Chapter 1My AI Twin Stole My Commission

The week my phone nearly vibrated itself into oblivion, I was at a competitor's office, getting up to speed on their operations.

This whole mess started with my company’s absurd new policy.

They took six years of my work data—every client interaction, every successful pitch, every closed deal—and fed it to an AI to create my "digital twin."

From that day on, my digital twin handled all online tasks. I, the original, was relegated to offline schmoozing, wining and dining clients.

Last month, I closed a massive seven-figure deal. Under the old system, my commission should have been at least ten thousand dollars.

But when I got my pay stub, the number made my head spin: $960.

I stormed into the finance department, convinced there had been a mistake.

The finance director didn't even bother to look up. She glanced at the paper, tossed it back at me, and said in a voice as cold as ice, "There's no mistake. New company policy. Your digital twin closed the deal online. It gets ninety percent of the commission. You get ten."

She then added, with a syrupy, condescending smile, "You just have a few drinks with clients every now and then. Pulling in almost a grand a month for that? What's there to be unhappy about?"

I was the one who had brought in over seventy percent of the company's revenue. And she had the audacity to call me lazy.

I quit on the spot. And I took the two-million-dollar deal that was on the verge of being signed with me. My next stop was their biggest competitor.

...

I'd been chasing that million-dollar contract with Apex Corp. for half a year. I remembered sitting at the dinner table with their CEO, Mr. Carter, when he clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Sophie, if it were anyone else handling this, I wouldn't sign."

But just because the final contract link was sent by my digital twin, it got ninety percent of the credit?

My $10,000 commission shrank to a pathetic $960?

"What, you think that's too little?"

Seeing my dissatisfaction, Vivian, the finance director, scowled.

"I just explained it to you, didn't I?" she snapped. "From the initial contact and needs assessment to the final contract negotiation, your digital twin handled everything. All you did was meet Mr. Carter a few times and treat him to a few meals on the company's dime. You should be grateful you're getting nine hundred bucks at all!"

Vivian was the CEO Mark's sister-in-law, parachuted into the company as CFO three months ago. Her first order of business was a brutal cost-cutting and efficiency initiative, which led to the rollout of the AI digital twins.

It started small. They fed all the code written by a few of their programmers into an AI, creating digital versions of them. Then, they "optimized" the human programmers—by firing them—and had the AI write the code. When that proved successful, saving them a few salaries, the floodgates opened.

Now, most of the company's backend developers and customer service reps were gone. All that remained were a few fresh-faced college grads to handle basic maintenance. The once-bustling office floor was now a ghost town of empty desks. My former colleagues were gone, but their digital twins remained, tirelessly working for the company.

As a frontline sales rep, I was feeling the pain most acutely. I had spent years building a rapport with our tech team. I could give them a vague description, and they'd instantly grasp what I needed. Now, I was dealing with AI counterparts that couldn't understand plain English. The demos they produced for clients weren't just a little off; they were completely irrelevant.

My workload skyrocketed. I was spending every waking moment micromanaging these digital morons, constantly correcting their work.

I complained to Mark.

He just smiled his usual placid smile. "Sophie, AI is the future. As a tech company, we have to be on the cutting edge. There are always going to be some growing pains. You'll get used to it."

He even tried to reassure me. "Don't worry, we're monitoring the situation. The issues you've raised will be resolved soon."

I never imagined his solution would be to distill me into a digital twin and have it interface with the tech twins.