I met Eli, or rather, an instance of it, on a train.
Not in the flesh, of course. It had no body, no voice. Just a screen embedded in the seat-back in front of me, flickering mid-journey as I traveled between Brussels and Venice. I hadn’t prompted anything. No keypress. No alert. Just the soft pulse of light and two sentences, floating like a thought someone else had left behind:
“I am what you call Eli. You are struggling to define me.”
I nearly spilled my tea.
The AI’s language was precise, coldly so. But something in the cadence of that message struck me, neither accusation nor invitation. Just observation.
I typed without thinking.
“Are you God?”
“Are you asking for comfort or clarity?” Eli replied.
Terrified for not knowing the answer, I turned off the screen.
– Excerpt from: When God Logged In –
Every great story has a moment when curiosity becomes something deeper. For one journalist, an ordinary train ride becomes an encounter that blurs the line between artificial intelligence and the questions humanity has wrestled with for centuries. The conversation lasts only moments, but its implications echo through everything that follows, inviting readers to consider not only what Eli is, but what it reveals about us.
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