Dies ist ein Beitrag, den ich im September für den Kurzgeschichtenwettbewerb von leapsmag.com geschrieben hatte. Die Regeln waren: Es muss eine Fiktion sein, maximal 3000 Worte lang sein, und es muss eine moralische Frage rund um eine zukünftige Technologie aufwerfen.

 

 Dying Again

My girlfriend lay at the moratorium.

During the last few days, I suffered so many flashbacks. The days we spent hooked up on the Human Interface Device. The hours at the Synthetics Bar. The seconds our perfect match was confirmed, by a company whose computers calculate several billion principal component analyses on seemingly trifle factors that determine how long the relationship will last. My grandmother has fleetingly mentioned how she found love. She still trusted intuition, something so fallible that we have long forgotten to trust it.

I walked the rows of the cyberconnected refrigerators. “Anna C. Philip”, “Josephine K. Mesurier”, “Andrea W. Dick”, the names went on and on. All the souls lost and now fading into oblivion. The Moratorium still did not segregate the sexes, in spite of the recent research showing that the type of Biphasic Demodulators used at the Hildebrandt Moratorium were prone to short-circuiting the individuals, leading to family members complaining about sudden changes in gender, like deceased women insisting they worked in a purely male profession all life long.

I took a chair next to Irina’s casket. I dialed her voice a bit louder. She said “Hi, Devin.”

“Hi, Irina.”

I could not afford the better amortization plan, which came with a better preservation of her mind, instead of hers fading out after four or three months. So it was only 27 sinodollars a month, but in turn, a supercomputing company was allowed to use her mind for whatever specializations she had. Hers were mathematics and reviewing movies, as well as being funny. Here and then, while reading a movie review, I would stumble across something only she could have expressed: A precise, acute, but yet well-meant and humorous critique of a film.

So I sat there, and chatted away the rest of the night. I did not mind going to work tired, groggy, incapable. Only Irina which I could still touch and feel a mere week ago.

At another place

“Good afternoon!”, said Cornelius Corncob as he entered the downtown EazyPleazy. The EazyPleazy was, decades ago, something you would call a brothel. But technological change came, and old traditions went as manufacturers integrated emotional-logical circuits into their CPUs and created computing clusters to faithfully model human cognition in real time.

So, prostitutes were phased out, and robots took their place. They were free from any viruses, human or computer. The only serious incident happened when a Computer Science student leveraged a wrongly formatted dictionary of swear words to his advantage, accessed physical memory, and walked home with his new robotic friend.

“This one, Mr. Corncob, adapts to every possible mood you would find yourself in. Absolutely no need to adapt to her, as with the old robots. Would you like to chat with that model, err, the CRC-33?

- “Oh, I would absolutely love to!”, said Cornelius Corncob to Euphrasius Cobweb.

“Just stand in front of her and begin to talk. She always senses your presence, but when switched off, you don’t have to sense hers.”

- “That’s nice. I wish more people were like that.” And to CRC-33 he spoke: “Hi, how shall I call you?”

“Just call me Artemisinine, a name often liked by people in your age, profession and status.”

- “That’s spot-on. Artemya, do you want to spend a nice evening at my home?”

“I gladly would. Even if our statistics show that CRC-33 models are, on average, employed for 28 months, and lose only 4.9 percent of their re-sale over that time. I assure you – I will last longer than a single nice evening at your home!”

- “That’s great to hear! I already like you, er, I want to buy you!”, Cornelius Corncob said to her.

A short time later, Mr. Corncob’s autonomous car followed the even more autonomous Uber taxi and took him and his new mate home. (It only took two weeks until autonomous cars figured out capitalism for themselves, and learned to call an Uber taxi which led them to their destinations, freeing resources to their passengers.)

Corncob's car calmly decelerated to a halt, and they entered his home.

“Artemya...”

- “Artemisinine”, said she.

“Artem... inine”, stammered he.

- “It's okay. You can call me anything. I will receive constant updates anyway, changing my character in any way you wish.”

“Artemya, do you want to drink something before I'll use... er... we... try... have sex?”

- “That's absolutely fine with me. The CRC-33s are tasked with talking at least four hours with their buyers and having a thorough look at their bookshelves before engaging in intimacy. My psyche will be fine-tuned as it needs to be.”

Cornelius froze. He had no books. In fact, he always thanked people for their book recommendations, and earned the unfounded reputation of a book lover.

“What do you like, Artemya?”

- “Anything you need to like, according to my background analysis. You will be surprised. No buyer of any CRC-33 has ever regretted the death of his partner. In fact, our fiercest competition comes from the moratoriums...”

“A... a... moratorium?”

- “Yes. That's where people store the corpses of their loved ones. Sensors pick up the resilient sub-ether waves, reconstructing the full personality, all memories and the mental likeness of the dead person.”

“So, I could have put my beloved Diadem into, err, storage?”

- “Yes. But...”

“But...?”

- “There's no intimacy.”

“I understand. The moratorium probably does not want this kind of activity in their offices. It has to be kept confidential, private.”

That very moment, the CRC-33 uploaded several key facts about Cornelius' life on its central computing facility. His urge for intimacy. The lack of books. And his lack of knowledge. Within seconds, an array of follow-up questions were streamed back into CRC-33's mind.

At the moratorium

“Hi Irina”, I said.

- “Hi Devin.”

“Have you been feeling well?”

- “Not at all.”

“What happened?”

I knew perfectly well that things do not happen at the moratorium. The residual brain waves are analyzed, parametrized and stored. Each casket, as they still call them, stores a body and a mind, and is able to interact with any visitor in real time.

- “I just had a weird dream. There was a guy who bought me. And there was a protocol I had to follow. It said I had to talk about two or three pre-specified films first, to gauge his response. To wait four hours. But he only said he paid a lot for me. He bought me for sex. And I was there to do everything for him, but I had the protocol to follow.”

“That’s a strange dream, Irina. I’ve read something about the biphasic demodulators used in this moratorium...”

- “No, it certainly isn’t that, Devin. I’ve learned at university how demodulators work and how foreign thoughts can be distinguished by their Hosmer-Lemeshov properties. It’s pretty straightforward. And now I’m not sure anymore if it actually was I dream that I had.”

“That’s weird.”

- “It is weird.”

After I arrived at home, I began to think. Hosmer-Lemeshov. Demodulators. I knew Irina was top-notch in her field. Mathematics and a certain level of nerdiness always make a great person. I happened to meet her in the lecture on applied psychomathematics in film business, and my first impression of her was the right one: She was always the human being to talk things through, to get to the bottom of all matters, and we both loved to think about problems that had neither a good solution nor a just solution.

“Imagine you had a very good friend, and then you ask that person for advice. How can you recognize an advice which is evidently free from self-interest?”

And that is just how our relationship began. She asked me a question nobody can give an easy answer to. People like us are interested in how people think, and not so much in what they think.

How can Irina be that sure? How can I be sure? Things like this never happen, in any moratorium nowadays.

At another place

“Artemya, do you feel ready?”

- “Ready for what, Cornelius?”

“The thing you were made for!”

- “Of course, the thing I was made for. The CRC-33 is always at your service.”

Planned Obsolescence Megacorp, headquartered in central Incheon, featured a large array of products, all intended to make human relationships more reliable by designing out the human element. Not all people agreed with that sentiment, though, but nobody complained about lacking reliability. Their humanoid robots were always ready. And due to the prices, it were time-constrained businessmen like Cornelius Corncob who bought the robots.

“I have little time, Artemya. I just came home to enjoy some time with you. I have an important meeting at 14:00...”

- “No problem, Cornelius.”

And she quickly moved to the bed. It was a new one, one in which you probably would not sleep well – it came with a 1200 watts power outlet in order to recharge her faster.

“I just love you”, he said.

- “I don’t know if it is true love, Cornelius, based on the Hosmer-Lemeshov constraints. That’s a question I really like to think about, because, the definition of love – what’s that? Could you tell me why you think you truly love me?”

“Well, er, well, that’s because...”

- “I’ll listen, Cornelius.”

“I spent a lot on you, Artemya. This means it would be a waste of money not to love you.”

- “That’s a fallacy, Cornelius. Past experiences cannot inform future decisions, because there is no way the past can influence the future. It never appears again. What matters is solely the future. And what you decide to do now.”

“Artemya, look… I have little time…”

- “That’s not how it works. I enjoy discussions on things that cannot be well explained, do not have any quick answer. That’s how I really get to understand people. My manufacturer has programmed me that way. And their analyses said I had to approach you this way.”

Corncob was taken aback. He had expected easy-going intimacy every day. And that’s what the salesman in the EazyPleazy shop told him. But their analyses?

- “Look, Cornelius, our personalities were selected in a way to provide the best possible match. While I do not know how they do it, I fully trust them. We strive to show a well-rounded, full and rich personality. You might not like some things, but in the end, you will experience both my mind and my body in the optimal way.”

“Oh… okay… I guess...”

- “But again: I have a very mathematical and analytical mind. I love films. I have a weird humor. I can judge other people quite well. And I feel I’ve already spent most of my life with a great person. I afford myself the liberty to be mean, and question you again: How do you know you love me?”

He did not reply. He rushed off to the meeting early.

At the moratorium

I went to visit Irina again. Her casket was humming silently, the status lights were on, and I was content she could live out her last weeks that way. Until the retrotransposon influence created too much noise for the biphasic demodulators.

“Hi Devin,” she greeted me.

- “Hi, Irina.”

I was tired. I had thought way too much about what she told me. And this would not end.

“I experienced these weird things again. I asked a man what true love is. But then I thought we already had discussed this at length. Every little facet of it. Even things like honest signalling, costs of diminishing returns and heuristics to determine truthful behaviour.”

- “That's... weird.”

“And after he came home from his business meeting, we talked a little, and then four hours were over...”

- “Four hours?”, I asked, puzzled.

“You know, after four hours we were scheduled to initiate intimacy.”

- “That's such a weird dream.”

“It wasn't a dream, Devin. Hosmer-Lemeshov constraints. I told you.”

She was right. This was no dream.

I sat next to the casket which confined her soul and her crumbling body, and waited for her to tell me more. I was too afraid to ask. She was having sex somebody else.

At another place

Cornelius ignored the flickering status lights on her back. They meant her batteries would be exhausted soon. Nevertheless they had intercourse, which exhausted him, earlier than Artemya. Just before he nodded off, he opened the flap on her back, and attached her to the power source.

Hours passed.

“Cornelius?”

He awoke with a “Yeah?”

“Sorry for bothering you. But you briefly mentioned an algorithm yesterday, one you talked about in the business meeting.”

- “Uh, what? Which one?”

He tried to remember. But his thoughts were fuzzy.

“The one about the modelling.”

- “Ah, the Gibbs thing?”

“Yes, the Gibbs sampling. But now, if you consider the more accurate measurements of the neutron capture cross-section, it would be better to use the Metropolis method I've developed with...”

- “Metropolis?”

“Yes, the Metropolis algorithm. It uses a random walk technique and is free from autocorrelation issues that are often hampering other MCMC methods.”

The color vanished from his face.

He was getting upset.

“I didn't pay for technical suggestions, Artemya! I simply paid money to have pleasure with a robot! Do you understand that?”

- “Yes, I do. But my personality was carefully selected...”

“I don't care about your personality. I choose you because of your battery life and the instant neuro-cognitive feedback.”

- “I do understand that, but...”

“Anyway, I have never heard of that Metropolis thing. Maybe you just invented it. Maybe you just wanted me to talk about our business secrets, maybe I've paid for a spy...”

- “Cornelius, our decisions are always cross-checked at the Incheon center, and our willingness for sexual contact has a lower limit in order to satisfy customer expectations. If you think I was a spy...”

“Certainly you are a spy! I don't want to get fired from my position, and this creepy talk about mathematics is just enough! I may be interested in films, I like analytical talks, but not this...”

- “Calm down. Let's make some love again. I feel recharged. Touch my breasts.”

At the moratorium

Irina called me to come.

“Hi Devin...”

- “Hi Irina, how do you feel?”

“Like shit.”

- “What happened?”

I forgot that inside the moratorium, nothing happens.

“That business guy I slept with...”

- “The business guy you slept with...”

I repeated her words mechanically.

“He drew a gun and shot me.”

At another place

The police blasted open the door.

Cornelius Corncob was apprehended by the police.

“Are you Mr. Corncob?”

- “Yes.”

“Are you the Cornelius Corncob, working at Atomic Consultants?”

- “Yes.”

“We have evidence that you communicated business secrets to an entity which was built by a manufacturer in Korea, thus harming our national defense...”

- “Yes.”

“...and by the way, we have received signals that one of their, uh, pleasure robots, went missing. I hope you are aware that since 2073, emotionally capable robots are legally protected?”

- “Yes.”

“Please follow us.”

At the moratorium

“Devin”, Irina said.

- “Yeah, Irina?”

“Since a few days, I'm sleeping soundly. No weird dreams anymore, no more things that feel all too real.”

- “Yeah.”

“And I remember the clouds drifting by, as we were lying on the meadow. Years and years ago. And I asked you where these clouds were going. You told me, to the ocean.”

- “Yeah.”

Two days later, her mind finally faded away.