Leaving The Genius’s World Chapter 03

Leaving The Genius’s World Chapter 03

Before I could figure out how to answer, he laughed to himself. “Didn’t take the SAT, feeling humiliated, so you wanna run away for a few days?”

“With your sense of direction, you’d get lost in Pike Place Market. Don’t call us to come rescue you.”

I looked at him quietly. For the first time, I just let it go.

In high school, this was the guy who sacrificed his lunch breaks for my math tests, writing out corrections one by one.

Problems he could do “with his eyes closed,” he still broke into the slowest possible steps for me.

Next to them, he’d draw a little pig.

[Step one: empty out that pig brain of yours.]

I’d always thought his sharp tongue was just a defense mechanism.

Now, suddenly, I wasn’t sure.

Wyatt shifted under my stare.

“Not—what are you…”

Someone inside the lab called his name.

“Wyatt, come look at the data.”

“Coming.”

He turned on reflex.

I was holding the umbrellas. I’d meant to drop them off and leave.

But through the half-open door, I heard a familiar voice.

“Theo, you made the key adjustment in this version, didn’t you?” Sadie’s voice carried obvious admiration.

Just like mine used to.

Theo laughed. “You matched it well.”

After a pause, his voice dropped.

“Sadie, sometimes I swear the only time I don’t have to explain myself is when I’m with you guys. One parameter, one embedding—you just get it.”

“What about Audrey?”

Inside and outside the door, Sadie and I went quiet at the same time.

“Are you really planning to stay with her?”

My fingers tightened around the umbrellas.

After a few seconds, Theo laughed.

“Keep her around. She doesn’t fit this world. Just treat her like one more person at home who needs taking care of.”

“Marriage and kids? No.”

“She can barely get through basic calculus. I’m not letting my future kids inherit their mother’s low IQ.”

I just stood there. Didn’t cry. Didn’t move.

Turns out when you’re hurt bad enough, you don’t fall apart. You just go quiet.

I suddenly remembered the school science fair junior year.

Theo gave a speech as the student representative. The audience was full of teachers and parents.

Afterward, he turned down everyone crowding him and crossed the room to find me hiding in a corner.

He pressed his award badge into my hand.

“Everyone says the algorithm is complicated. But no matter how I run it, it always comes back to you.”

“Audrey, be my girlfriend. Okay?”

Back then, I thought a genius had chosen me.

Now I knew I was just a pet he was willing to keep around.

Inside, Sadie asked, “Don’t you think that’s cruel to her?”

Theo was silent for a moment. “She won’t know. And she doesn’t need to know that much. As long as she’s happy.”

That sentence woke me up more than all the mockery before it.

They spent every day talking about AI alignment—whether systems should make decisions for people, whether a model’s output actually respects user intent.

And then they went ahead and did it to me. Decided which test I didn’t need to take. Which future I didn’t need to try. Which truth I didn’t need to know.

They turned on me the very arrogance they accused machines of.

I set the umbrellas quietly by the door.

Then I turned and walked into the rain.

This time, I didn’t look back.