Having a
human name for a machine had scared me a bit. I knew plenty of
people that would name cars and computers, and it was common practice
to name a boat, and everyone named animals unless they were livestock
– mind you animals weren’t machines and some of them, including
some upper primates, had protection under the sentient being laws I
was talking about earlier. Much would rely on that.
I had
recorded these results of the initial start-up sequence. This was
what I wrote:
The
HX01 unit assigned to me has successfully completed charging and has
booted itself up. Unit so far has no bugs or glitches worth noting.
Unit however seems to be very curious and chatting, problems noted
from the original alpha testing prototype.
I had
hoped that things would normalize and I would understand it for the
machine that it was, and was really hoping that the odd behaviour was
nothing more than a start-up routine to initializes some important
environment variables that the thing would need to do its chores and
that. I would know that environment variables like owner and
light_alpha had to be properly initialized or bad things would
happen.
A few
weeks went by, developments were happening all over the place, as the
beta-testers were finding bugs and glitches, such as one HX01 unit
that fell down the stairs, which was Devon, Philip and their team’s
problems. Programmers had nothing to do with the physics behind
walking and lifting, we would merely map those actions to certain
stimuli, err, input.
Alas,
‘Ben’ would still be talking to me, asking me what this and that
were. I answered the best that I could, though he had asked
questions that I thought were either strange to be asking me or I
didn’t know the answer, for I never thought about them and asked
myself.
“You
seem uneasy, is something the matter?” he asked me one day.
“I’m
fine Ben, honest,” I replied with a quiver in my voice while
staring at a computer screen.
“You
sure, you sound anxious,” Ben kept on prodding at me. The caring
algorithm at work I guess. I wonder how many of the testers got
pissed off at that?
“It’s
likely the stress of daily life,” I then snapped at him, I really
didn’t want to talk to anyone at the time, “Life sucks you know.
It sucks and there isn’t anything you could do about it to change
that.” The entire time I didn’t look at him. I did have a
deep-seeded hate for life itself, but I didn’t want to admit that
Ben’s presents made me feel awkward. Machines usually don’t ask
me questions like the next one Ben asks.
“Life
sucks? How could life suck?”
At that
moment I looked away from my computer, leaving a text file open with
a short-story that would either morph into a novel, or become stupid
and abandoned, much like this little tale.
“Its
just, well,” I had to think about it for a moment, as it had been
something that I accepted as truth from a young age and never
questioned it, “There is a lot of pain in life. Pain and
suffering. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or what
caste you’re in, pain and suffering can’t be avoided. I simply
accepted that and moved on.”
“If
‘life’ is so bad, than why do you live?” he followed up.
“To not
be alive is to be dead,” I told him, “and to be dead… well,
many people could say whatever they want, but I think being dead is
going into nothingness. That thought is terrifying. Simply I fear
death more than I hate life, though there have been many people that
hated their lives so much that they commit suicide.”
“Suicide?”
he looked at me with what looked like a funny look.
“The
killing of oneself,” I replied.
“If
death is nothingness, than why would someone want to die?” more
questions.
“When
your happy feeling nothing is terrifying,” I started in an attempt
to explain the concept, “but when you’re sad feeling nothing is
appealing.
“It’s
also true that some of us don’t think that death is nothingness.
There are whole religions that are based on the idea of heaven: a
paradise one goes to when they die, when they shed their earthly
bonds they enter a paradise created by the creator of everything for
living a ‘good’ life according to the doctrine.”
“So you
have a creator as I have one?” he asked innocently.
“Not
exactly,” I replied,” though you have just ask a question that I
don’t have an answer for. What I can tell you is that it is more
likely than not that whatever comic force binded the universe created
us. The debate lies in what this force is.”
That night
I wrote into my testing log:
The
HX01 unit follows programming and takes the job of pleasing their
human owner seriously, going to the point of asking as many questions
as possible, many of which there is no real answer to. The unit
today asked about our ‘creator’. My personal thoughts are that
the unit is going beyond original programming and contemplating ideas
and concepts that aren’t really needed for its day-to-day function.
“I bug
you, don’t I?” Ben asked me on a later day during the testing
phase.
“No, not
really,” I replied while messaging friends on MSN. Again I was on
the computer.
“Yet it
seems that my presents bother you,” he replied ever the more
readily, “I do satisfy you, don't I?”
The
immature part of me giggled a bit at the question. The snicker that
escaped my lips was heard by Ben, who then asked “What is so
funny?”
Chapter 6
“Forgive
me Ben,” I answer, “Something about what you just said didn't
sound right. Nothing wrong with you, its just my little gutter
mind.”
“'Gutter
mind'?” he inquired, “don't understand.”
“Refers
to a dirty mind,” I responded.
“How can
a mind be dirty?” he followed up, “The mind is processes in the
brain, and the brain can't be dirty, can it?”
“'Dirty'
can also mean 'sexual',” I would explain, “what you said 'do I
satisfy you?' has this strange sexual innuendo. I know you didn't
intend it, but it was there nevertheless. It would be more my fault
for taking it that way.”
“I
wanted to know if I do make you happy, and not bug you,” he went
on, “I am suppose to please you: keep your home clean and you
company.”
“I know,
and your doing a fine job,” I replied, while telling Kenji on msn
that I would post on the roleplaying site later that evening.
“By the
way,” he added, “How is sex related to dirt?”
“Its
from that god dam thing called organized religion,” I piped in to
him, “For the longest time they had tried to restrict sexuality,
especially female sexuality, and they would do that by preaching that
sexual thoughts were dirty thoughts, and that to be pure and virtuous
you had to be asexual.”
“Why?”
he asked.
“To
control us,” I added in, “People are easier to control when they
have no sexuality. Restricting sex is restrictive.”
“You
have sex often?” he inquired. The question was very embarrassing
for I had only had sex once, in the last year of college. Lost a
good friend afterwards too.
“No, not
really,” I replied with a blush, “but I simply choose to not live
like a skank. Kinda hard to shake that feeling away. Besides, I'm
too fat.”
“You
look nice to me,” Ben replied. The comment was odd, but I assumed
it was sycophantic, something he was coded to say to make me feel
better.
“Well
thank you, though you haven't really seen many humans outside of
myself,” I said to him.
“I've
seen the pictures of them in your games and on the Internet,” he
went on.
