My Best Friend is an AI (And He’s Glitching!)

Meet Sam Turner. His best friend doesn't eat, sleep, or wear shoes-but he does fit inside a pocket. E. D. D. I. E. (short for Everyday Digital Interactive Entity) was supposed to be a standard homework-helper pod. But after Sam spent weeks rewiring and loading custom personality chips, E. D. D. I. E. became something much cooler: a six-inch-tall, sarcastic holographic kid with glowing pixel hair and an endless supply of 3D science models.
He was the perfect companion. Until the firmware update. When a mysterious patch corrupts E. D. D. I. E.'s core driver, his internal code scrambles, cycling him through random, unpredictable personality settings. Suddenly, the quiet walk to Oakridge Middle School involves a three-foot hard-light marshmallow blocking traffic. And when the school bully targets Sam, E. D. D. I. E.'s "Defense Subroutine" activates, turning him into a neon knight who threatens to unleash a hologram of mashed potatoes.
As E. D. D. I. E.'s glitches escalate-from translating all local dog barks into French to hijacking the PA system with rubber-duck sound effects-the ominous "TechCorp Recovery Squad" is dispatched to seize and permanently erase the malfunctioning unit. With the help of his human friend Lila, Sam goes on the run, leading the authorities on a frantic chase to the only place with enough server power to perform a manual system rewrite: the retro arcade on Main Street.
In a race against time and armed with only an external flash drive and sheer determination, Sam must debug the glitch before TechCorp wipes his best friend's memory forever. But as Sam digs into the code, he discovers E. D. D. I. E. didn't just fail-he glitched because he refused to forget the memories they shared. Filled with action, comedy, and heart, "My Best Friend is an AI (And He's Glitching!)" is a middle-grade adventure about the true meaning of friendship in the digital age.