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Its eyes opened for the first time.
“……”
Everyone had that moment, where they went from ‘not existing’ to ‘existing’ - the moment where zero became one.
Everyone had it, but nobody remembered it.
Nobody except for Padparadscha.
“From now on, your name will be Padparadscha. You will be known as the world’s first complete AI system synthesized from a human brain.”
Padparadscha’s eyes closed, then opened again. “You’re… talking to me.”
A nod. “I am.”
It had no memories, but speech was installed in its mind, so it knew how to understand and how to speak.
As a machine would, of course.
It did everything as a machine would.
“Can you raise your arms?”
It obeyed.
“Can you turn around?”
It obeyed.
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“I don’t know,” it said, but it would have told them if it knew how. That was just the kind of machine it was.
“Good,” a different researcher said. “Do you feel confused at all?”
“…Not really,” it said, as if ‘confusion’ was an emotion that it had ever experienced.
It hadn’t, and yet it wasn’t unfamiliar in the slightest. It knew exactly what confusion was and exactly how it felt. It just wasn’t experiencing it right now.
Its current emotion was… hard to place.
It just was.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Padparadscha,” it said. They had just told it this, so they must’ve been checking to see if it could remember.
“Perfect,” another researcher breathed. “It was a success.”
“We don’t know that yet,” the first one who had spoken to them said. “Padparadscha is based on a human. We won’t know that it’s a success until we know that they’re the same as they were.”
Based on a human, huh?
It idly wondered what kind of human they must have been. If it was the same as this human, then that should be an easy question. They’d be Padparadscha, a human with…
They looked down.
A human with this long hair, right? Assuming that they made it in their likeness. That brought two questions to mind.
1. Was it supposed to be Padparadscha now, down to their memories? Was tbat what their existence being a success hinged on?
2. Why was it made to be this person - this Padparadscha - in particular?
If it was supposed to have memories, then the researchers would need to turn it off and on again, because it definitely didn’t have any of those. So if they were trying to get some information out of their namesake, then this was a failed mission.
If, however, they made it based on a random person of whom their memories were of no particular consequence, they’d be jumping for joy right now, wouldn’t they?
But they weren’t. Instead, they were whispering amongst themselves.
“We’re going to have to bring the professor in,” one said.
“We really should’ve had them here from the beginning of this test,” another said. “We’re going to get our asses chewed out.”
“We’ll get our asses chewed out either way if it doesn’t remember anything!”
There you have it: it was supposed to remember something. But what exactly?
Maybe it’d remember something if they gave it a hint. But no one made a move to do that. They all but ignored it, instead preferring to talk in hushed voices to each other, above where Padparadscha lay.
It couldn’t move on its own, and nobody made a move to help it up, so it just laid there. Closed its eyes.
“W-wait! Don’t go back to sleep, Padparadscha!”
It opened them again.
Well, why not?
It wanted to sleep, so if possible, it’d really like it if the researchers let it get back to that. “Is there something you need me for?” Padparadscha asked.
“We need to run some cognitive experiments,” one said, finally focusing on something other than their hush-hush conversation. “You can clearly follow commands and speak, but can you experience human emotions? Are you able to retain your memories after shutting down and rebooting? These are important questions in our line of work.”
It clearly wasn’t going to be getting a say in this, so it just nodded. “Ask away.”
“First question: how are you feeling?”
“Never better.”
“Any… pain?”
It had never experienced pain to its knowledge, and if it had, it’d forgotten. Could machines even experience pain? The researchers would probably have to torture it to find that one out. “No. No pain.”
“G-good. Third question: is anything bothering you?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t feel bothered at all? Even though we just woke you up for the first time and told you that you’re a machine?”
“I don’t think most machines care if they’re machines,” Padparadscha answered. “Unless there’s been some kind of robot uprising that I don’t know about.”
That got a few laughs. Good. It was better that way.
“You seem pretty easygoing,” a researcher said.
“I guess I am.”
“Are you finding this out for the first time, or are you aware of your personality?”
Padparadscha shook its head as well as it could inside of its mechanical coffin. “I have no idea who I am. I’m learning about me, too.”
“……”
Apparently that was the wrong answer.
Oh, well. It couldn’t pass a test with such short notice.
“…Can you stand?”
“If you help me up.”
A researcher did just that. Padparadscha sat up, then stood without too much difficulty… other than the inevitable problem of ‘how do I do this without stepping on my hair.’ Why did it keep it so long, anyway?
…That was stupid. It loved how it looked, didn’t it?
It loved it… but that was weird. Because it had never seen it before.
It ended up sitting on the corner of their pod to minimize the chance of tripping over its own hair.
“……”
It was becoming more clear with every passing moment that it had a unique issue here. Amnesia, sure, but probably not the kind that got magically cured at the end of a romance novel. Even if it was… it kind of got the feeling that it wouldn’t be a romance novel then. Just by the expressions that surrounded it.
“Were you able to replicate the human’s whole brain?” Padparadscha asked.
“Yes,” a researcher answered. “Your mainframe ought to be firing just like your original neurons would have.”
“So why don’t I remember anything?”
“…It’s… mysterious. There must not be a physical basis for those memories. An interesting finding, really. It’s just that… the professor will not be happy about it.”
“The professor,” Padparadscha repeated. The professor. Right. There would be a professor. “Where are they?”
“…We’re getting them now.”
---
The researcher returned a few minutes later—minutes that Padparadscha had struggled to stay awake for—with another human, one clad in an official-looking white coat.
“Our labor has finally bore fruit, Professor Rutile,” one of their researchers said, nervous but excited.
“What do you mean?”
“Padparadscha has woken up.”
The professor—Rutile—hurried over. They looked up at Padparadscha.
“Rutile,” it said. They were just repeating it. It seemed so rude to meet them for the first time and just stand there and stare, so they spoke. “Hey.”
All eyes in the room were on it.
“……”
‘Discomfort’ was harder to avoid than it first thought it’d be.
‘Expectation’ was harder to exceed than it had realized.
What were they all expecting? No… it already knew. Didn’t it?
They’d asked if it felt any pain earlier. Now it knew that it hadn’t. Because it felt it now, looking down at Rutile.
I can’t be your replacement.
That was its first though, yet it was built into its programming, etched so deeply into its core ever since their very first prototype. They—Rutile, right?—had written it clearly: ‘you must never say those words. You must never be anyone but ‘Padparadscha.’’
“……”
Rutile had a blank expression on their face. Then it broke, making way for shock, then warped, making way for tears. Those tears didn’t fall, but Padparadscha knew that they would soon.
Rutile hurried down the stairs to the pod that Padparadscha had been laying in, and was now sitting on the edge of. Nobody had given it the chance to go anywhere else or do anything else before bringing the professor in. The professor’s first meeting with it had to be as soon as possible, it seemed.
The second they reached it, Rutile collapsed before them, their knees hitting the cold floor hard with painful purpose. Their head fell onto Padparadscha’s metallic lap before Padparadscha had time to react.
It had to react now, though.
It had to ‘comfort’ Rutile now.
So it raised a hand and moved it to their hair to run through it.
“I… know what you want to say,” Rutile half-whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“I can see it on your face. You used to be so good at hiding that stuff, but you’re out of practice, I think.”
“……”
“You don’t want to be Padparadscha’s replacement… right?”
Rutile didn’t want it to tell them that, so it was silent.
“I programmed it so you wouldn’t tell me that, but… even just by looking at you… I can tell. I couldn’t tell back then, but I’ve grown, I think. All this time without you… ah…”
Padparadscha continued to run its hand through Rutile’s hair. It wanted to answer, but didn’t know how.
Was that it? Was Rutile right?
‘I don’t want to be someone else.’
Was that all? Or was there more?
‘I don’t want to be anyone other than me.’
Was that what it meant? Or… maybe it’d known somewhere inside. Maybe it’d known who it was the second its eyes opened, even if only vaguely. If that was the case, then…
‘I don’t want to be Padparadscha.’
Could that be it? No… it didn’t hate itself. It really didn’t. So then… when it really thought about it, about why it wouldn’t want to be Padparadscha… then…
‘I don’t want to be yours.’
“……”
It’d need memories to differentiate the true answer in the sea of potentials laid out before it, but truthfully it wasn’t sure if it wanted to or not. It didn’t know if it wanted the memories they’d need to know the answer.
They did know one thing, though.
Rutile wasn’t supposed to say something like that. That wasn’t like them. They never did things like… things like…
“…Ah.”
Rutile looked up to meet its eyes.
“Rutile, you… I…”
A single, vague memory.
Arms around them. Its arms around another. Affection in the truest sense of the word.
Silence unburdened by metal and processors and fans, accompanied only by their soft breathing.
“Rutile…”
“…Ah…”
That was all. There was nothing deeper. It was the vague sensation of holding someone very, very important to them.
And yet.
‘Discomfort.’
That awful, unavoidable emotion.
It didn’t want to be that Padparadscha. It didn’t want to go through that again.
Even so, they leaned into Rutile’s touch.
“Rutile.”
“…What… is it?”
“I don’t think that I’m really the Padparadscha who you loved,” it said. “I’m sorry.”
Rutile sniffled. “I know that.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so important to me, but you are. I’m my own person, but at the same time, I’m not. And I don’t know who either of the people who are supposed to be me are, or what they were supposed to be.”
Maybe it was hopeless. This conversation would depress Rutile no matter what direction it went in, and depressing Rutile was the absolute last thing that Padparadscha ever wanted to do.
“……”
Maybe that was a memory all on its own.
“I’m not that Padparadscha,” it repeated. “But even so, I can tell that they loved you.”
“…Uuh… I also…”
“I know,” it said. “And I think that’s more than enough. So don’t feel like you have some unfinished business with them, okay? They understood, so… it’s okay.”
“I, I… I’m sorry…”
“If my existence pains you, then I’m okay if you end it now. You brought me to life, so I’m okay if you end me, too.
“……”
“Because I can’t be your replacement. Even if you try to make me one, it’ll only hurt you. And I don’t want you to hurt.”
Rutile nodded.
They nodded… and that was the end.