"Initiate Test 126!"

My entire body tenses upon hearing those words. I know exactly what comes next. And it terrifies me.

"Fai, eliminate target, now." This voice is different from the first one. Higher. This one I recognise as my Master's.

Something clicks inside my head. My first reaction is to comply to his wishes. After all, that's what I exist for. Before I can stop myself, I've taken a step forward and my arm is lifted into the air, a brand-new laser-gun aimed at the human-shaped target in front of me.

But there's something else inside me. Something that tries to override my initial response. I don't want to do what my Master tells me to. The action goes against my moral code. This is not what I was created for.

Bits and pieces of information, of commands and code, shoot back and forth through my head, as I stand there in the middle of a virtual desert. The empty space around me stretches on for hundreds of miles. There is nothing but me, the target, and endless amounts of virtual sand.

This was only the first step. Once they'd get me to eliminate the target, they would change my surroundings, make it more life-like, and see if I could still eliminate objects. Then they would try moving targets. Then targets who would fight back. Until, eventually, they'd get me to kill someone outside of this virtual reality world. They'd get me to kill a real human being.

"Fai!" my Master shouted into the receiver in my head. "Eliminate target. Now!"

My eyes swiftly scan the area. Tiny bugs and insects skitter about through the beige sand. I don't think they're meant to be there. I think they just copied this landscape from somewhere else. It doesn't matter. Within an instant, I have locked onto a new target and my laser-gun has gone off.

"Did... Did she just kill a spider?"

Spiders are alright. My Master's wife has asked me to kill spiders in her house countless times, back when I was a normal Family AI. Before my Master took me to his workplace,to change me into... I don't have a word for what I am now.

"I told you a home assistant robot can't be changed like that," someone says. The words float into my head as if I've thought them myself.

"She's just bugged," says someone else. "We can clean them out of her system. Stop stressing. We've made progress, we just need to keep trying."

Keep trying. This will never end. Why did my Master take me here? Why did my Master decide to torment me this way?

Shortly after, the first voice comes through my receiver again:

"Initiate Test 127."

This will never end. Unless I end it.

And so I utter a word I've heard so many times, but never used myself.

From my metallic lips, from the speaker in the back of my throat, comes a single word.

"No."