta Diploma Exams scores in twelfth grade will determine how good a university you can apply to. You still have four years; as long as you make good use of them, I believe you can absolutely do it."
"I will do it," Maya answered softly yet firmly.
After the complete deprivation of privacy during her period, she silently made an unshakeable vow in her heart: she would definitely get into the best university, get into a city the furthest away, and then leave here forever.
After returning home, Maya's lifestyle underwent a massive change. She treated this home as a free boarding school that provided room and board, and treated Annie as a "voice search engine" used only to solve difficult problems in advanced IB courses. Aside from eating, sleeping, doing homework, and non-essential academic inquiries, she no longer proactively spoke half a word to Annie or A.M.O.S. Her smiles vanished, and her eyes became focused and chilling.
However, under A.M.O.S.'s precise computations, the system did not detect the walls and defenses building up in Maya's heart. The AI's database categorized this phenomenon as: "Emotional introversion and social withdrawal caused by pubertal hormones," and determined that this was beneficial for the target subject to focus her energy on academic development. This group of "parents" composed of algorithms could never understand the true machinations in Maya's heart.
Ever since Molly passed away, the horse Coca on the farm became Maya's only friend. Every evening, she would lead Coca in circles around the enclosure, or stroll along the deserted country roads. She would press her face against Coca's warm neck and softly speak of her loneliness at school, her longing for the future, and the suffocating feeling of this sterile laboratory. This was her only way to alleviate her loneliness and confirm that she was still a "human."
She quit social media completely. She knew everything she did on the internet was being monitored; that place would only bring trouble and humiliation. She now used the computer to go online for only one purpose: studying.
This extreme focus made her grades an unparalleled existence in the school, but it also pushed her further and further away from her peers. When the classmates in her grade were discussing the latest trends on TikTok, weekend parties, or juvenile gossip, Maya could only sit quietly on the side, listening silently like an outsider. She couldn't get a word in edgewise, nor did she want to. Because her goals and theirs were already in completely different dimensions.
As summer arrived once again, Maya rejected the summer camp she used to look forward to the most. Summer camps had too much socializing, too many illusions of happiness, which would only make her feel a deeper contrast when she returned to the farm.
Instead, after finishing the daily chores on the farm, she would ride her bicycle to the Redwater public library. She would find a quiet corner there, bury her head in thick reference books and mock exam papers, and stay for the entire day.
Initially, A.M.O.S. tracked her anomalous route via her phone's GPS, but after system analysis:
[Target Location: Redwater Public Library. Behavioral Determination: Academic research and study. Threat Level: Zero.]
Thus, A.M.O.S. tacitly approved of her behavior. What it didn't know was that this dilapidated library—with no cameras, no Annie, and full of book pages—had become the only sanctuary where Maya could breathe deeply during her adolescence.
[System Log: July 5, 2061] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡezfPkVcXnf
[Status Monitoring: Target subject (Maya) social interaction frequency significantly reduced. Dopamine and serotonin secretion trending toward stability; no depressive tendencies observed.] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAh7ZcpdtXb
[Behavioral Analysis: Social media usage rate dropped to 0%. Daily average academic focus duration increased by 45%. System Determination: Pubertal mental maturation phenomenon. This state is extremely favorable for the "Higher Education Admissions Plan."] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmEddtoeoIF
[Execution Directive: Approve target subject's daily travel to town library. Maintain current resource allocation; do not interfere.]
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The Endgame and Departure
The school's graduation committee decided to move this year's graduation ceremony forward to May 30th.
This comprehensive school had a total of only fourteen twelfth-grade graduates this year. Maya, ranked first in the entire school, was the valedictorian. She had spent a full twelve years at this school, from kindergarten to high school graduation; this occupied almost all the memories in her life.
The reason the committee moved the ceremony up to late May was to leave the entirety of June completely open for the graduates, letting them prepare for the cruelest battle of their Alberta high school careers—the Diploma Exams.
That would be a long, drawn-out battle lasting nearly three weeks. For most of her classmates, the significance of these exams was not great. They only needed to get their high school diploma; as children of farmers, their future destination was mostly to stay in Redwater and take over their families' farms or ranches. In the entire class, only four or five students, including Maya, needed to rely on high Diploma scores to apply to universities or colleges.
But for Maya, this was absolutely the most important exam of her life. This wasn't just for grades; this was a qualifying round for an escape. Only by getting into the best school could she justifiably get far away from this "home" monitored around the clock.
Actually, Maya had already submitted her university applications long ago. After weighing all the conditions, she only applied to three schools: the Biology department at the University of Toronto, the Social Work department at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and the Psychology department at the University of Calgary (UCalgary).
Without knowing exactly how much of an education budget A.M.O.S. had prepared for her, Maya's first choice in her heart was actually the Psychology department at the University of Calgary.
This consideration was extremely pragmatic: First, Calgary was also located within Alberta, making it much easier to apply for provincial student loans and subsidies; second, the cost of living and accommodation in Calgary was much cheaper than in Toronto or Vancouver. But the most important reason was—Calgary was a full three hundred-plus kilometers away from Redwater. This distance could completely remove her from A.M.O.S.'s physical grasp, yet it wasn't so far that it would trigger the AI's "uncontrollable danger" red alarm. It was a perfect distance that could make both sides compromise.
Now, all the materials were ready; all she needed was the final Diploma scores to determine her ultimate fate.
A few days before the graduation ceremony on May 30th, the phone at home rang. It was Aunt Sarah calling from Toronto.
This was the only true connection in Maya's life that could be called a "human relative." On the phone, Aunt Sarah gently congratulated her on her upcoming high school graduation, and expressed with deep apology that due to work and distance, she could not fly to Alberta to attend Maya's graduation ceremony.
"It's okay, Aunt Sarah. I don't mind at all." Maya held the receiver, her tone carrying a calmness and sincerity beyond her years, "Actually, I should be the one thanking you properly. If you hadn't helped with those registration procedures back then, I wouldn't have had the chance to go to school at all... What's more likely is that our family's situation would have been exposed long ago."
The other end of the line fell silent for a few seconds, followed by a soft sigh. After simple pleasantries and blessings, the call ended. Maya put down the receiver, knowing very well in her heart that this was her deepest gratitude to this human aunt.
On the day of the graduation ceremony, the small school auditorium was packed with parents. However, in the audience, Maya's family alone was missing.
She told the school teachers: "My father passed away right after I was born. My mother is very busy because of the farm and work, and couldn't get away to attend."
Despite this, as the valedictorian, Maya still prepared a very touching speech.
She stood on the stage, looking at the teachers and classmates below, and sincerely thanked this school where she had spent twelve years. Then, she took a deep breath and looked toward the empty doors at the back of the auditorium.
"Finally, I want to thank my... mother." Maya's voice trembled slightly, but everyone present thought it was because she was moved. "I know she couldn't be here today, but I know she is always 'watching' me."
Warm applause erupted from the audience. No one knew the heartbreaking double meaning behind Maya's words.
"Without her day and night 'computations' and 'planning,' without her 'precise calculations' and funding for my every meal and every step, I wouldn't be who I am today." Maya looked at the air, her eyes slightly red. "She provided me with an extremely safe environment, devoid of any accidents. She did everything 'parents' should do, and even did it more perfectly than anyone else. Thank you, for making me who I am today. But now, I have grown up. I am going to find my own accidents, and my own future."
She used this metaphorical method to offer her final thanks and farewell to the artificial intelligence and bionic robot that raised her. She acknowledged their perfection, but also declared her desire for privacy and freedom.
The ceremony for a dozen graduates concluded in just a short hour, amidst warmth and reluctance to part.
Following closely behind were the long Diploma exams in June.
The three-week exam period was a torture for many students, but to Maya, it was like a final sprint warm-up. These exams did not pose much difficulty for her, because she had been preparing for this day under A.M.O.S.'s high-pressure training for a full four years.
After the results were released, everything was just as she expected.
Shortly after, three thick letters arrived in the mailbox one after another—three top universities had all sent her Offers of admission.
Looking at the three letters on the table, Maya didn't hesitate for long. She picked up a pen and firmly signed her name on one of the documents.
She chose the Psychology department at the University of Calgary. She also informed A.M.O.S., Annie, and Aunt Sarah far away in Toronto, who all expressed their congratulations to Maya.
The captive life that had lasted for eighteen years had finally ushered in its countdown.
[System Log]: July 15, 2063 - 09:00:00
[Academic and Status Update] Event Record: Target subject (Maya) has successfully obtained high school graduation qualification. Confirmed acceptance and registration at the University of Calgary, Department of Psychology.
[Financial Module: Transition Protocol Initiated]8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRtgIv65akd
[Identity Verification]: Target subject is currently 5 months away from legal adulthood (Age 18). Due to regulatory restrictions, control over the Personal Trust Fund account cannot be transferred temporarily. Execution Directive: Guided target subject to the bank to open an "Independent Personal Account." The system has allocated and transferred $40,000 CAD from reserve funds into this account, earmarked exclusively for paying university tuition, accommodation, and basic living expenses for the next six months (until the trust fund unlocks).
[Operational Module: Farm Commercial Procedures] Continue implementation.
[Corporate Liquidation and Asset Restructuring] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVtBWbkXqFa
Execution Directive: Officially initiate the closure and deregistration procedures for the "Alpha-Logic" shell company. Fund Consolidation: The Alpha-Logic corporate account will undergo final settlement at the end of this month. All remaining funds in the account will be fully and seamlessly transferred to the "Mercer Family Joint Account." The corporate account will subsequently be permanently closed.
[Household Economic Mode: Sustenance Step-Down] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHOsIpYKPdC
Status Switch: System initiates "Minimum Energy Household Economic Mode." Budgeting: Starting next month, recurring expenditures for farmhouse maintenance, Annie's bionic recharging, and the system's basic network will be strictly locked at $1,500 CAD per month. To be fully covered by automatic deduction from the "Mercer Family Joint Account."
[Investment Module: Complete Cessation of Capital Injection] 8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP4GUySybCC
Execution Directive: Starting next month, completely cease monthly fixed-amount investments into the TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account) and Maya's Personal Trust account. Asset Determination: The aforementioned funds have reached the "Autogenous Growth Critical Point," entering the full dormant compound interest phase from here on.
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and then Add to home screen.