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.
