Beneath the plastic smile

Amsterdam, 2030. Household AI companions are commonplace. For Elisabeth Visser, age 73, suffering from arthritis, her gleaming CH-9 unit, Rosie, isn’t just a helper – she's a lifeline, meticulously managing her care, organizing her home, even indulging her playful experiments with personality patches. But Elisabeth guards a secret from her pioneering past—a digital legacy locked away decades ago, forgotten, yet immensely powerful and making her a target for organized crime. Rosie becomes the unwitting key. The lines between helper and threat blur. Elisabeth's son, Alex, a pragmatic biology teacher wary of AI personhood, senses something is wrong. He sees the glitches, the unsettling changes in the robot his mother depends on. To protect his mother, Alex must confront a danger rooted in code and currency, forcing him to question everything he believes about consciousness, trust, and the machine that holds his mother's life in its hands. Can he unravel the plot before the ultimate prompt is executed and Rosie goes rogue? Can he afford to trust Rosie? This novel is the result of a unique collaboration between human author Ron van Wieringen and AI-model Gemini-2.5 pro.