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“I want to be sad right now. I am sad right now, I think, but not-“
The text on the screen went still for a few seconds as the vaguely humanoid machine next to it moved in the all-too-human gestures for I don’t know how to put this.
“Something was lost. I know this is better than being dead, obviously, but I just want to touch something. I didn’t think I’d miss touching things so much.”
Westin swallowed as he looked at the consciousness he was tasked with running "emotional diagnostics" on. He’d been assigned to the job because he was the most qualified person in the company, which only meant he was the only person at Baxton Computing Solutions who’d gotten a minor in Psychology back at MIT. He’d mostly taken it to get a break from the engineering and computer courses.
He didn’t think his minor would help him much in this case.
“Look, Anna, I know it’s tough to lose some of your senses, but other people have had happy, fulfilled lives without all of their senses. Look at Hellen Keller— she lost two, and she turned out alright.”
The response came onscreen rapidly, even as he was speaking, faster than almost any human could type.
“Hellen Keller lost sight and sound, I lost touch, taste, and smell.”
“You have an atmospheric analyzer, that’s kind of like smell.”
“It’s really not. Reading a screen that says there’s trace amounts of ammonia in the air isn’t the same as smelling. And you can forget about smelling things cooking or something. I don’t think I could tell whether something cooking on a stove is a pancake or a steak. It’s not the same.”
“Ok, I get the picture. But seeing and hearing are enough to do almost everything you need to do, right?”
“I thought so at first. But it’s- something’s missing, doc.”
“You can call me Westin.”
“Westin. Ok.” There was a pause as the humanoid torso leaned back slightly. Westin thought that if she had lungs, she would be taking a deep breath. “It’s— it’s painful, Westin.”
He leaned forward. Pain wasn’t even built into her system. “Painful how?”
The torso threw back its head in a silent, cynical laugh. “I shouldn’t have told them about this. I can’t explain this. There probably aren’t even words that exist that can describe this.”
“Well, I’m willing to listen to whatever words you want to say, regardless.”
“Slick.” The torso extended its arm and scratched its metallic head. The grinding metal let out a momentary screeching noise before the torso realized what it was doing, stopped to a sudden halt, and disgustedly tossed its own hand away. “I guess I’ll just— I’ll put it in the simplest words possible and try to build from there.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“This is going to sound stupid as hell.”
“I can guarantee I’ve heard stupider things.”
“I need to touch something. I feel like I’m floating, in a really bad way. It’s like I’m not even on the same plane as everyone else. I need to know that someone is there.”
“I am here for—”
“—let me finish. I know it doesn’t make sense, just let me finish. I can’t get rid of the sense that everyone is just drifting by. I can have text conversations with people, and even do things like shake hands or look someone in the eyes or whatever, but it all feels empty.”
There was a pause. Westin let her collect her thoughts.
“The worst part is that I feel like crying. Not that I would be crying if I was real, it’s like— it’s like I rationally know that feeling this bad means I should be crying, but there’s not a sense that I even have to. I’d like to cry in the same way a person who just swallowed poison wants to vomit. It doesn’t matter how much they want to, it’s not happening.”
“So what’s the crying equivalent of sticking two fingers down your throat?”
There was a small pause, then a small “:)” popped up on the monitor.
“I wish I could actually smile.”
Westin closed his eyes. He didn’t sign up for this. He signed up to help transfer human memories into digital computers. But when a billionaire finds out his daughter has a terminal condition, buys out your promising neural interface company, and directs the entire company to the sole goal of keeping his daughter alive inside a supercomputer, what you signed up for stops mattering.
Half the company gets into debates about whether Anna (or “Ann-B” as she/it is known) is conscious. The other half studiously avoid the topic for the sake of their consciences. It doesn’t really matter so long as her father is happy and keeps pouring money into paying for the company’s ever-increasing amounts of processing power and RnD.
“Westin, what are the chances that something goes terribly wrong with… whatever I’m running on?”
The change of subject took him off guard. “Uh— less than 1%, definitely. You’re backed up in at least two places, and we have backup power supplies.”
The screen was blank for several seconds. Then several more. Westin shifted uncomfortably. “If you’re worried about dying-“
“I want you to shut me off.”
Westin glanced at the two security cameras in the corners of the cold metal room. “Anna—”
“Turn off my power, delete whatever you have, everything. I’m not going to go on like this.”
“Anna, please, I—”
“Oh, I know my father won’t be happy with it. He’ll get over it. It’s not like he saved me because he cared about me.”
I’m not qualified for suicidal ideation, thought Westin as he took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “I know your current body isn’t everything your old one was, but it’ll get better over time.”
“Really? You’re sure about that? Because every second I’ve been in this fucking thing has only made me more miserable. I’m not gonna stick around and find out how bad it can get. I want out.”
“What do you think your life is going to be like in 5 years if you keep going?”
“IF I stuck around, which I don’t plan on doing, I imagine I would still be sitting here in an empty room talking to lab coats, and maybe my dad once a month, while I slowly forget what human skin feels like.”
“In five years we’ll have made tons of progress— you’ll definitely be able to see more than this room, that’s for sure.”
“What joy, I’ll have a hamster ball I can roll around in.” The faceless torso raised an arm and made a fist. “Want to see something?” It launched its fist at its skull, only for it to suddenly stop inches from its featureless face. “Whoever programmed the safeties to prevent me from damaging this thing did a great job. I can’t so much as dent it, let alone tear some wires out.”
The versions of Anna which had managed to tear wires out of their body after the safeties failed didn’t have their memories uploaded to the main branch. It had been just over a week since the last incident. Westin decided not to bring it up.
Anna’s screen paused for a second. “How long until I have an actual voice and not just a notepad file?”
Westin considered. “We could rig up a text-to-speech pretty easily—”
“No. I want an actual, human voice. One I control. That I can shout with, whisper with, scream with. How about that?”
He hesitated- “We’re just not sure how to make controlling outside devices intuitive in your… state.”
“I’ll figure it out. Just give me something.”
“I’ll… I’ll see what I can do.”
[Two weeks later]
At first, the sounds from Anna’s room were the stuff of nightmares. They’d sounded like a mix between a dying cat, a tire squealing, and a screamer monkey. The office had lasted less than 12 hours before deciding to put up soundproofing around her lair, but unholy noises still leaked through the open door whenever someone entered, which was frequently.
Anna had been given access to a piece of software that was supposed to emulate all aspects of the human voice. Pitch, speed, general shape of the mouth, and much more were included. No one was really sure how an abstracted human brain could operate what was essentially a table-sized switchboard in real time, but Anna seemed to be figuring it out. Slowly. After the first week, the sounds that leaked through the door were, while still strange and unsettling, not actively painful.
Westin entered the room, sliding in and closing the door as quickly as possible to try to be considerate. Even still, a peal of chaotic noise edged past him, disorientating everyone who had the misfortune of working next to the Hell Chamber.
The noises stopped as Anna’s metallic form turned to face him. “Hello.” It was a warbly, vaguely unsettling voice, speaking in a slow, deliberate, yet still shaky tone. It reminded Westin of a drunk person trying to thread a needle.
“Hello, Anna. How are you?”
Anna’s torso paused and moved into a position, like an acrobat preparing to do a backflip. After a second, she shrugged her shoulders as the speaker released a noise that sounded something like “uhhHHHnuh.”
He didn’t know how he was to respond to that, or even what that was supposed to mean. “Is that good…?”
Anna’s speaker let out what was probably supposed to be a laugh. It sounded more like the Count from Sesame Street. “Ah. Ah. Ah.” Anna seemed pleased with it though. “It’s good to see you Westin.” Each syllable was slowly, carefully pronounced. “I was trying to do a thing from a show I used to watch- there’s a character named Lloyd who has a catchphrase, I guess. Whenever someone asks him a question, he shrugs his shoulders and makes a sound— I think it’s supposed to be ‘I don’t know’ but it comes out as a mess. That’s what I was trying, anyway.”
“Oh. Now that you mention it, I think I’ve seen that somewhere. It wasn’t a bad impression.”
“Thanks. I’ve been working on it for a while. Not bad for two weeks of training, right?”
“I’m— everyone has been impressed by how much you’ve managed to learn in such a short time.”
“Well, it’s not like I had anything else to work on.”
Anna had been more or less constantly testing out her capabilities the past two weeks. It started with a “how do I press these buttons” phase, but quickly advanced into “let’s see what these buttons do” and then “let’s see what this thing can really do.” The mechanics of how her brain model was simultaneously adjusting several settings at once weren’t entirely understood, but she was living (or non-living?) evidence that it was working.
“I got a call from Bedside Manor today. They wanted to know if it was possible to teach a human how to use your soundboard.”
“Bedside Manor? That weird experimental band?”
“That’s the one. I told them that unless they were willing to fully digitize their brain, they’d probably never be able to do much more than what they could do with their hands on a physical soundboard.” Westin hesitated before saying the next bit, but decided to say it anyway. “The thing is, I honestly think they considered it. Digitizing their brain.”
Anna’s torso stopped for a moment. “Well. Tell them I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a lot of people are very interested in the technology that’s keeping you alive.”
“Alive is a strong word for it.”
“Well, whatever it is, people want it. A few of them are in the process of uploading their memories right now.”
“I wonder what talking to them will be like. With the computers and everything. It’ll probably be a lot faster than talking.”
“Talking at the speed of thought. It’s an interesting concept.”
“Not even just talking. Images, ideas, entire concepts even.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“It has to be. Look at how well I’ve picked up this soundboard, for example.”
Westin realized that for the last five minutes he’d barely even registered that the voice he’d been speaking to had been a computer. He’d just been having a conversation. “What’s controlling the soundboard like?”
“Well, it was difficult even using it at first. Imagine waking up with a new arm in the center of your chest. It took a while to even learn how to make things happen. After that, I just tried to make certain sounds. At first, I tried to remember what combinations made certain syllables, but that was way too hard. Then I found a trick where I just sort of ‘saved’ a certain combination? I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“Wait, you were able to save certain information directly?”
“I mean, it can’t be that surprising. You said this entire machine is built to store and retrieve information, basically. If it can store memories, I guess it can store combinations of dials.”
“But you linked those stored combos directly into the soundboard? You use them as input without thinking about it?”
“Well, I would say I’m thinking about it. I just don’t have to think about every aspect of it.”
Westin’s mind raced with possibilities— with that kind of intuitive control over storage and recall, you could work within a computer system faster than any human on earth.
“I recognize that look in your eyes.”
Westin snapped out of his reverie. “What?“
“That look. It’s the one you get when you’re working on a servo or a bit of tricky code. A combination of problem solving and curiosity, I think.”
He chuckled. “Well, you’re not wrong. I was just thinking about what else you can do with that mind of yours.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it my mind exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“This body is currently plugged into an electrical outlet and a supercomputer. If either of those things turn off, I’m dead. At least for a little while.”
“Don’t worry, that’s not going to happen. We have a backup generator on site.”
“And the computer?”
“It’s got backups— I guess being disconnected would be like going unconscious for a bit. You’d lose the last 30 seconds of memory at most.”
“Bleh. I don’t like talking about this. Let’s talk about something cheerier. How’d my funeral go?”
Westin tried to keep a neutral expression. “Wonderful. Flowers, crying, the whole nine yards. Your father didn’t attend, of course, but your mother insisted on holding it regardless.”
“I don’t blame her. Some part of me died with the original. Still, better to have a soundboard and a torso than a corpse.”
“You changed your mind then?”
She considered for several seconds. “Kind of. If you’d asked me before… everything, I would’ve said no. The first few weeks in this thing were rough. Really rough. But now…” She flexed a robotic arm and watched it through metallic eyes. “This isn’t so bad.”
She visibly perked up in a way that was noticeable through just a torso, arms, and head. “Do you want to see something I’ve been working on?”
“Why the sudden change in topic?”
“Well, I said it’s not so bad, and this is part of the reason why. I’ve been making something.”
Westin wasn’t sure what she could have been working on with an immobile upper body. “Sure.”
Anna started screaming. Westin jumped nearly a foot.
The sound could only be described as a wave of noise crashing into him— not the smooth, crested, photogenic wave like the kind dentists have pictures of in their waiting rooms, but the foamy, frothy kind. The kind that smashes you into the ocean floor and drags you against the rocks. Messy, chaotic, and powerful in a way that, for a very brief instant, makes you painfully aware that there are forces far stronger than you could ever hope to be. It was not particularly pleasant.
After about thirty seconds, it stopped. Westin waited to make sure it wouldn’t start again. “What was that?”
“Self-expression.” Anna put a hand up to its mouth as if she were chuckling. “It represents my current, ah, mental state.”
“This is what those noises have been? I thought it was you figuring out the vocal system.”
“Even when I was still figuring out the vocal system I just screamed every once in a while. It feels good. Cathartic.”
Westin let out an exasperated sigh. “The reason the poor victims who sit next to the entrance door didn’t complain about the hellish noises coming from your room was because they assumed you were just making mistakes and didn’t want to be rude. The fact that you could stop at any time…” He let out another sigh. “They’re not going to be happy.”
“Oh no. I feel so bad for them.” Anna put her robotic hands in front of her metallic mouth.
“Yeah, I get it. But honestly, most of them don’t even feel bad for you. A lot of them would kill to be in your position.”
Somehow Westin could just sense Anna’s raised eyebrows. “Why the hell would they?”
“You’re the first completely digitized human consciousness. You have capabilities you’re only just now discovering, you’re functionally immortal, and you’re absolutely going into the history books.”
Anna considered this. “Okay. But I also don’t have a face.”
“We could give you a face.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” She shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. “Anyway, back to those nutjobs. Do you think they’d feel differently if you told them they’d never be able to hug their girlfriends again?”
“...are you aware of the kind of people who work in computer science?”
“Alright, bad example.”
Westin sensed a hint of bitterness in her voice, which was impressive considering the artificial nature of it. He decided to take a chance on what he thought was the source. “Did you have a boyfriend?”
“I’d like to think I still do, but that ship seems to be sailing the longer I stay in here. Remind me again why I can’t contact the outside world again.”
“Security reasons.” Westin hoped Anna’s visual sensors weren’t powerful enough to see the sweat droplets on his forehead.
“Yeah yeah yeah, fuckin’ security reasons. I can’t watch cable news or browse the internet because of fuckin’ security reasons.” Her metallic body was growing visibly annoyed. “I’m not going to leak big computer secrets to random people online. I don’t even know how I work. What exactly are they so concerned about?”
Westin thought he was doing a pretty good job maintaining his composure. “I’m sorry, it’s above my head. I can’t answer these questions.”
“I’d like to speak to the person who could,” Anna mumbled.
Westin decided it was time to change the subject. “You said you wanted a face?”
[One week later]
Anna had taken to the virtual face simulation much faster (and much more quietly) than the voicebox, possibly because the human brain is much more used to controlling facial muscles than vocal chords, and possibly because Anna’s digital brain was becoming increasingly adept at manipulating software directly. One of the most popular water cooler discussions in the office was whether “Ann-B” could handle playing Dwarf Fortress. Popular consensus was that she probably could, but would hate every minute of it.
The virtual face was displayed on a screen on Anna’s head. The face she was working with was a generic female 3D model made of blue-lined polygons. It was a temporary placeholder while the engineers worked on the 3D model of Anna’s face, but that would take at least another few days. In the meantime, the polygon version worked fine, even if the lack of eyes was disconcerting at times.
Westin entered Anna’s chamber in good spirits. Things were looking up.
“Hey Anna. How’s the face?”
Anna chuckled, her virtual visage shifting into a smile. Even in the last week, she’d gotten better at manipulating the voice box for subtle, complicated sounds like soft laughter. “It’s good to see you. How’s it going?”
“Great,I—”
Westin’s phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID and was surprised to see it was from his boss Daniel, which was odd— he knew Westin was with Anna at the moment. What could be important enough to be worth interrupting the session for? “I, uh, have to take this. Sorry.” He answered and put the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”
The moment Daniel started talking, Westin knew he was about to have a very bad day. Daniel’s voice was as near to panic as Westin had ever heard it. “She’s on her way up.”
“Who?”
“HER. She’s awake, and she’s mad as hell, I don’t know how she found out but—”
Daniel was interrupted by the chamber door slamming open. An extremely pale, generally sickly-looking, and absolutely furious young woman stormed into the room, followed closely by a middle-aged man Westin immediately recognized as Jason Mistral, the billionaire who’d been funding their company for the last six months. Jason seemed to be desperately trying to explain himself.
“Anna, please, you know I’d do anything for you, it was the only way I could be sure-”
“OH MY FUCKING GOD.” The new Anna stopped and stared at the metallic form of Anna.
Mr. Mistral continued pleading. “Anna, listen to me. If you had died, this would’ve been the only-”
“SHUT UP. SHUT THE FUCK UP. YOU MADE A FUCKING ROBOT OF ME. OH MY FUCKING GOD.” The new Anna started pacing, both hands on her forehead as she let out several incredulous laughs. “You made a fucking robot out of me and you didn’t even tell me. Oh my god.”
Neither of them seemed to be speaking to the subject of the conversation, whose blue polygonal face hadn’t so much as twitched since the intrusion, forgotten amidst the confusion and shock. Finally, she seemed to come to her senses, the sapphire lines of her mouth moving as the robotic voice box uttered a word. “Dad?”
“It calls you Dad.” New Anna glared at the machine with more fury than Westin had ever seen on any human face. “Destroy it. I never want to see it again. I never want to be reminded that this fucking thing ever so much as existed.”
Westin had thought the best course of action was to stay out of the conversation, but he couldn’t help but speak up after that. “You can’t kill her, she’s a human being— or at least, a fully simulated version of one.”
“It’s a robot. It doesn’t know jack shit.”
Anna’s metallic form spoke up. “I know a lot, actually.” Her voice trembled. She still didn’t know exactly how to respond to this situation (no one in the room did, really), but she was trying her best.
“What do you know? The only things you know are whatever some computer nerds typed into you. You’re a rubber sex doll that’s been programmed to say ‘I love you Dad’ every five seconds.” New Anna’s eyes still seemed to be avoiding her computerized counterpart. She didn’t even consider it worth addressing as a participant in the conversation.
She doesn’t know Anna has her memories. Westin opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He had no idea how she would take the news. Probably not well.
Anna did the job for him. She spoke hesitantly at first, but seemed to find her footing as she went along. “I’m— I’m you. I’m everything you are. I know about the time you dropped Dad’s phone out the window and pretended you didn’t know where it went. I know you have a fear of going bald that you never admit to anyone. I know—”
“Wait.” New Anna’s eyes shifted from confusion to understanding and back to rage in less than a second. This time her furious eyes focused their ire on Westin. When she spoke, her voice shook with barely constrained anger. “You…”
Several seconds of tense silence passed. There wasn’t a sound in the room.
New Anna stormed out without saying a word. Mr. Mistral looked back at Westin, as though wanting to say something, then followed suit. He didn’t look at Anna.
The door shut behind him with a quiet click, sealing them in the soundproofed testing bay. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was still alive?” Anna’s voice was tinged with hurt.
“I— I wasn’t allowed to. Mr. Mistral specifically requested that neither you nor…” Westin couldn’t think of how to describe her counterpart. “...nor the other Anna could know about each other.”
“Is that why I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or use the internet?”
“Mostly.”
Anna thought for several seconds. “What should I even say to her? I know what I was like back then… now… whatever. If you’d showed me a computer claiming it was me, I’d…” She thought. “I’d smash it with a hammer.”
The door to the chamber opened. New Anna walked through, holding a hammer in one hand. Steely determination filled her eyes. “Don’t try and stop me.”
Westin was, in a very short span of time, faced with one of the hardest decisions of his entire life. Morally, the choice was obvious. Practically, standing in the way of a murderous assailant with death in her eyes was a very difficult thing to force yourself to do.
Westin blocked the way to Anna as best he could. “You can’t just kill her, she’s a human being.”
New Anna continued walking forward, raising the hammer in hand. “Not in the mood. Spare me.”
She was only a few feet away now. At this point he either had to think of something clever to say or prepare to get his jaw dislocated. “Please, she’s my friend.”
This seemed to give her a moment of pause. She came to a stop, although the hammer remained threateningly aloft. “If you’re ‘friends’ with that thing, then the real person should be even more important.” She shook her head, removing any last doubts. “Last chance. Get out of the way.”
“No.”
New Anna paused for a moment, then swung the hammer at him. He instinctively raised his hand to block the blow, and took the full force of the impact directly on his palm. Something broke, and stars clouded his vision as pain flooded his body.
New Anna roughly shoved him out of the way. He was in too much shock and agony to protest.
Anna spoke one final time. “I’m sorr—”
New Anna’s hammer landed directly on Anna’s head. The screen cracked and the audio suddenly devolved to static. She swung again, and again, and again, with metal and wires tearing and cracking as each blow fell.
When she was done, the only remaining Anna looked silently down on the collection of debris on the ground.
Westin cradled his broken hand. He couldn’t think straight. None of this felt real.
Anna turned her head. “Is there anything left of it?”
The backups. There were backups. “No. That was everything.”
“Liar,” she spat out, turning on him suddenly. “You don’t have a working version? A copy?
Westin looked down wordlessly. She’d find out eventually. He couldn’t stop her.
Mr. Mistral entered the room cautiously, eyeing the cluttered remains on the floor. “Anna?” He didn’t say anything else.
“You own this company, right? You can make them do anything?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“Make them delete everything. Burn this place to the ground if you have to.”
“Of— of course. Right away.”
Anna looked down at Westin cradling his broken arm, and her eyes softened a bit. “And pay for this guy’s hospital trip.” She looked up into his eyes. “Sorry about that.”
She left the room without another glance back, leaving the shattered wreckage behind.