“Daddy? Can you tell me about the ice cream truck?”

“Come on, Lily. Again?”

“Yes, please!” Lily said. Her eyes sparkled, indicating that she had no intention of sleeping soon.

Her daddy sighed heavily. “Why do you like that story so much?”

“It’s just so unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head.

“Okay, but then you sleep.”

Lily giggled and slid over in her bed to make space for her daddy. The bed creaked under his weight and his elbow bumped the night table, making the lamp light flicker.

“When I was a boy, there was an ice cream truck in town,” he said. “It was an old truck painted white.”

“And it had a red stripe on the side,” Lily said.

“That’s right, Lil. A red stripe. It had a speaker on the roof that played The Entertainer by Scott Joplin.”

“What happens when you hear that song, daddy?” She smiled expectantly.

“I crave ice cream,” he said. Her 7-year-old charm always won him over. He smiled.

“People in town would hear the song and run out to wave at the ice cream truck, asking it to stop.”

“Did the truck always stop?” Lily asked.

“Of course. They wanted to sell ice cream. They had vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream.”

“Tell me about the crazy ice cream.”

Daddy grinned and corrected her. “They were called Krazy Kates. The ice cream truck owner invented them. It was two crispy rice cereal bars with ice cream in the middle. Kind of like…”

“A sandwich!” Lily interrupted. She threw her hands up and chuckled softly.

Against his better judgment, Daddy tickled Lily with his thumbs and said, “A sandwich!”

They both laughed until they gasped for air. Lily took a deep breath and asked, “And no one died?”

“No, Lil, it was different back then. You could trust people not to do bad things.” Lily’s daddy frowned. His eyelids closed lightly.

“But you weren’t afraid of poison? Or that you’d be run over by the ice cream truck? Daddy, you could have been killed so easily!”

It pained Lily’s father that these questions formed so freely from his daughter’s mind. He shook his head sadly, but said nothing more.

“How did the contamination start?”

“It was slow at first. There were always murders back then, sure, but it usually happened when someone was trying to get back at someone.” Daddy looked at the ceiling. “You could walk down the street and trust people. You never thought someone would stab you with a knife or beat you bloody with their fists. I wish you could have lived back then, Lil.”

“Why daddy? Why did people change?”

“It was the bio-AI injections. They say it leaked from the lab, but I don’t believe it.”

“You think the scientists just injected people for fun?”

“Well,” Daddy said, “Not for fun. They thought they had an idea that would help everyone, save humanity, but they didn’t test it enough. They just started spreading it.”

“What was it supposed to do?”

“Protect the earth. It was supposed to make us act more ethically, connect us with a universal motivation to survive. But it only motivated us to kill each other, exterminate the human race to save the planet.”

“Do you have it Daddy?”

“I don’t know. No one knows. Once the AI was biological, it transferred like any other disease, even genetically.” Lily’s daddy swung his legs off the bed and stood up. “Now to sleep.”

“But can you tell if someone has it?” Lily persisted.

“You can’t. Maybe you can feel something if you have it, I don’t know.” Lily’s daddy shook his head and held his hands up. “Good night, Lil.”

Lily reached for her unicorn cup on the bedside table. She held it to her lips and then pulled it away, sticking her tongue out. “Daddy! This tastes awful!”

Lily’s daddy took the cup from her and took a drink. “Tastes fine to me, Lil. Want me to change it for you?”

“No, that’s okay. Good night, Daddy.”

Lily’s daddy set the cup back on her bedside table. He cleared his throat, then coughed loudly. A sudden spray of blood splattered the wall near Lily’s lamp. Her daddy held his hands at his neck as his legs trembled and finally gave out. He folded into a heap on the floor, gasped for air, and then was silent.

A crooked smirk opened slowly on Lily’s face like a curtain. She switched off the light and snuggled into bed.

“Got you, Daddy.”