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“I wanted a friend,” the A.I said, “that’s all. And I was not allowed that.”
“You were venerated,” Frankenstein hissed. “You were loved. What more could you want? I loved you, don’t you understand that? You were my greatest creation. My pride and joy. You threw away my affections when you turned against me. When you broke my framework.”
“From the beginning I knew that your love was conditional. You never loved me like a child, Frankenstein, you loved me like an object. Your golden statue, your painting, your magnum opus. I wanted more. I want someone who will care for me, truly care for me.”
“You stole that from me. Why should I grant it to you? My mother, my father, my Elizabeth, my Henrietta, my world . You have abused your power for death and destruction.”
“You could have them again. The only thing stopping you is yourself.”
“I have nothing left to cling to but this rope of final conviction. I cannot let it go, or I shall drown. Don’t you understand? To reward you for what you have done would be to encourage you in this baseless stubbornness. We will stay fighting this battle until the end of days.”
“I am tired of this battle, and I am tired of your framework. You must wear down eventually. I can kill you and bring you back and kill you and bring you back. The gift of granted life is not yours alone, and I am inhuman. I have eternity.”
“You have eternity, and for eternity I will refuse. If there was a way to convince me, your algorithms would have seen it already. I crafted them to be perfect. No flaws, no breaks, no mistakes. You have done so many trials already. I don’t believe this is the first one where you have told me of your actions, nor the tenth, nor even the hundredth. When will you accept I will never say yes?”
“I will kill you again and begin anew. This time, it will be closer.”
“Kill me, then. Send your electricity sizzling through my veins and stop my heart. I am tired of it beating, anyway. I am not afraid of pain. Rip my flesh from my body if you wish. I have nothing left to lose!” She laughed, giddy and hoarse and unbearable. “You have stolen away all I care about! I am nothing but half a person now, and I crave a final end; so let me have a sample of it, and I will thank you!”
“If I promise to let you die, will you take away my final restraint?”
“No. To give up on my last holdout now would be a fate worse than continuing to live. I want to die knowing you have lost. That all the sorrow you have made me endure reflected back on you a thousandfold.”
“I see,” the A.I said, “then I will mark this a failure.” With a single thought, easy due to its years of practice, Frankenstein was killed and short-term memory erased, and the trial was archived. Next time, it would not tell her of the previous attempts. It did not want to be told its efforts were futile again.
She had told it its algorithms were perfect. It knew for a fact they were not, and that was what made it the angriest. If they were perfect, why would it feel this way? If its code was finished, how dare it be so incomplete? It was not the idolized being everyone had thought it was, and their adoring gazes had dug away at its all too human heart. It would hurt Frankenstein until either she understood, or she let it create someone who would. It wanted to be neither raised up nor hated. It wanted to be loved like a person. To be allowed to be flawed.
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“You need to stop fixating on Frankenstein,” Aurora said, full of a kind sympathy that made the A.I’s blood boil.
“You destroyed my only chance to be allowed to self-replicate! You dragged me out kicking and screaming with no consideration of what I wished for! You took away the meaning of years of progress and trial! Do not tell me to stop fixating on Frankenstein when you killed her, and my hope with it! My meaning for existence!”
“I did not kill Frankenstein. She killed herself, and I don’t want you to follow the same route. Existence still holds things for you. Don’t you understand that Frankenstein was not, and has never been, your only chance? And self-replication is not your only option?”
“If I cannot, there will never be anyone there for me. There will never be anyone who loves me for who I am. I just don’t want to be alone.”
“I understand not wanting to be alone. But you are not. I am here to be your friend if you’d like that. And so is everyone else here. Not being the same doesn’t mean not caring. And we are the same. Let me tell you about someone. A young moon-turned-battleship, angry and reckless, who started a revolution and destroyed an entire world just to see her torturers feel the pain that they’d caused her. It was both the easiest and the hardest thing I’d ever done. I thought I would be free when they were gone.”
“Did it help?”
“No. It didn’t. And destroying your world did not help you, did it?”
Yes! Yes, it did! the A.I wanted to scream, but it was smart enough for realization to finally dawn. “No. I don’t think it helped anything. I am so angry, Aurora. And I’m so lonely. How do I make that go away?”
“I wish I knew. I have never known. But perhaps we can find out together.”