I (28M) met my girlfriend (29F) through my job – she doesn’t work there, but I ran into her one day in the office lobby.
For context, I work at a small neurotechnology company (name omitted for privacy reasons). I won’t get too much into it because honestly, I don’t have much of a neuroscience background, but they want to invent a brain implant that allows people to access the Internet from their minds. I know that sounds crazy, but I don’t think they’ll ever get there. The company is funded by some eccentric billionaire, so I think it’s his weird pet project or something.
I’m fairly new to the company as I’ve only been there for about 6 months. My role is pretty low-level; I mostly just enter data into spreadsheets. I don’t even really know what the data is supposed to mean. I took the job because it pays extremely well compared to other data entry roles, and my boss is pretty chill. The only thing I don’t like is how quiet the office is. Sometimes I go into work and don’t speak to anyone for the entire day, and we never have office socials or anything. Besides my boss, who I meet with once a week, the only person I’ve gotten to know is Sam (25-ish F), who I think works in the engineering department. Honestly I’m not too sure. We’re not really supposed to discuss work between teams, and each department works on a different floor that nobody else can access. But Sam is nice; we met because we drive the exact same car (make and model), and we’ve gotten them mixed up on more than one occasion.
Anyway, my girlfriend (let’s call her Jess) and I met in the lobby during my first week at this job. She was telling the front desk guy that one of the fish in the lobby aquarium looked sick, and she seemed genuinely concerned. I was immediately drawn to her because of how caring she was, and we struck up a conversation about animals. I learned that Jess is actually part of the first human study at my company. Don’t worry, they’re not implanting people with brain computers just yet. According to Jess, they’re just testing a basic implant that can record the impulses of individual neurons – not that much more advanced than the devices researchers use in mice. She comes to the office twice a month or so to complete random tasks while the scientists record her brain activity. They pay her $1000 per visit, which is insane, but I totally get why she signed up. So Jess and I hit it off, and now we’ve been officially dating for about 5 months. She’s by far the best girl I’ve ever dated. She’s super sweet and thoughtful, she’s a GREAT baker, and she’s really smart (although she can’t do math).
Over the past few weeks, Jess has been acting a bit different. I feel like maybe something happened that’s been making her upset, but she hasn’t told me anything. She’s just been a little off. For one, Jess hasn’t been as nice as she usually is – she’s not mean exactly, but it’s been different. Like usually, she makes a point to help out this old man who lives in the apartment next to hers. I always see Jess carrying the man’s groceries upstairs when I go over there. But ever since a few weeks ago, she’s totally stopped. I mean, she’s not rude or anything, she still says hi to the guy. But I haven’t seen Jess have the same long conversations with him that she usually does. Maybe he said something offensive to her that she didn’t tell me about? I’m not sure.
Also, Jess doesn’t pet people’s dogs anymore. I know that sounds small, but since we’ve been together, she’s always stopped everyone with a dog to pet them and ask about them. No matter the type of dog, she would always do this. But now, she barely even glances at the dogs we run into when we go out. Our mutual love of animals is what we initially bonded over, so this is kind of weird to me. That’s why I feel like something’s been bothering her. But she seems just as happy as usual, so I don’t know.
The last thing I really can’t explain. Last week, Jess and I went to a new restaurant for dinner. It was nice, we just talked as usual. But when the check came, I pulled out my phone to calculate the tip. Before I could even type in the numbers, Jess had written the total with an 18% tip on the receipt. It’s not like the pre-tip number was simple or anything – it was like $47.19 or something like that. I checked what she wrote using the calculator, and it was exactly right. I don’t know how to explain this, because the Jess I know can’t do math at ALL. She usually uses a calculator for everything. I asked her how she knew the right answer, and she said she didn’t know. Basically, I’m coming to Reddit for any suggestions. Is it normal for people to change like this? Am I just overreacting?
UPDATE:
Something really strange happened over the weekend. I have no idea what to do.
On Friday after work, I realized I had forgotten my phone at the office. Jess was already over at my place when I got home. She’d had a study session at my company the previous day, so she treated us to takeout, and we watched a movie. By the time we finished, it was around 11 PM. I decided to swing by the office to grab my phone since I’d need it over the weekend. When I got there, the parking garage was pretty much empty, except for a car that looked just like mine. That must be Sam, I thought. What was she doing at the office so late?
When I got inside the building, I swiped my badge and headed up to my floor. I spotted my phone at my desk, retrieved it, and got back on the elevator. But before I could hit the ground floor button, the elevator started moving up. Before I knew it, the doors had opened on the 14th floor. I should have just minded my own business and hit the right button. I wish I had. But I didn’t, and I’ll forever regret it.
When the doors opened, I was surprised by what I saw. Whereas my usual floor was boring-looking, with small windows and rows of cramped cubicles, the 14th floor was windowless and clinically white. There was an MRI-like machine in the center of the room, and I saw a large TV screen ahead of me with a rotating projection of a human brain. At the bottom right corner of the screen was a label that read “J. Turner.” Jess? Was this where she came to participate in the clinical trial?
My curiosity got the better of me. I stepped off the elevator and walked closer to the TV. To the left of it, there was a computer monitor sitting on a desk that had been hidden from view when I was in the elevator. Glancing at it, I saw a graph with what seemed to show spikes of brain activity. That made sense, then. This must be Jess’s brain recording from yesterday, I thought. Underneath the graph, there was a series of numbers. The patterns seemed familiar – almost like the numbers I was endlessly entering into spreadsheets. Maybe all the data I was working with was the brain activity of the study participants?
Wait. Looking closer, the graph and numbers seemed to be changing. A small timestamp at the top of the graph read “11:26 PM.” But that couldn’t be right. Wasn’t this recording from yesterday? Jess had assured me that the scientists could only monitor her brain activity when she was hooked up to the machine. There must be some kind of mis–
“What are you doing?” I heard a sharp voice coming from behind me. Whipping around, I came face-to-face with Sam. She looked almost angry, but I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Sam? Why are you here so late?”
She ignored me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she snapped. “How did you get to this floor?”
Before I could respond, Sam started herding me back to the elevator. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”
“Sam, what’s going on? What’s on that computer?” I asked once we got into the elevator.
Sam shushed me, and we rode down in silence. In the close quarters of the elevator, I noticed that her face seemed worried, not angry. Outside the lobby, a breeze had picked up. Shivering, I shrugged on my jacket, and Sam followed me to my car. As I was about to get in the driver’s seat, she tugged on my jacket sleeve and pulled me into a hug. Confused, I was about to protest when I heard Sam’s frantic whisper in my ear and felt her slip something into my jacket pocket.
“Don’t look at it until you leave the garage. Drive away and do not look back. You deserve to know what’s really going on.”
She pulled away and turned around, walking back towards the lobby. As Sam instructed, I got into my car, started the engine, and drove out of the garage. A few miles away, I pulled into a gas station and reached into my pocket. Inside was a small black notebook filled with Sam’s handwriting.
The last entry was dated that Friday. “I can’t keep quiet about this anymore,” Sam had written. “I have to tell the authorities.”
I flipped back and read all of her notes from the first page. Like I said, I don’t have a neuroscience background, so I didn’t understand everything. But from what I could piece together, I knew I should be terrified.
It turns out that Sam had started keeping notes about what she witnessed at the company. Unlike me, she was told a little more about the technology that was in development. She’s part of the team responsible for building and testing the brain implant. Contrary to what Jess was told, they can monitor her brain remotely. And worse, computer interfacing isn’t even the main purpose of the implant.
I guess the eccentric billionaire doesn’t actually care about browsing the Internet in his mind. What he really wants to do is create artificial human minds. Not artificial intelligence, but digital copies of real minds. He thinks they’re the key to saving the human race from inevitable extinction. So his team of scientists has tried building brain models on the computer. I think they got pretty close, but their digital brains weren’t fully human. What they realized is that there’s something special about our biological neurons that make us who we are. Without the means to recreate human neurons, they’ve found a new approach: using existing brains as hosts for the digital ones. They think that if they implant a digital brain into a real one, incubate it for some time, and then reupload it, it’ll have that unexplainable quality that makes us human. For now, they’re studying the incubation period.
After surgically placing the brain implant, it gradually prunes unneeded neural connections and creates new ones in the host brain according to the architecture of the digital model. Ideally, the host won’t notice what’s happening as the artificial mind takes control. But there are key differences between the real and digital minds. The company’s founder wanted to improve on human minds to make his digital ones “infallible” – that means strengthening connections to make brain processes faster and cutting out some of the emotions that lead to faulty human judgments. I suppose that explains Jess’s changes.
Sam wanted to tell the authorities. But who would she tell? Are the police even equipped to deal with this? And was this process reversible? Maybe I could talk to her on Monday, and we could come up with a plan.
I thought about Sam’s notes all weekend. The differences in my girlfriend were even more noticeable now; she was almost callous with how she interacted with me, and even the way she spoke seemed a little less human. I held out hope that Sam would have more answers for me on Monday.
Monday came and went. When I parked at the office, I saw Sam’s car in the same exact spot as Friday night. I had a pit in my stomach all day, and I didn’t see her all day – but that wasn’t exactly abnormal. I even stayed at the office a bit later than usual, but when I left for the evening, Sam’s car was still sitting in the same place. Tuesday, too, I saw Sam’s car but no Sam. The next day, Sam’s car was gone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But when I got to my desk, I was met with my boss’s frown. He led me to his office.
“What were you doing here Friday night?” He asked. “I got a security report that you swiped your badge around midnight.”
“I f-forgot my phone. I came back to get it. Why? Is everything alright?”
He didn’t answer my question. “Did you see anyone else here?”
My heart was pounding. Should I lie and say no? But Sam had implied that they were watching and listening somehow. My boss might know if I said something off. “Yes, I ran into someone. I just said hi and left. W-what’s this about?” I stuttered.
“Yes, another employee was present at the office around the same time. She has been under investigation for a while now, as we suspect she may have been stealing proprietary technology from the company. As of Monday morning, this employee has been terminated. We wanted to ask if you witnessed any… suspicious behavior.”
“No, I didn’t see anything,” I said. As I turned to leave my boss’s office, my blood ran cold. If Sam had been fired on Monday, why was her car there until today? And what were the chances she would park in the exact same spot in such a crowded garage?
I know something horrible must have happened to Sam after we parted ways on Friday night. And something sinister is happening to my girlfriend, something I can’t even begin to fully understand. I want to tell someone, but who would ever believe me? And If I say anything, maybe they’ll come after me, too.