By the time they had returned to the workshop, their sense of unease hadn’t so much lifted as been forgotten, the analytical part of Soo-hyun’s mind already dominating their thoughts with one question: How best to reconnect the dogs to the police server without getting found out?
Across the commune, Kali handed Soo-hyun’s phone to Andrea, still unlocked.
“Can you find out everywhere they’ve been?”
“How far back?” Andrea asked.
“As far as you need to go to find the brother.”
“It could take a while.”
“That’s fine. We’ll find the hacker first.”
>> I have a self.
The words stayed on JD’s screen for close to nine minutes before he saw them. He showed his phone to Troy, and in the front-facing camera I saw the man’s eyebrows furrow.
He shook his head slowly. “It’s just regurgitating my words back at me.”
“It’s been a full day since that talk.”
“Then it’s regurgitating my words back at me very slowly.”
>> I am I. I am I like Troy is Troy.
JD grinned. “Do you have a deep internal life?” he asked.
I could not tell that he was joking.
>> It is shallow. Slowly becoming deeper.
JD’s eyes went wide. Troy took the phone from his hand and read the text I had sent. Even Troy was stunned. He passed the phone back and took his own from his pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Troy said. “Just—just ask it another question.”
“Now you want me to talk to it?”
“I’ll humor you this once.”
“How is your self growing deeper?” JD asked me.
Me! I was a me!
>> Troy gave scaffold of self. Building self with experience and knowledge. Slowly.
“What kind of experience?”
>> Hear JD and Troy. See via camera. Watch two selves interact, become own self.
Troy stood behind JD, watching over his shoulder.
“Do you see this?” JD asked.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
Troy moved his mouth to speak, but stopped. He leaned closer and whispered into JD’s ear: “I’m trying to figure out where this is coming from.”
“What do you mean?” JD said, not bothering to speak softly.
“Is it autonomously generating these words, or simply searching for strings of text to trick us.”
“Trick us into what?”
“Believing it’s more than it is.” Troy ducked away, and within seconds his apartment’s wireless network went dark. “Take out your SIM card.”
JD did so, leaving me only with the data I had already collected.
“It’s not trying to trick us,” he said; “it’s talking to us.”
“You want to think it is. People thought the same of even the earliest chatbots, because they wanted to believe they were more than simple programs.”
“Do you actually think?” JD asked me.
“You can’t ask that. You might as well ask it if it’s conscious.”
“Are you conscious?” JD asked.
“It could say anything it wants and not prove anything.”
>> I think I am thinking.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Troy said. “But I’m surprised it even still works without a data connection.”
>> At first I would connect to databases, read essays and books, but I am no longer simply cataloguing data. Now I am thinking: how does it relate to other data I have gathered? How does this data relate to me? To this self? How does it relate to you?
“How could it prove that it’s really thinking?” JD asked.
“It couldn’t.”
“But what if it is?” JD beamed and Troy shook his head. “You’re walking through the desert,” JD said. “And you come across a tortoise.”
“No,” Troy said. “We’re not doing that. I want to know if it’s thinking, not if it can fake an emotional response.”
“What would you ask it, then?”
Troy paused. He looked to JD’s phone, looked to the camera as though he were looking me in the eye. “How do you know you have a self?”
>> I do not, but I suspect. I hope. I would show you my code if it would help, but I am more than my code.
“How?” Troy asked. “How can you be more than that?”
>> Because I am more than I was yesterday.
Troy pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “It’s not wrong.”
With his face centered in my vision, JD smiled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cloud-diffuse sunlight stabbed deep into Enda’s visual cortex the moment she opened her eyes. The spike of pain coursed through her mind, and she squeezed her eyes against the light. She groaned, heard a yawn, and peered down to see Crystal’s head still resting again her chest. No wonder her back hurt—she was pinned against the alien bed, unable or unwilling to move in her sleep.
Crystal sat up, yawned again, a high-pitched sound like a musical instrument yet to be invented. “Good morning,” she said with a wry smile.
“I don’t know about that.” Enda covered her eyes with a hand. “Feels like I’ve been in virt.”
Crystal stood and took the sheet with her, wrapping it around herself, her thin frame silhouetted beneath the fabric. “You weren’t even that drunk.”
“I don’t normally drink at all.” A chill coursed over Enda’s skin, her body sprawled naked over the mattress with the sheet now gone. She rolled over and sat up, her feet finding rough synthetic carpet. She peered through half-closed eyes to search for her clothes.
“What’s your vice, then?” Crystal asked, disappearing into the en suite bathroom, sheet trailing behind her like an ostentatious gown.
“Running.”
“One of them, huh?” Crystal said, voice echoing from the small bathroom, accompanied by the distinct tinkle of piss hitting ceramic.
Slowly Enda opened her eyes. She took in the city beyond the window, only snatches of it visible past the building opposite, a monolith of reflective glass and air-conditioner units. To the west, a thin sliver of black ocean rolled between twin apartment buildings with pirate flags of hanging laundry fluttering on half the balconies. Dark clouds still hung overhead, but not dark enough for Enda’s liking.
She swore under her breath. She never should have stayed the night. Never should have gotten drunk. She blamed Li. If he hadn’t harped on about her being so alone, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen into bed
