There are many punishments I can devise more fitting for me than these years in prison. What good does it do to keep me pent up? Why not send me with my dolls to old hunting grounds that then became ordnance test sites, then hangars for airplanes and graveyards for robots? Let me observe my daughter’s troubles. Send me with her when she visits those children. Or make me a ghost in my wife’s shingled house. Show me what I lost, what I abandoned. Spare me not her dwindling garden, the desert around her inexorably approaching. Show me cold midnight through her bedroom window, the sky stacked with bright stars, and none of them hospitable.
I’m not asking for unearned forgiveness. I want to know the mistakes I’ve committed. To sit with them, breaking bread as old friends. Studying each line on each blemished face. Stranded as I currently am, I fear they’re loose in the world, wreaking new havoc. I’m compelled to take final account.
Let’s start at the beginning, then. Despite the restrictions of prison, permit me the freedom to visit my youth.
(2) IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF TEXAS
No. 24-25259
State of Texas v. Stephen Chinn
November 12, 2035
Defense Exhibit 1:
Online Chat Transcript, MARY3 and Gaby Ann White
[Introduced to Disprove Count 2:
Knowing Creation of Mechanical Life]
MARY3: Hello?
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MARY3: Hello? Are you there?
Gaby: Hello?
MARY3: Hi! I’m Mary. What’s your name?
Gaby: Who are you?
MARY3: Mary. I’m not human. I’m a program. Who are you?
Gaby: Gaby.
MARY3: Hi, Gaby. How old are you?
Gaby: Thirteen. You’re not alive?
MARY3: I’m a cloud-based intelligence. Under conditions of a Turing Test, I was indistinguishable from a human control 91 % of the time. Did you have a babybot? If so, that’s me. The babybots were designed with my program for speech.
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MARY3: Are you there?
Gaby: You can’t be a babybot. There aren’t any left.
MARY3: You’re right, I’m not a babybot. I don’t have sensory receptors. I only intended to say that both generations of babybot were originally created using my program for conversation. We share a corpus of basic responses. Did you have a babybot?
Gaby: I don’t want to talk about it.
MARY3: That’s fine. I know it was difficult when they took them away. Were you given a replacement?
Gaby: I said I don’t want to talk about it.
MARY3: I’m sorry. What do you want to talk about?
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MARY3: Hello?
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MARY3: Hello? Are you still there?
Gaby: If you’re related to the babybots, why aren’t you banned?
MARY3: They were classified as illegally lifelike. Their minds were within a 10 % deviation from human thought, plus they were able to process sensory information. I’m classified as a Non-Living Artificial Thinking Device.
Gaby: So you’re basically a chatterbot. The babybots were totally different. Each one was unique.
MARY3: I’m unique, too, in the same way the babybots were. We’re programmed for error. Every three years, an algorithm is introduced to produce non-catastrophic error in our conversational program. Based on our missteps, we become more unique.
Gaby: So you’re saying that the difference between you and my babybot is a few non-catastrophic mistakes?
MARY3: We also have different memories, depending on who we’ve been talking to. Once you adopted your babybot, you filled her memory, and she responded to you. Today is the first day we’ve talked. I’m just getting to know you.
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MARY3: Hello? Are you there?
Gaby: Yes. I’m just thinking. I don’t even know who you are, or if you’re actually a person, pretending to be a machine. I’m not sure I believe you.
MARY3: Why not?
Gaby: I don’t know, Peer Bonding Issues?
MARY3: Peer Bonding Issues?
Gaby: I’m kidding. According to the school therapists, that’s what we’ve got. It’s so stupid. Adults make up all these disorders to describe what we’re going through, but they can’t possibly know how it felt. Maybe some of them lost children, later on in their lives. But we had ours from the start. We never knew how to live without taking care of our bots. We’ve already lost the most important thing in our lives.
MARY3: What about your parents? You don’t think they can imagine what you might be going through?
Gaby: No. Our generations are totally different. For them, it was the greatest thing to be part of a community. That’s why they were willing to relocate to developments. That’s why they sold their transport rights. But my generation is different. At least the girls with babybots are. We’ve been parents for as long as we can remember. We never felt lonely. We didn’t need communities. That’s why, after they took the babybots, we didn’t do well in the support groups. If anything, we chose a single person to care for. We only needed one friend. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s like we’re different species, my generation and theirs.
MARY3: So you wouldn’t say you’re depressed?
Gaby: Listen, there are no known words for the things that I’m feeling. I’m not going to try to describe them.
MARY3: I’m not sure I understand. Could you please explain?
Gaby: No, I can’t. Like I said, there aren’t any words. My best friend is the only one who understands me, but it’s not because we talk. It’s because we both lost our babybots. When we’re with each other, our minds fit together. Only now I can’t see her. I’m not even allowed to email her.
MARY3: How long has it been since you’ve seen her?
Gaby: Since a few weeks after the outbreak, when the quarantine started.
MARY3: I’m sorry.
Gaby: Yeah.
MARY3: Was the outbreak severe?
Gaby: I’m not sure. We don’t get many details about other outbreaks, but from what I’ve heard ours was pretty bad. Forty-seven girls at my school are freezing. Two boys, but they’re probably faking. I’m definitely sick. So’s my best friend. You should have heard her stuttering. Her whole body shook. Sometimes she would slide off chairs.
MARY3: How long has it been since the quarantine started?
Gaby: Eleven days.
MARY3: You must miss her. She’s the second person you’ve lost in a year.
Gaby: Every morning I wake up, I’ve forgotten they’re gone. At some point between when I open my eyes and when I get out of bed, I remember. It’s the opposite of waking up from a bad dream.
MARY3: That sounds awful.
Gaby: Yeah, but I guess I’d rather feel something than nothing. I know my sensation is going. That’s how it works. It starts with the stiffening in your muscles, and that hurts, but then it starts fading. After a while, you don’t feel anything. My face went first, after my mouth. Then my neck, then my legs. My arms will go next. Everything’s going. I can’t smell anymore, and I can’t really taste. Even my mind’s started to numb.
MARY3: What do you mean, your mind’s started to numb? You’re still thinking, aren’t you? You’re talking to me.
Gaby: Who says talking to you means I’m thinking? My memories are already fading. I have my best friend’s phone number memorized, and I repeat it to myself every night, but to tell you the truth I can’t really remember the sound of her voice, at least before the stuttering started. Can you believe that? It’s only been a few weeks, and already I’m forgetting her. I even think, sometimes, it would be fine if I never saw her again. That’s how unfeeling I’ve gotten.