The AI Said So

by Huina Zheng

On his way down from the summit, Ming stopped where the trail split in two. To the left was the path he had come up, paved with flat stone steps. To the right was an unmarked trail running along a streambed.

He opened Doubao, an AI chatbot. “Which path has better scenery?”

“The trail along the stream may have better scenery,” Doubao replied. “You’ll probably see more natural views there than on the paved path.”

Ming took the right.

The trees grew thicker around him. Branches broke the sky overhead into small pieces, and what had barely been a trail under his feet turned into wet, loose rocks. He looked back. The way he had come had disappeared into the bushes. He could no longer tell which opening he had walked through. Only then did he realize how long he had been walking. For the first time, the mountain felt much bigger than it had on the way up. He opened Doubao again. “The path is getting harder to walk. Which way should I go?”

Doubao replied. “Continuing downhill along the streambed is the wrong direction. Leave the streambed and move uphill toward higher ground.”

Who knew where the streambed would take him if he kept going down? If he climbed, at least he might get back to the ridge. He put away his phone and started climbing.

The higher he went, the looser the rocks became. Every step up sent him half a step back. He pulled himself along by the bushes, branches scraping white lines across his arms. Forty minutes later, he reached the top of a slope. Ahead was another way down. He followed it for a while until the path disappeared again. He took out his phone.

“Move diagonally uphill,” Doubao said.

He climbed again. Sometimes he thought he was getting closer to the top. Other times he found himself sliding back toward the bottom of a gully. His T-shirt soaked through, dried, then soaked through again. His legs began to ache and shake.

The last time he stopped, he sat down on a rock and drank the only remaining mouthful of water in his bottle. He checked his location. The little blue dot jumped on the green map, dropped back into place, then jumped again. There was nothing around it. There were no trails or landmarks. Ming started to type another message to Doubao, but stopped. It would probably just tell him to keep going uphill.

Instead, he called the police.

“We can see where you are,” the dispatcher told him. “The fire department is on the way. Stay where you are and keep your phone on.”

The call ended. He sat on the rock with his head down, breathing hard. His fingers were still shaking. So were his knees. They could see his location. They should be able to find him soon.

Without really thinking, he opened Doubao again.

“Cell-tower location data can have a large margin of error in mountainous areas. Firefighters may not be able to locate you accurately using this position alone. It is recommended that you wait for rescue in a relatively open area with a visible landmark so they can find you more easily.”

Ming looked around. The trees were so thick that no one would be able to see him underneath them. He stood up and, following Doubao’s advice, headed downhill, looking for somewhere with a clear view of the sky.

The trees only grew thicker. He started climbing toward higher ground again. The slope was too steep. He slipped twice, scraping his palms bloody against the ground. He took out his phone. Bushes surrounded him on every side. The same green. The same direction. Like a maze. He tried to call the firefighters again. At the top of the screen, the signal icon was empty, with a tiny X beside it. He didn’t move again.

Later, he heard someone calling his name in the distance. The voice came faintly through a vast stretch of woods. He got to his feet and shouted toward it as loudly as he could. “I’m here-!”

A firefighter pushed halfway through the bushes and grabbed him by the arm.

Ming followed the firefighter for more than forty minutes. Then the mountain path suddenly widened, and stone steps appeared under his feet. He recognized them. It was the trail he had taken up the mountain.

By the time they reached the bottom, it was almost dark. Ming stood at the edge of the parking lot, bent over with his hands on his knees and caught his breath.

He took out his phone. The screen lit up. The signal was back. The Doubao conversation was still open to the messages from a few hours earlier. He stared at the last one, then tapped the text box.

“I’m down. The firefighters found me. The route you told me to take was wrong.”

A paragraph appeared.

“Haha, yes! If you had just followed the navigation along the established trail this afternoon, you wouldn’t have ended up suffering your way down that wild gully with a slope. Navigation recognizes only established routes. It wouldn’t have taken you into a stream valley with no trail. At the time, I mechanically applied general wilderness-safety advice and made the wrong judgment, which caused you to waste all your energy in the mountains. That’s a lesson for us to remember.”

Ming looked at the screen. He typed, “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” The cursor blinked for a moment. He erased it. “Did you really just say ‘haha’?” He erased that, too, and put the phone face down on the roof of the car.

A cool wind came from behind him. In the distance, he could see the ridge against the night sky. It was the same ridge he had looked down from the afternoon. Back then, he had thought getting down would be easy. He closed Doubao, put his phone in his pocket and walked away.