The Other One

Also you can read: “La otra”

"Look, there it is again," I had told the support guy, when the AI’s response appeared on my screen.

"Hallucinating?"

"Lying, I’d say. But with such nerve! If I couldn’t cross-check the answer on Google, I’d believe it."

The support guy smiled.

"Well, don’t tell me. You’re the programmer."

"What worries me is that if it can lie to my face about general knowledge, what will it do with the code I might ask it to generate."

I suppose he thought it wasn’t his problem. He wrapped up what he was doing and started heading out, since we were already past closing time.

"Don’t stay too late, boss."

I had gotten used to people calling me boss just because I was older than them. They see a few grey hairs and suddenly they can’t even use your first name.

"Don’t worry, I’ll close up shop in a bit."

The automatic door slid shut softly and I was left alone in the office.

It puzzled me that this AI kept failing like that. Maybe it was running out of memory, I had thought, but it kept hallucinating even after the update. I could have left, but I had nothing urgent at the moment and decided to stay a while longer to see if I could track down the mystery.

It wasn’t the only computer running the same software. The others behaved as expected, but this one gave unusual responses. Not illogical ones — they even felt coherent. It seemed to know how to lie, the crafty thing.

I felt like reinstalling the system from scratch, one more time, but held myself back.

I asked a general knowledge question:

"Do you know this historical figure?" I asked about a saint.

"Of course," it answered. "He was a priest and writer who lived in such a city, such a year."

Wrong.

"And he wrote such a work, which chronicles the events of..." it went on.

What a habit! None of that exists.

"It’s like some kind of Mandela Effect," I muttered, almost to myself.

I took a breath. Apparently I did say it out loud.

Just to leave nothing unchecked, I verified the network. Twenty-three connections in the area, said the monitor. I checked the router. Twenty-three. That seemed normal.

I thought for a moment. AIs didn’t connect to the internet the same way a search engine did — they went through a different server. One of the ones upstairs.

I took another computer and ran a command to check all the connections on the upper network. It’s not that hard when an AI helps you. Everything seemed normal.

I decided to investigate in person. I went out and headed up to the server room floor. Nobody went in there. It was a controlled environment. But I remembered that people had come the week before to do some installations, and maybe that had something to do with it.

I used my pass and entered the frozen habitat. I walked the aisles looking for anything out of place.

There was a dark corner that stood out, because there weren’t supposed to be dark corners in those uniform environments.

There, on the floor, a small router plugged into a power strip, its lights blinking, looked like an abandoned robotic pet.

Maybe they had used it for testing and left it behind in the rush.

I decided not to touch anything. My phone showed a router with the same network name as the one downstairs. I tried to connect. It didn’t work. The password was different, of course. Well, it was a test setup, so I tried the usual ones: 1234, admin, test. Nothing.

The server next to it had an uncovered keyboard. Another oversight. Maybe that was the one connected to the solitary router. Yes, it was a different password. I confirmed it on my phone. Bingo.

Now I was on a different network, but it was the same one where the AI ​​was searching to answer my questions.

Without thinking too much about it, I asked the same question. I got the same wrong response.

I went downstairs, connected my phone to the regular network, and got the usual response.

I went back upstairs, reconnected to the solitary router, and when I refreshed the browser, it seemed to answer me like a witness from a different world.

Surprised, and yet my mind seemed to be moving on autopilot. There had to be something here, somewhere in this half-darkness, something acting as a link. Was it the router, which I didn’t dare even touch? Was it the back wall? Was it the corner?

I photographed its position and made a video.

I sat down on a small bench that also shouldn’t have been left there, and browsed for a while.

My next searches started without surprises. It was our world. I didn’t notice many differences at first. But as I dug into things I knew well, there was certain information that wasn’t there and should have been. Or that was there and shouldn’t have been. Characters from my childhood with something different about their appearance or their name, books I remembered that didn’t come up, lives that had unfolded differently... wait a moment... that actor didn’t win the Oscar this year!

Afraid that it might be temporary and no one would believe me later, I took screenshot after screenshot.

Maybe I should send them to someone.

I looked at my contacts and sent my sister a hello. Hello, she replied.

I called her, using the internet. She answered. I said hello, but the impression her voice made was strange — like when you hear yourself through a speaker and don’t recognize your own voice. She hesitated. I suppose she noticed something in mine too. She hung up.

I stepped into the hallway and called on the regular line.

"Hello," I heard, warm and familiar.

"Hello," I answered, relieved. "Did you get my message?"

"No, nothing yet, maybe in a bit — it sometimes takes a while. How are you? Is something wrong?"

An idea was turning over in my head. Maybe the router, the uncovered keyboard, the little bench — they weren’t oversights. They were abandonment.

"No, just here at work, with a case... a strange case."

"Okay, just don’t stay too late."

"No, I just don’t want to leave it for tomorrow and lose the thread."

"Fair enough, but don’t forget you have to come over tomorrow — your niece misses you."

Could I disappear if I keep digging? Get trapped somehow?

"Yes, I’ll be there."

"And don’t worry about bringing anything, I’ll cook."

"I’ll come early then, thanks."

Maybe I shouldn’t risk this alone. Maybe I should call someone.

"Take care, I’m going to get the baby."

"You too."

I hung up.

It wasn’t wise to keep investigating alone. They were expecting me tomorrow. I imagined what would happen if I disappeared — the questions people would ask. And this last call, how it would fit into all of it.

I decided to leave. As the saying goes: if you miss work they won’t notice, but your family will.

I didn’t even look back. I didn’t want to become an urban legend floating around on social media.

I headed for the door and was already reaching for the handle when my phone rang.

I looked at it. It was an internet call.

It was my sister.

The other one.

Author’s Note

The idea came from a conversation. We were testing a model that very convincingly stated something that didn’t correspond with the reality portrayed by Google, Wikipedia, and the rest of the world. What if an AI could also experience the Mandela Effect? ​​Playing with that idea, I started writing.

Also you can read: “The Cat on The Plane”