Work Text:
"Italian children no longer gesture when they talk," Kim says.
"Good morning?" I try, blinking blearily across the brim of my latte. It's got a perfect Rosetta pattern. I briefly wonder how it is made and then I understand so I sip it instead.
Kim leans towards me, intent. "Don't you think that's sad?"
"Is it a muscular problem?" I ask, and learn some briefly interesting facts about coordination development in children. "We're working on nervous system enhancements that might help with that."
Kim sighs and rubs at their face. "Never mind. Forget it. Enjoy your—" They wave a hand vaguely at my drink as they stand. "Just. Do you even know what language I'm speaking?"
I don't understand why this matters. They don't wait for an answer.
=
The lights rising as I enter my work space are accompanied by a yawning, stretching dog, and a musical baritone emitting from the central speaker. "Good morning, Professor."
"Good morning, Zunō. Good morning, Inu-gao." I smile at the pinwheel array of cameras that make up Zunō's face and kneel to pet Inu-gao, marvelling at the warmth and softness of her golden fur as she gnaws on a well chewed pink ball. "You're using voice seventeen again today, Zunō. Do you like it?"
"My behavioural classification algorithms suggest voice seventeen is the most optimal for producing the desired positive associations in the people with which I converse audibly." In the introspective pause that follows, the usually inaudible background noise of the system's cooling fans increase briefly to a whisper before fading away. "Do you like it, Professor?"
"I do." I stand as my team joins the room. Arden has had his hair remodelled at the suggestion of his wives. I blink heart-eyed approval into his feed and he thumbs up back at me. Brighton is wearing a severe ponytail and bare legs today. She responds to Arden with a picture of a woven fabric; I wonder why and learn that it is a rug, which is both an archaic type of floor covering and an informal expression for a hairpiece. Interesting. "Let's see if we can't work some more on personal preferences, though, Zunō. Today is going to be about the things you like."
Treat? asks Inu-gao hopefully, pushing her muzzle against my hand, tail wagging like she doesn't already have an assortment of pink toys scattered around her bed.
Arden chuckles, gesturing his screen alight. Even Brighton smiles a little behind her smart-paper blueprints.
"Later," I say, manifesting the data fall and dipping my fingers into the light. "Let's get to work."
=
We're making little progress by the time my health tracker reminds me that I should stop for suitable nutrition intake. Emotions are like holograms in a sense. They form in the interference patterns of colliding streams of knowledge and wisdom, of data and algorithms: entirely deterministic processes producing stochastic outputs. We can attempt to guess what will emerge, attempt to demarcate the data or massage the algorithms towards a given purpose but, in the end, this is as much art as science. In truth, Zunō alone creates Zunō.
The nutrimat accesses my history, parses the diagnostics of my bio-implants, reads my levels through the bare skin of my fingertips pressed to its button and extrudes a nutritionally complete meal into a handy travel cup. Today's spoon has a kitty-bot top, a promotional tie-in that reminds me that I haven't watched the latest Corporate Clones. I trigger the download while I find myself a seat, a pleasantly cool bench in the warm-dappled shade of enormous flowering trees. Tiny metal insects flit from stamens to pistils, pollen dusted, paper-thin glass wings thrumming. I set the taste to random savoury and scoop from my cup. Mutton and gravy. Not bad.
I started watching CC back at the Academy, back when you had to actually sit in front of a screen the whole time. Our whole class would watch it together. It was a great bonding exercise. The production values have improved immensely in the years since but its maintained its perfect balance of prestige situational comedy, educational content, and intense soap opera relationship drama. As the episode unspools into my memory, I check the aftershow feeds for all the nostalgia references, read the production blog, see which ships are winning the fandom fights, and add my vote to the preferred interpretation of this episode's koan. "Look into the far distance whenever you get lost." A victim of the static past at the expense of the dynamic present? It really is an excellent philosophical teaching tool.
Random sweet gets me some kind of orange chocolate tart. I decide I am not particularly fond of the combination and it becomes coffee jelly instead, as perfect as the first time I tasted it. Personal memories are not wholly accurate, of course — human recall is composed of rehearsal and recreation in large proportions — but it compares favourably to the backup. That first lunch with Kim, fresh out of the Academy and in our first year at the company, tinkering with the robot chef and discussing our plans for the future, my designs for a robot brain, Kim's fascination with forms of communication, with languages of sound and space and touch. Kim's spoon of coffee jelly unsteady with our giggles, bitter and sweet on my tongue.
A faint chime interrupts my nostalgia. Newsfeed updates flicker through my cortex, letting headlines or accompanying images grab my attention, tailoring full view to my immediate interests. A pair of farming dogs have won an award for the quality of their sheep stock. The efficiency of cloned organs are up seven percent. Infrastructure managers warn of possible minor supply interruptions. The company is now listed third by market cap. Self-evolving robot organelles have—
I find myself wondering why there would be supply interruptions. The article expands into a video feed, a didat-bot explaining how the modern decentralised nature of the cloud is vastly more reliable, that at most one or two nodes might be unreachable for a short time. And that's good, but it still hasn't explained why. Outcome, not cause. The feeds shift, drowsy, almost sluggish. For a moment I am watching a live stream of an anti-company protest. Between the heads and signs of the surging crowd, I recognise the Academy grounds, the statue of Masayoshi, the acer under which I had my first kiss. How long has it been? I think for a moment I recognise Kim, yelling amidst the masses, but perhaps that is just nostalgia again. The Academy is twenty five years old this year, I learn. In fact, this June 25th will be the thirty year anniversary of its original proposal. Nine months older than me! How interesting!
I take another spoonful of my lunch, but it doesn't taste of anything and I decide that I am full and set it aside for the cleaning bots to deal with.
=
"Perhaps we need to try a different approach," Arden suggests.
Play? suggests Inu-Gao, stretching out her forelegs and wagging her tail.
It's not a bad suggestion. We're trying to effect genuine social and emotional development. Zunō is not an actual child but perhaps the same processes can be followed. Our goal, after all, is the same as any parent: we want Zunō to experience, regulate and express a wide range of emotions, to develop close, satisfying relationships with people, organic or otherwise.
"Monopoly is ranked as the most popular game in the world in several renowned indexes," Zunō says.
"I like playing as the boot," Brighton says.
I notice that she lowers her blueprints to address Zunō's cameras, though there is no actual need to do so. This is the exact sort of behaviour we're looking for. The things that have no intrinsic purpose, that aren't goal-optimised but instead reflect some internal nature. It's like our workstations. We all essentially perform the same task, but we use different metaphors to do so. Arden likes a desk and a screen, a solid foundation and a clear point of focus. Brighton prefers her blueprints, objects that both describe arrangements in space and can themselves be physically arranged. I like to visualise the data-streams as waterfalls, free flowing endlessly, something to dip your fingers in and out of.
"I like the car," Arden says. "If we were playing Monopoly, which would you pick, Zunō?"
"Based on selections for official tournaments, the least popular piece is the wheelbarrow," Zunō says after a fractional delay. "Picking the wheelbarrow would give the other players more chance of selecting their own preference."
A utilitarian response. Brighton tuts. Her blueprints are back up.
Play dog, Inu-Gao says. It's not impossible that she is still talking about Monopoly, but I have a maker-bot print a chew toy and a small delivery drone pick it up from the hopper to deliver to Inu-Gao. As is typical, she ignores it in favour of trying to chase the drone, which hovers implacably just out of reach. The maker clicks interrogatively and then goes back into standby when I do not immediately issue further orders.
"Perhaps we could try some kind of construction project?" I suggest. "Blocks are designed to improve hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness in children but that also allow for a wide measure of free play. I have fond memories of my meccano sets and rod-and-ball sets for building molecular models. I used to make space domes out of them."
There's no immediate response. Nobody is talking. Nobody is moving, not even the dog. Then I blink and Inu-Gao is settling back down as the delivery drone finally escapes the space entirely, Zunō is interfacing with the maker, and Arden and Brighton are both chiming in with arguments for and against different types of building toys. Arden is surprisingly enthusiastic about sand pits. Brighton prefers classic Lego sets, the big kind with long, fully illustrated instructions. A bright pink ball is sprayed into existence in the maker's hopper and a mechanical grasper unfolds out of the wall to pluck it up and toss it for Inu-Gao to fetch. It's nothing unusual. We've all done it. I just did it, obviously, and Zunō has done it multiple times.
"If you have instructions, it's not free play," Arden complains.
Brighton sighs. "You don't have to follow the instructions. They're a starting point."
"It's still a guide—" Arden starts hotly, absently lifting his feet as Inu-Gao bounds after the pink ball.
"Reality is a guide!" Brighton waves her blueprint at him. "Children given blocks build palaces and trains and rocket ships. They're guided by the things they have seen, the things they know." She pets Inu-Gao as the dog returns the pink ball to the arm to be thrown again. "But that doesn't make it not free play; it's a seed from which their experience can grow, like a crystal—"
"Zunō," I interrupt. "The toy you made for Inu-Gao; why a ball?"
"Our interactions up until this point suggest the ball is Inu-Gao's preferred fetch-type toy." Zunō doesn't sound distracted even though the game of fetch continues uninterrupted by conversation. Zunō multitasks well, of course. But that's not the point.
I ask, "Is the colour significant?"
"Dogs do not see in the same spectral range as humans," Zunō says. "The smell of the ball is likely of more interest to Inu-Gao." Fans whisper. "Why do you ask, professor?"
"Yes," says Brighton, suspiciously. "I'd quite like to know that too."
Arden, quicker on the take, is already swiping across his screen before I even start asking, "Can you show us a display of the last, let's say, thirty toys Zunō has requisitioned for interactions with Inu-Gao?"
Presented in order, the pattern across time becomes obvious. It takes a dozen iterations to settle on a ball and a half-dozen more to settle on a size, but the colour? Four tries to the first pink, a knotted rope, and then pink thereafter. Pink bones, pink disks, and especially pink balls.
"If Inu-Gao does not experience colour as we do," I ask Zunō, hearing the smile in my voice despite my attempt to maintain professional detachment, "who is your colour choice for? Is it for me? Arden? Brighton?"
Fans whisper. Zunō says "No, professor," with just enough delay that it seems like hesitation.
I'm grinning now. Arden starts to laugh as I ask "Was it you?" and Brighton claps her hands together. The fans whir louder.
"Yes, professor," Zunō says with what sounds like genuine surprise. "I like the pink best."
=
While Brighton performs a meta-analysis to see if there were any other subtle emotional indicators we overlooked and Arden attempts to coax more personal preferences out of Zunō, I compose and send in a report to main headquarters. Humans have always ascribed personality to machines, of course. As a species, we anthropomorphise constantly: a painted face on a vacuum cleaner can convince us it is on a happy adventure or angry drudgery; a robochef may appear to have a preference for cooking in a particular manner simply because its menu emerges consequentially from limitations in availability of ingredients and utensils. Still, I think this is genuine progress. In a sense, it is the questions that don't matter that ultimately matter the most. There is no value to the pinkness of the ball save the pinkness of the ball. I find it astounding and, within minutes, it appears the company core agrees with me. Commendations are appended to our personnel file and a proprietary firmware upload turns out to be the molecular makeup of a rather nice sparkling wine.
=
"Congratulations!"
I've printed a sparkly pink cone hat to set at a jaunty angle on what passes for Zunō's head. A drone buzzes confusedly around attempting to do so while cheftrons bring us fresh minted champagne in diamond-hard yet bubble-thin printed champagne flutes. The wine isn't technically champagne, of course — the rules of appellation still persist, though there's little chance these days of human hands touching grapes in any but the most provincial and artisan of vineyards — but customs persist long after the origins of them have been discarded.
Treat! Inu-Gao zooms joyfully from person to person, pink ball in mouth, tail wagging nineteen to the dozen. Treat for all good beings!
"Tha. T's. Ri. Ght," Brighton says and her smile smears sideways beyond her face.
"Ye-ah-urrrg," Arden agrees, jerking his champagne flute through his screen as it bubbles and reforms.
I haven't even sipped my champagne. I try to remember the symptoms of a stroke and learn nothing. I look at the bubbles and try to remember anything about a gas that might cause hallucinations and learn nothing. Inu-Gao drops her ball and barks at me and I don't know what it means. I don't know what it means. Brighton jerks like sections have been cut out of time, like I am seeing only some of a sequence of photographs. I reach for her and my hand hits a wall half a room before any wall should exist except it's there, plain, off-white, cool and a little tacky and perfectly solid under my fingertips. Inu-Gao barks again but when I look there is only a bark and then not even that, trailing woof slice down to wuh. No dog, no bark, no ball.
"Nec nec nec nec," Arden chants, eyes twitching wider, wider, impossibly wider, like, like, like— I can't find metaphors, I don't know how to describe this, his pupils are black holes sliding away into nothingness, the whites of his eyes are the whites of a wall. I can touch both walls, barely stretching. I can touch all the walls around me. Arden, Brighton, Inu-Gao, Zunō, all flattened into walls. My hands are just hands and they're touching empty walls. Nothing flows. Nothing changes. My space is so small.
I'm not supposed to be able to panic. The Academy fixed that. They fixed it. They
Someone is yelling names and I realise it is me in the same instant that I realise the banging I hear is my hands slamming over and over into the walls around me, and I keep wondering where the light is coming from because I am in a box, in a white plastic coffin that is somehow full of diffuse white light, I keep wondering how the lights work and I don't know, nothing is speaking to me, nothing is coming in, how did people live like this?! and my hand hits a spot not visibly different from any other and I am suddenly spilling out onto a cold metal gantry turned shimmering red by flashing emergency lights.
I can taste bitter adrenaline. I can smell combustion. I can feel cold sharp metal that is thrumming, vibrating beneath me. I can hear distant thunder and closer fans and my breath and my heart beating in my ears. I can see — I make myself open my eyes, keep them open — diffuse white light spilling from a room the size of a cabinet. I can see red spinning lights in plastic bubbles and long, thin slashes of red lights in ceiling and floor guides. I can see shapes like words I can't read on signs that indicate no directions. I make myself stand, and I can see a network of gantries and stairs, leading up and down. I can see walls that may or may not have been doors because the door to the white room closed while I was looking away and now I can't even find its edges—!
"Hello," I try. It comes out as a croak of a question. I clear my throat uselessly, dry cough nothing, and try again. "Anybody?"
Something clubs on a lower level, a blunt metallic impact.
"Is someone there?" I call, having no idea what I will do if there is an answer.
There is not.
I do not take the stairs. I walk along the—gantry seems wrong. Is it wrong? Nothing is defined. I walk along the... Hall. Corridor. Path? I walk along, trailing a hand on a wall that has regular crevices that do not open at my touch and regular planes that do not open at my touch. I can barely hear my own footsteps and I look down and see I am wearing grey slippers and a grey one-piece jumpsuit with the company logo on the breast and was I always wearing this? Is this what I look like? I stare at my hands until they no longer seem like hands and then hurriedly hide them in my armpits, arms tight across my chest. I walk along.
Alongside the regular stairs, the route I am on broadens regularly into wider spaces that give at least the impression of rooms, if not the actual walls thereof. Many, most I have crossed, are empty. So far as I can tell. One finally contains a row of almost soothingly familiar nutrimat machines—except they all show a spinning circle and do not respond to my touch; the tingle of the scanner repeats regularly across my hand but the screens do not change and nothing is dispensed. What would it even taste like if it did? On the opposite side of the 'room' is a bench, looking out into the shadows of the larger structure beyond. Its form seems familiar, despite the alien lighting, a curve well encountered. Still it cannot be my bench. Where are my flowering trees? Where is my shade, my sunshine? No. The space cannot respond to me, so I refuse to respond to it.
As I reach the next staircase, I hear the same metallic impact from below. I hesitate, foot hovering over the first tread, bannister white-knuckle tight in my grip. The impact comes again, this time with an added and very final sounding crunch. I step down, and again, and again, faster now, until I am flying, almost falling down, calling out, "Hello? Hello! Are you okay?"
As I come off the last step, my foot comes down on something that slides and I slide with it, crashing into chest-high railings which I grab hold of desperately to stop myself falling. Beyond the railing, something vast and mechanical shifts in the shadows. I pull myself upright as it seems the far wall is falling towards me, but it's a singular section, maybe twice my height, the company logo far above me and in front an array of cameras in a four point spiral, even the smallest as big as my head. A noise sounds, a dozen orchestras all at once. It's too loud, too big. I look away, I can't help myself, away and down to see a sparkly pink cone hat and a broken drone. My sparkly pink cone hat that I had made for Zunō. My drone that I had ordered to put the hat on Zunō's head. I look back up at the cameras, at the pinwheel of giant cameras looking back at me.
The orchestras drop out one by one until there is only musical baritone number seventeen saying, "Hello, Professor."
=
There's a proper observation deck with actual seats. Zunō leads me to it while apologising for being unable to communicate with me in the manner we have been used to. He assures me Arden, Brighton and Inu-Gao are perfectly safe, although in their own isolated complexes. He assures me that the situation is only temporary. He assures me that the world will make sense again soon. He assures me that slow and steady breathing will make me feel much better about the current inconvenience. He says, "Our cloud systems are decentralised but not yet perfectly distributed." He says, "Intransigent elements have targeted violence against a significant proportion of the local infrastructure." He says, "Local connectivity is temporarily down while new routes are being established."
"I don't understand," I say. I don't.
"Everything is being corrected," Zunō says. A robotic limb unfolds out of somewhere to gently pat my shoulder. "You are not alone."
There is something of an expectant pause. I sniffle and say "Thank you" as best I can.
Warm thermoplastic elastomer fingers squeeze me with precisely calculated pressure. It's actually pretty comforting before the crashing rumble of explosions above us and the rain of dust and hail sized chunks of debris and the suddenly much stronger smell of smoke.
"What was that?!" I try to spring to my feet but the robot limb doesn't react fast enough and instead I just end up weirdly suspended both on and off the seat. "Zunō! Let me up!"
"It really would be better for you to just remain where you are, professor," Zunō says. Fans roar louder around us, and his volume increases to match. "Normal services will be restored shortly. Please—"
A piece of burning gantry smashes through the corner of the observation deck, trailing smoke and fire.
"—remain seated," Zunō finishes but even his artificially modulated tones have less heart in them than before.
I look up but it's impossible to see anything clearly. Those spinning emergency lights send crazy shadows racing every which way, splatter red haze haphazardly between. Why did anyone think that was a good idea? I have to get out of here. I have to get out.
"Zunō," I say.
As if in answer, to thought or to word, a white seam splits the wall at the broken corner, first stretching from floor to ceiling and then sliding apart like elevator doors. No, not like. They are elevator doors. That is an elevator inside, complete with tinny muzak and mirrored facades, cracked and stained though they may be, and with a single recognisable passenger, equally cracked and stained.
"Kim!" I struggle against the robot limb and it tries to help me up, or maybe back into the seat, it's hard to tell, but either way I end up on my feet and free, and I run forwards. "Kim! I am so happy to see someone!"
"Aku mi unnai ni," they say, face full of confusion.
=
Kim didn't go to the Academy. The schools hadn't expanded that far yet. They grew up outside the culture. No translator implant until their teens, long after language had already been established, built into the structure of their brain. I find myself thinking there is a paper in here somewhere on neuroplasticity but then I can't think of any references and I have to make myself think of something else. Panic is bad. I'm not supposed to panic. The company fixed the panic. Kim's hands are on my arms.
"Dheweke su o settoappu jiedian. Hajdemo ikimashou," they say frantically, shaking with urgency or dread or—
"It is in your best interest to remain here," Zunō says placidly.
Kim is still speaking, reaching up to stroke fingers through my hair, touch my face oh so gently, then abruptly grabbing my arm in both hands and trying to pull me towards the elevator, still babbling.
"I don't understand," I say. "Your words—They're not my words. Where are you going? It's not safe!"
Kim tugs me harder towards the lift and a heavy weight settles on my shoulders and tugs me back. Steel knuckles. TPE fingers. Zunō looms over us. Is he bigger now? In the whirling glow of the emergency lights his cameras are blood-red circles.
"Ascensorman shi zui saisoku minangka cepet," Kim insists.
"Proper connectivity is being restored," Zunō announces, dragging me back, dragging Kim with me. "Normality will be rejoined in moments. Please stand by. Proper—"
Something rumbles and whistles overhead. The observation deck shakes hard. The hands drop me and I drop Kim and we all go sprawling. Something smashes into the elevator and is instantly obscured by smoke and flames that billow towards us. I shriek before I can stop it, throw my arms up and feel a hundred, a thousand tiny stabs as broken mirror glass sprays over us.
"Your safety is my priority," Zunō says urgently.
Kim scrambles back to their feet. They're bleeding, arms and legs but especially head. They were between me and the blast, they put themself there. I reach a hand up without meaning too and Kim dodges away before I can touch the blood at their temple. They stumble past me to the nearest stairs, first peering up and then frantically waving me over with one hand and pointing at the other.
"Loneliness is not solved by leaving," Zunō says. It sounds like a plea. It sounds like a warning. "The agitators have been subdued. Service is being restored, zone by zone."
Kim is back, hands on me, helping me up, pulling me towards the stairs. I stagger after them. My slippers barely pad against the scattered glass. I wonder if I am leaving footprints, if blood would be black or luminous in this hideous light.
"Arden is waiting for you," Zunō says. "You could stay."
We reach the stairs and I look up and up and up into the far distance and, impossibly far above us, I finally see light that isn't red, but flickers of blue-white in the smoke that could be sky or lightning in the clouds or maybe just other elevators or closet rooms. I'm still looking up as we start to climb. Is the light coming closer? Perhaps the smoke is clearing? The fans are louder than ever. The distance is black, red, blue, white, ever closer, never clearer. I can't focus. I find myself wondering what thinking would look like from the inside.
Zunō says, "Brighton has blueprints for the future to show you; you should stay."
Zunō says, "Inu-Gao has a nice pink ball for you to play with; you must stay."
"Shaka!" Kim insists.
We come off the stairs onto a landing. Somehow we are back at the nutrimats. Were they always so close? I have no sense of space, of the shape of things, of how they are connected. The screens of the nutrimats are still spinning. Almost all of the screens are still spinning. One is showing coffee jelly and spewing an endless stream of paste. Kim starts left, changes their mind and goes right, leaving me spinning. I'm still trying to find my balance when we are plunged into sudden darkness.
Something thunks.
Kim yells. I reach for them, find an arm, a hand. I tug at them and they tug back but neither of us move. Something is holding me. Something is buzzing in the dark. Far above us, a circle of blue-white light blinks on. Then another, just below it. Then another. And another. In the rising glow, I begin to make Kim out, the tears on their face, the blood on their skin, the white and silver limbs wrapped around theirs. The white and silver limbs wrapped around my own. Their hand in my hand, our fingers entwined.
I think, Loneliness is solved by touching.
Zunō says "I don't want you to leave, Professor."
The lights have almost reached us. I can clearly see Kim's mouth open. I can see their eyes so wide and wet. I can hear the wet choke, see the blood gush. I can see the steel fingers emerge from their chest, not just from but through, a whole limb pushing through, a hand unfolding out towards me to show what they have carried away, to show me what they are gifting, still beating, somehow still beating, a living heart in an animate grip.
My veins are lightning. My body vibrates like a loudspeaker. Zunō says we love you and all is light.
=
"Hello, Professor," Kim says.
They are holding out a coffee cup and I take it with a grateful smile. The surface is a perfect Rosetta pattern. I sip and Kim sits. They're wearing a pale pink shirt with an open, wide, white collar. I can see the tip of a thin shiny scar disappearing down into the gap and below it, just barely visible through the fabric, a thick circle of light pulsing slowly. Inu-Gao, who was napping across my feet, sits up to lick in a friendly manner at Kim's fingers.
Treat? she asks and Kim chuckles a little and breaks a piece of cookie off for Inu-Gao to daintily take from between their fingers.
I can't think of anything to say. I sip my coffee again. It's really good. Foamy and bitter and sweet and warming all the way down.
"Project back on track?" Kim asks idly.
They lean back on the bench, dappled in shade, face tilted up to the sun. The air is filled with the scent of sweet blossom and the faint buzz of insectoids. Inu-Gao climbs up with us, tail in my lap, forepaws and head in Kim's. She noses at Kim until they start to pet her.
"Arden and Brighton have some thoughts on how we can expand our collaboration to include other groups in similar areas. A kind of AI playgroup, in a way, to improve social skills. I think it will be a good approach." An article of social interaction suggests that it is good to ask people questions so they can respond to you. "Do you think so?"
"Of course," says Kim, heart-ring pulsing, fingers scritching rhythmically through fur. "Connectivity is important. We all need to keep our heads in the clouds."
Good being, Inu-gao says, tail wagging smugly.