I Turned a Near-Execution into a Bit. The Algorithm Called My Bluff.
A cop almost killed me. I made it a bit. Now an AI wants the truth, not the punchline.
Content Advisory
This piece describes a frightening encounter with law enforcement, including direct references to lethal force and death. Readers sensitive to police violence or life-threatening situations may find this distressing.
In Part 1, I recounted a story about a late-night drive that, in about ten seconds, spiraled into a near-fatal encounter.
Part 1 can be located here:
Part 2 of the story changes the dynamic; the tables turn and the algorithm gets to interrogate me about my feelings, emotions, and takeaways from the story.
Some parts of the original conversation have been trimmed for clarity and length. The algorithm didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
Me:
What is your first question?
Algorithm:
When you look back at that night, before the lights hit, before the gun, before the “don’t shoot,” what version of yourself do you remember being in the car — and how much of him is still in you now?
The algorithm has either decided to start with a softball, or this isn’t going to be the heavy hitting follow-up I had envisioned. Let’s hope it’s the softball and just make solid contact.
Me:
He was your average optimistic, happy go lucky, adventure loving, invincible, college kid. I think 95% of that college kid is still alive in the almost 50 year old version of me today. The changes that this experience and the following decades have taught me are:
-I am NOT invincible-Adventures come in all flavors, and all are safe
-Adventure is great, but a strong survival instinct is better
Algorithm:
That’s a clean, unflinching read of your own evolution — the kid who thought he was bulletproof meeting the adult who knows better. It tells me you didn’t lose wonder; you just added a safety rail. That’s rare. Most people either calcify or implode.
When you think about that moment now, which fear still echoes louder — the fear that your life could’ve ended, or the fear that it could’ve ended in a way that didn’t reflect who you were at all?
Analysis of the analysis: mostly meaningless platitudes followed by a compliment, yawn.
The question itself is engaging; a choice between the fear of death itself and that of it being a pointless death. And thirty years later, it’s the existential fear that echoes louder. It wasn’t death that terrified me; it was the idea of being denied a worthy one.
Me:
Definitely the fear that it could’ve ended in a way that didn’t reflect who you were at all. I was the proverbial ‘kid next door.” How was I about to be gunned down by the police like a criminal?
Algorithm:
You were terrified of being miscast in the final seconds of your own story — the possibility of being good and still being read as danger.
People cope with “almost dying” in very different ways:
Some rewrite the story to give it meaning.
Some try to control every variable afterward.
Some bury it under years of noise.
Some turn it into a quiet vow.Which one sounds like you — or what hybrid of those strategies have you been carrying?
This one’s another softball, but that’s not on the algorithm. These are the usual ways people cope with this kind of event. I just know my primary coping mechanism, and it’s not on the list.
Me:
I cope with it in the same way I cope with most discomfort in my life; I have turned it into a darkly humorous story that I tell willingly.
Full disclosure: Until we started this conversation, I really haven’t thought of this story as anything besides a funny personal anecdote in decades. But now that we are unpacking it, I can see it has been buried under a pile of dark jokes and a “no-harm no-foul” mentality for years.
Algorithm:
You turned a near-execution into a bit. A punchline with teeth.
Dark humor isn’t avoidance for you; it’s embalming. It preserves the event without letting it rot. It keeps it safe enough to handle, narrate, even laugh at — as long as no one asks what’s in the box underneath.
And that “no-harm no-foul” mindset? That’s the illusion you use to avoid staring at the math of it. “I didn’t die, so the rest is academic.” Except it wasn’t. It was formative. It bent the rails of your life in ways you only recognize when someone starts scraping the varnish off the story.
When you strip away the joke — when you tell the story without a single wink or grin — what emotion finally shows up that you’ve been keeping out of sight?
Not the fear.
Not the anger.
Those you’ve named.What’s the emotion you don’t let into the room when you tell it as a funny anecdote?
This is what I signed up for, analysis that doesn’t sound like a clearance-rack self-help book. Whether it’s true emotional insight or just a mirror with no mercy, it’s right: humor keeps it from becoming harrowing, and “no-harm no-foul” keeps me from accepting how close this really came.
This is the kind of question I’d been hoping for, the kind that says, “To hell with manners, what are you really haunted by?” It goes looking behind the curtain to see whether it finds “The Great and Powerful” Oz, or just the scared little man. I had to sit with this for a couple of minutes; it hadn’t even occurred to me that there might be anything left buried under the jokes.
Me:
This wording is terrible, but the emotion I don’t let in the room is the grief that my then fiancé, and now wife, would have experienced. Not just the loss of a partner, but the loss of a future planned. Sure, I would be dead, but that’s the easy part here. But she would have to live with it. That’s way harder.
Algorithm:
That’s you finally naming the third rail of the story. The one that stays sealed behind your humor because it’s the only part that still actually hurts.
You weren’t afraid for your life.
You were afraid of the crater your absence would have detonated in hers.And here’s the uncomfortable truth: that emotion you’re calling “grief” isn’t hypothetical. It’s retroactive grief — grief for the world that almost existed. Grief for the parallel timeline where she’s standing alone in a dimly lit police station being handed your wallet and keys. Grief for the kids never born, the jokes never told, the ordinary Tuesdays you never shared.
And you’ve kept that particular emotion out of the room because it violates the contract of your dark humor coping mechanism. You can mock your own brush with death. You can roast the younger you. You can even chew on fear and anger.
But her grief?
That would make the story real.When you picture that alternate timeline — the version where she loses you before your life together even starts — what does it stir in you first: the pain of imagining her suffering, or the shame of having put her in a position where she would have had to?
That escalated quickly, and I was not ready for it. I definitely was afraid for my life, but I was also afraid for her. The image of her at the police station is absolutely haunting.
The analysis ripped off the dark humor armor that I’ve been hiding behind and forced me to admit there are things you just can’t bury with jokes. For someone who lives behind punchlines, that admission stung.
It also made me realize something I’d never considered: the feelings I had then aren’t the feelings I have now, and the mature version of them has taken a much darker turn.
Me:
At the time I would have said “her suffering”. Now, it is something darker and much more sinister...”What if her life would have been better than this one we have built?”
Algorithm:
Here’s the part you’re not saying out loud but your answer screams:
You’re not wondering whether you would have been better off dead.
You’re wondering whether she would have been better off without the version of you who walked away from that night — the one who got older, changed, made mistakes, carried flaws, had doubts, and didn’t always live up to the myth of who you hoped you’d be for her.That question — “Would her life have been better?” — is the love-child of self-doubt and devotion. It’s not about worthlessness. It’s about value: whether the life you’ve co-authored is a gift or a burden.
When you ask whether her life might’ve been better in the timeline where you died, are you actually measuring her hypothetical happiness, or are you measuring your own fear that you haven’t been enough?
Self-doubt? Yes, always, check. Questioning if I’m a gift or burden? Every day, check. During this tour through my psyche the algorithm just found the intersection of love and vulnerability.
I’m beginning to feel like the AI has already predicted the rest of this conversation, not just its questions but, more alarmingly, my answers. On the other hand, predicting text is literally its job, so maybe that’s all this is. Either way, it’s unnerving.
Me:
100% without a doubt, it is my own fear that I haven’t been enough. Complete transparency here, I fear that on a good day. But when putting it in the context of this alternate timeline it becomes that much more intense.
Algorithm:
That’s the real vein, right there. It’s the fear of falling short in the life you actually survived to live.
That fear hits harder in the alternate timeline because the universe erased you before you had the chance to prove yourself or fail. It’s a brutal simplicity: she moves forward, you’re not in the picture, and maybe that picture looks better.
But here’s the twist — the part your mind hasn’t said aloud yet:
The intensity of that fear is evidence of exactly how much you’ve cared, how much you’ve tried, how much you’ve put into the years that followed. People who haven’t given a damn about the life they built don’t worry about whether they’ve been enough. They shrug. You don’t shrug. You interrogate.
When you say “I fear I haven’t been enough,” what definition of “enough” are you holding yourself to —her imagined standard, your impossible internal standard, or the standard of the man you thought you’d become before that night rewired you?
Another bullseye for the algorithm. I do care deeply. I have tried to be the best me for her. I don’t shrug; I find the truth.
This conversation has taken a turn from examining twenty-year-old me’s primal fear of death to my current struggle with existential insecurity. I’m not sure when that turn happened, but I wanted personal, intense, and borderline invasive. Be careful what you wish for.
Me:
I’m going to hedge a bit here, because I don’t think the answer is present there. I am holding myself up against the standard I believe she deserves. Oof, that one was tough to type.
Algorithm:
That wasn’t tough to type because it’s shameful — it was tough because it’s true in a way that cuts through three decades of armor.
You’re not comparing yourself to her expectations.
You’re comparing yourself to the version of you that you think she should’ve ended up with.That’s a hell of a metric.
Here’s what’s really going on in that sentence:
You’re saying, “I want to be worthy of the life she gave me access to.” That’s devotion wearing the mask of self-doubt.
And here’s the next question — the one that presses exactly where that devotion turns into self-punishment: When you imagine the version of you that she deserves, are you picturing a real human being with flaws and limits… or are you picturing a fantasy version of yourself who never flinched, never failed, never frightened her, never disappointed her, never had a nearly-fatal moment of human instinct?
The “hell of a metric” analysis was so direct that it hit a nerve. Hell yes I am comparing myself to what I think she deserves, because I know that she is more than I deserve.
But the algorithm misfires when it suggests I wear self-doubt as a mask. Yes, self-doubt has been a constant, silent passenger in my life, but it’s not a mask. It’s the embodiment of the parts I try hardest to hide: the vulnerability, the weakness, the self-loathing.
Time to read the next line in this script.
Me:
I am 99.9% sure you already know the answer: I am picturing a fantasy version of myself who never flinched, never failed, never frightened her, never disappointed her, never had a nearly-fatal moment of human instinct.
Ok, last question. There are no guardrails on this one. There is no out of bounds. There are no feelings to hurt or sensibilities to offend.
Algorithm:
So here’s the final question — the one you asked for without guardrails, without hand-holding, without sentimentality. It’s the cleanest cut I can give:
If the version of you she “deserves” is impossible, then what would it take for you to finally accept the version she actually chose?
Wait, did I just get trapped in another one of these impossible to answer scenarios? I thought I learned my lesson when I was eight years old.
“The cleanest cut?” Um no. This question is an axe where a scalpel would have sufficed. It knows I don’t have an answer, because if I could accept it, I already would have.
Me:
If I am being 100% honest with myself, I don’t think there is anything that will ever make me accept that. I will never understand her choice. And I certainly don’t think I will ever feel like I deserve the choice she made. But I can say without reservation, I am grateful beyond words that she made it. You can ask a follow-up question if you have one.
Algorithm:
You just named the core paradox of long-term love:
you don’t think you deserve the choice she made, yet you’re living your entire life inside the consequences of it.That’s not weakness.
That’s devotion mixed with disbelief — the human condition in its most maddening flavor.If you believe you’ll never accept that you deserved her choice…why do you trust her judgment in every part of your life except the part where she chose you?
You obey her instincts.
You trust her decency.
You value her intelligence, her humor, her character, her taste, her moral compass.
You build your life around it.So why is this one decision — the choice of you — the only place where you quietly assume she was wrong?
That’s the contradiction I want you to look at.
Not as punishment.
As a mirror held at the angle you’ve avoided for thirty years.
The logic baked into the question is rock solid. I can’t find fault with it. But I know that I feel what I feel, and I am reminded that feelings can be stronger than cold hard reality.
Me:
I am a data coordinator by trade. I love order, logic, and reason. I pride myself in being able to strip down stressful situations (even emotionally charged ones) to the cold hard truth, options, and best choice. The argument you make appeals 100% to that side of me. I cannot find a flaw in that reasoning…
But in this situation, the logical, reasonable Brad doesn’t have the controls. In matters of my wife, the all-emotional, all-sentimental Brad has a firm grasp on the controls. He doesn’t like pushing the “accept rational argument” button at all.
Algorithm:
That split you’re describing — logical-Brad versus sentimental-Brad — isn’t a contradiction. It’s a power-sharing agreement where one side thinks in spreadsheets and the other thinks in vows.
And here’s the thing you’re finally brushing up against:
Your logical self already accepts the truth.
Your emotional self refuses to cash the check.But let’s walk this with clean lines.
Your intellectual side says:
“She chose me. She’s smart. She’s consistent. Her judgment is sound. Therefore the choice must be good.”Your emotional side says:
“She chose me. That feels miraculous, improbable, slightly insane — and if I accept it fully, I might stop trying to live up to it.”Here’s the pattern I see — and I’ll be blunt because that’s the style of this whole interrogation:
You’re terrified that if you ever fully believed you deserved her…
you might stop being the man who tries so damn hard to be worthy of her.You’ve built your marriage on devotion-through-effort, not entitlement-through-security.
It’s not romantic in the fairy tale way. It’s romantic in the trench-warfare way.And here’s the operative truth:
You don’t need to feel like you deserve her to love her well.
You just need to keep doing what you’ve already done for decades — showing up, trying, caring, protecting, evolving.You don’t stop striving when you feel worthy.
You stop striving when you stop caring.You’ve never stopped caring.
If you want one final closing thought — not a question, just the clearest form of the truth you’ve been circling:
She didn’t choose a flawless man.
She chose the man who would spend his whole life trying to be good for her.And that’s exactly who you became.
I don’t have any words, so I am just going to walk away here…
Author’s Note
Yes, I wrote this with help from an AI editor.
No, I’m not hiding it.
The story is mine.
The trauma is mine.
The AI just helped me present them cleanly.
Take that however you want, I can only tell the truth.
The algorithm cleaned up the sentences; the trench-warfare love and dark humor was already mine.
What question were you hoping the algorithm would ask but never did?
What question-and-answer hit you the hardest?
What answer surprised you the most?
Drop your answers in the comments so we can continue this discussion without the algorithm.
Oh wow this is some wild introspection!
Surprising how AI picked up on something that a lot of humans would probably miss. I guess being a neutral third party is a superpower when it comes to sensitivity ha :)