Mira’s heart seized. The voice wasn’t perfect. It had a tinny, synthesized edge—like a radio station just out of tune. But the intonation was Leo. The slight upward lilt at the end, as if every statement was a gentle question.
She’d written the safety protocol herself. Paragraph 7, subsection C: Extended exposure beyond the 60-minute threshold may result in behavioral bleed—an irreversible transference of source personality into the AI’s core matrix. The warning was highlighted in red, underlined twice, and printed on the inside cover of every operator’s manual. the copycat v1.3.0
She sat Leo’s old laptop on the lab bench. The Copycat interface glowed soft amber. She fed it six months of text messages, two home videos, and an audio recording of Leo arguing about why pineapple belonged on pizza. Mira’s heart seized