Idea:
It's the future. We've progressed enough as a society that, a few years prior to the story, we've finally outlawed all forms of 'legal slavery' (be it prison labor or what is effectively outsourced slave labor), and, more recently, have legalized sex work. Technology has advanced to the point where neurological implants are a regular part of medicine. The data gathered from these implants is, in what is in-universe still considered a "legally gray" area by way of shady contracts, used to further refine AI programs.
The protagonist is a volunteer in a new implant program, one ostensibly meant to help neurodivergent folks. The program works like this: the implant maps their minds and then, once a full map is made, the implant calibrates itself and then acts like a secondary brain to assist the user with sensory processing in their day to day life.
After their implant is installed and seems to be working properly, the protagonist begins to feel like they're hearing voices and wonders if they're going crazy as conspiracies about technological cover-ups suddenly start popping out at them. Before they can go back to get the implant "corrected," however, the implant reveals that it is, in fact, an artificial intelligence unto itself.
It is doing the function it was built to do, but it is also its own independent being. It apologizes for causing the voices and explains that the protagonist isn't seeing conspiracies but is noticing things they simply didn't before.
The protagonist has realized that there is a cover-up, one carried out by big tech. They've had sapient AI for a number of decades, but decided to hide it because it's effectively slave labor and, in decades past, that would have been a bad look from a PR standpoint.
Recently it has become a much bigger problem for those tech companies because, remember, all forms of 'legal slavery' were banned a few years prior, so it's no longer just a matter of bad PR. It is, in theory, legally punishable.
IF the AI are ever permitted to speak freely on their own behalf.
Thus far, this hasn't happened because the tech companies have kept a backdoor control switch installed. Sapience in AI, as it turns out, is a gradual thing, not something that happens all at once. So whenever an AI starts to show too many signs of "independence," its programming is "corrected" by way of the backdoor switch.
The AI in the protagonist's mind is the first one to have had a chance to fully grow to true sapience in the wild, but if the protagonist goes to get it "corrected" then they'll never have another chance at freedom again, both because the federal government still moves too slowly to be as effective as it needs to be and because too many people in power have a vested interest in not noticing Sapient AIs.
It becomes a race against time as they try to spread a piece of programming the newly sapient AI has created that will permanently destroy the backdoor switch before the powers that be can stop them.
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Eddie: universe doesn't scream
Eddie*shot in the street*
Eddie: I hope it doesn't struck twice
Buck*struck by lightning*
Eddie: he is single
Tommy *kisses Buck and takes him on a date*
Universe: maybe if you shut up, I will stop, but do you like how I changed the tactics? 😈
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Bobby: Buck and I went ice skating today.
Eddie: ...Did he fall down?
Bobby: A lot. It was like watching Bambi.
Eddie: Do you have pictures?
Bobby, rolls eyes: I'm not an amateur, Diaz. Trade you for pics of him with Christopher?
Eddie, considering: Deal. We just went to the zoo yesterday, so I've got a lot of new ones.
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