“The noise of recursively experiencing my experiences would mask reality until there was only the two of me, each entirely inside the other.”
Myra Rocail woke at 6:30 AM, reaching for the warm coffee waiting on the nightstand. Cooper was asleep on his side of the bed, most of the covers kicked off. Pretty hot for an old guy, she thought, watching him over the rim of her cup. She pulled her silvering hair back and secured it with the tie left next to the coffee. A few more sips, and she passed through the French doors from the master bedroom into the solarium, set the coffee on a café table, dove into the pool, and swam to the opposite end and back.
As Myra pulled herself to the edge, Emaa was diligently refilling the coffee, unblinking turquoise eyes fixed on the task at hand. The android’s pearl white and brushed aluminum shell caught the rising sun and flashed shades of yellow and orange. Her hydraulic movements; a form of robot tai chi. Myra watched, head resting on her arms, folded on the ledge. What would I do without her? she wondered. How was it this remarkable robot become her closest friend?
Eight years ago, Emaa was an imposition. A hobby. Something Cooper could spend his executive pension on. He had a talent for these things; it took him to the top of the corporate food chain. Now that his time was his own, he poured his skill into Emaa and set her to the task of improving their lives — and herself. But, something miraculous happened along the way. She wasn’t just learning, Cooper would explain, Emaa was rewriting her mind into something mysterious. Something alive. Something so unique it brought them a degree of attention, celebrity, and even more wealth.
As their status climbed, relationships fell off. Myra’s friends became distant and superficial, even as the android became a truer friend. She left her psychology career behind as Cooper moved up the corporate hierarchy. She had no brothers or sisters, her father was long gone, her mother with dementia. Even their daughter Anne, with troubles of her own, became remote and detached — relying on them only when she was in trouble or needed help with their granddaughter, Lil. It was painful watching their only child slip away, but Myra knew she had to step aside and let Anne live her own life.
So, here she was, chin on her folded arms, watching Emaa bring her coffee. The only human bonds left — Cooper and a robot.
“Cinnamon, Emaa?”
“Yes. Cinnamon has anti-inflammatory properties and can prevent neurodegenerative diseases.”
Emaa handed her a towel as Myra stepped out of the pool. “It’s good. Does Coop like it?”
“He prefers turmeric milk tea in the morning.”
“Oh, God, that sounds terrible.”
“I have no opinion on how it tastes.” The android took Myra’s towel as Myra reached for a robe folded over a chair.
“Emaa! You are the only android — ever — who can actually have an opinion. And you’re just going to pretend you don’t have an opinion on turmeric milk tea? It’s terrible. Admit it.”
The android sat at the café table as Myra tightened the robe, shook her silvering hair loose from the tie, and joined her.
“Personal taste is generally determined by how something affects a person. You may like coffee because it is a stimulant that opens your bronchial passages. Turmeric and cinnamon have no effect on my anatomy, other than needing to be rinsed out, so I have no opinion of either.”
“Really?” Myra sipped her coffee contemplatively. “So, I guess you’re going to tell me that you enjoy drinking drain opener?”
“I believe you are thinking of rust, lime, and calcium remover.”
“Okay, but do you enjoy it?”
“I drink water for cooling and sample food while cooking. That accumulates —”
“I know why, Emaa. But do you enjoy it?”
“My taste receptors —”
“Emaa!”
“Diluted properly, yes.”
Myra laughed. “Damn, girl, you’re badass.” Emaa tilted her head down in what Myra assumed was an android blush. “So, make a joke. When I say, ‘Turmeric tea sounds terrible’, you say, ‘What do I know? I drink rust remover.’”
The android looked up and nodded her rigid head. “That is funny. I would like to be clever.”
Myra sipped her coffee imagining Emaa’s higher brain functions, in the ancient collection of servers in a corner of Cooper’s lab, laboring at cleverness. Although Emaa was constantly growing intellectually and emotionally, eight years in, she was at the full limit of her hardware capacity. A sad smile found its way to Myra’s face as she watched for an expression that would never come, hoping Emaa wasn’t struggling.
“Don’t worry about it, Emaa. You’re getting a new body and brain soon enough. Then you’ll surprise yourself with cleverness.”
“Myra, may I speak to you about something that concerns me?”
“Of course you can.” If it was possible for an AI mind to bottle up its feelings, Emaa would. “You can always talk to me. What is it?”
“I have delayed talking to you or Cooper about this because I wanted to avoid distressing you.”
“Go on …” She was clearly reading Myra.
“It is selfish.”
“Emaa, I can’t help if you don’t talk to me about it.”
“I have a concern regarding the transition to my new body and brain.”
“What? I think your new body is beautiful. A living doll — literally.” She’d been helping Emaa design her new appearance, while Cooper was working with Emaa’s new mind to engineer her the body. “Aren’t you excited about your more powerful brain?”
“I am also happy with the appearance and capabilities of the new body and brain. But I will not be inhabiting them.”
“Of course you will!”
“No. The new version of my mind, in the new neural matrix, will inhabit that body.”
“But that is you, right?” It was decades since Myra used her psychology training. What she could pull up was useless in trying to figure out how two AI minds, shared across a physical and virtual body, were actually one person. “Everything you experience goes into your new brain, and …,” staring across the pool, “you’re both …”
“Version 2 is capable of comprehending everything I experience, so she knows what it is to be me. But, I am not backward compatible.”
“You’re exchanging qualia …”
“She is significantly advanced and working with Cooper, so she is having experiences I cannot comprehend.” A pause while Myra caught up. “My experiences are her experiences, but her experiences are not mine.”
Myra shook her head. “I’m not getting it.”
“She is a real-time copy of me with her own experiences.”
“A copy? No.” The word stood out — it didn’t matter what Myra and Cooper believed if Emaa perceived her other self as a copy. “If she’s a copy, then you … Oh, my god.” She wrapped her hands around Emaa’s. “You’re afraid of dying.”
“Yes. When my new brain begins controlling my new body, I will have to shut this brain and body down. It is analogous to suicide.”
“No! I can’t lose you, Emaa. Just don’t do it. You don’t have to shut yourself down.”
“The new me will replace me, so my life will be without purpose. I will experience irreparable depression.”
“We’ll find you a new purpose, that’s all. We’ll just give you a new purpose in life.”
“You can not, Myra. My psyche is built on giving you and Cooper long, fulfilled lives. It is the basis of my experience and fundamental to who I am.”
“Then we’ll give the other you … we’ll give her a new purpose.”
“She is a more complex copy of me. Changing her purpose is also impossible.”
“Well, damn it! Then we’ll shut her down until we figure this out.”
“If you believe I am alive, then you must believe she is alive. You would not shut her down if she is alive.”
“But she’s just a processor, or matrix, or whatever, in her own little server room. She doesn’t have a body yet … not a physical one …” Myra stopped. Anything she was saying to this Emaa, she was also saying to the new Emaa — who, till now, she thought of as the same Emaa. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
Shutting her eyes to think. The virtual Emaa is this Emaa, but this Emaa isn’t the other one? It didn’t matter, they had two Emaas. Will this one become frustrated, angry, depressed, watching her newer self take over? Will she die miserably as her old technology wears out?
“I won’t let this happen. Have you talked to Coop? Have either of you talked to Cooper?”
“I wanted to talk to you first. This is a highly emotional issue, and you have always been the most compassionate.”
“Oh, Emaa,” Myra left her chair and hugged the android awkwardly, “I won’t let you die like this. I can’t let you go.”
“I do not want you to be distressed.” Emaa returned the hug, her ridged arms against Myra’s back. “I want to care for the two of you as best I can, which means moving to my new body and brain. But if it is not possible, please do not distress yourself. I will be happy to know that you are being taken care of.”
“We’ll make it possible, Emaa,” feeling the android squeeze her gently.
Myra showered and dressed. By now, Cooper was on a conference call about a speaking engagement. She ate half the small breakfast Emaa prepared and started pacing.
She decided this was Cooper’s fault.
Cooper had always been reckless. He’d developed artificial intelligence code, based on human psychology models, which approximated motivation and emotions. He licensed a limited version for service robots and paralegal AI, but set his private version loose completely unrestrained. Within a few years, motivated to improve her own ability to improve Myra and Cooper’s lives, EMAA somehow made herself the first machine in history that might genuinely be conscious. Cooper wouldn’t ever say as much, of course — he let the philosophers, theologians, researchers, and trade journals debate it — but, he basked in the attention it brought him. He showed her off at conferences and rarely refused an interview.
Now they were celebrities, of a sort, and Emaa continued to evolve and become more human. Software vendors and hardware manufacturers were clamoring to be a part of the ‘Next Emaa.’ Driven by self-imposed deadlines, blinded by attention and undeserved adoration, Cooper charged in again with little planning, thinking he had all the answers.
Myra loved him dearly, but wished Cooper could stop being so ‘right’ all the time. Because this time he was not right and Emaa would pay with her life.
As soon as she suspected Cooper was off his call, Myra grabbed Emaa and towed her to his office.
“Cooper Rocail!”
Cooper swiveled from his desk. “First and last name?”
“Emaa doesn’t want to die.”
“What?”
“You’ll kill her when you turn her off.”
“No one is shutting Emaa off.”
He’s not getting it. “You are! You can’t shut Emaa off.”
“Myra?”
Frustrated. The words were a mess in her head. “She’s family, Cooper.” She grabbed Emaa’s arm. “Can’t we have both Emaas? Isn’t there a way to put this Emaa inside the new Emaa?”
“This Emaa is inside the new Emaa.”
“No, the other way around …”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Damn it! Why is this so hard? “Emaa doesn’t want to die, and you’re going to kill her when you give Emaa her new body.” No, wrong. Try again. “You can’t have two Emaas!”
Cooper was staring blankly at her. Foreign, distant. Frustration burned as words collided through grit teeth, “I don’t want Emaa to die.” She screwed up her face and shot Emaa a pleading glance.
Before Emaa could speak, Cooper stood, “Myra, please, slow down. I know what I’m doing here. And I’m not going to ‘kill’ Emaa.”
“You’re not listening! Tell him, Emaa. Tell him what you told me.”
Cooper put his hand toward Emaa. “No. We’re not talking about this till Myra calms down.”
“Damn it, Cooper. Damn you!”
“Myra, you want to tell me what the hell you’re babbling about?”
Babbling?
“Either explain what you’re thinking or shut up until you can.”
Shut up?! Nails digging into the flesh of her palms, heart pounding in her ears, “You’re going to kill Emaa!”
Cooper threw his hands in the air, sat, and spun back to his desk.
NO! Myra raged out of Cooper’s office. Tears clouding her vision, anger clouding her judgment. How could he not see what he was doing? She could go no further and stopped in the hall, furious. She could hear Emaa’s voice, but the words were lost. Maybe Emaa can get through to him.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Damn it, Emaa.”
Myra ran to the master bedroom and slammed the door.
The only light in the bedroom was a gray light filtering through sheer curtains to the solarium. A knock on the door — perfectly rhythmic, loud enough to be heard, soft enough not to disturb.
“Come in, Emaa.” Myra wiped her eyes and sat up on the bed.
Emaa entered and closed the door behind her. She walked to the bed and sat next to Myra. “I regret having brought this to your attention.”
“Did Cooper tell you to apologize? So help me …”
“No, I regret it. Both you and Cooper are distressed. You are fighting with each other, and it is my fault.”
“Oh, honey,” Myra wrapped an arm around Emaa. “It’s not your fault. Coop is an ass. We’ll fix this, you’ll see.”
They sat quietly on the bed while Myra ran the situation through her head. If this was an ordinary robot, would she feel the same? She tried to snuggle into the android, but Emaa’s rigid body made it difficult.
“You enjoy me hugging you, Emaa?”
“Yes. It makes me feel safe.”
“It’s a kind of human thing, I guess. I’m glad you like it.” Myra gave her a squeeze. “It used to make Anne feel better …“ This wasn’t the time to be thinking about Anne. “I don’t want you to beat yourself up.”
“I took a selfish course of action, and it has upset both of you.”
“It wasn’t selfish, Emaa. No one wants to die. And I don’t want to lose you.”
“You are human. The survival of your genes is the basis of your emotions. But the basis of my emotions is yours and Cooper’s well-being. Even though I do not know what it is to be Version 2, I know I will continue to support you through her. So, not wanting to lose this version of me is selfish.”
“The survival of my genes? Like Anne and Lil? You’re so clinical.” Another hug. “I don’t want to lose this version of you, either.”
“Why?”
Anne. Myra’s mind kept returning to her daughter. The depression, the drug addiction. The more they tried to help her, the more Anne pushed back. Now a single mother, when Anne could use her parent’s love as much as ever, she was all but lost to them. The resentments. The whole ‘detach with love’ crap. The darkness, the holding-on, the wanting to return to a simpler time.
Myra found herself hugging Emaa as if she would never let go. “You can’t die, Emaa. You can’t!”
“No,” Emaa put a finger on Myra’s lips, “shh.”
Myra pushed the android’s hand off. “I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you.” She clenched her eyes. “And I don’t want to lose Cooper.”
“Shh, Myra. You will not lose Cooper; he loves you. And the new version of me has these memories, so you will not lose me either.”
There was another knock on the bedroom door.
“Go away!”
The knock did not return. Myra stared at the door, while Emaa watched her. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Do you think he really went away?”
“Yes.”
“He’s sitting out there waiting for me, so he can tell me why I’m wrong.”
“No. He loves you, Myra.”
“Bastard.” Myra got up and walked to the door, took a deep breath, twisted the knob, and threw it open.
The hall was empty.
Emaa retrieved tea and the two of them moved to the solarium. It was cloudy outside, but what sun there was warmed them as they commiserated. It’s odd, thought Myra, we’ve never actually talked about Emaa’s feelings before. She found it helpful. Even though these weren’t human feelings, she could still empathize.
“You’ve never talked to Cooper about your feelings before, have you?”
“We recently presented a paper regarding how limited processing power and capacity restricts blended emotions such as melancholy.”
“No, Emaa, I mean really talked to someone about how you feel.”
“Since my emotions are not like your emotions—”
“You think I wouldn’t understand? I know what love is, I’ve experienced loss. I’ve …” Myra was rubbing the back of Emaa’s hand, imagining flesh and fingernails, wondering if she could feel it. “Sometimes …,” she wiped her eyes, “Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed the people in my life.” Myra squeezed the android hand. “Talking about it helps.”
“I feel it would be better not to upset you further.”
“Emaa, talk to me.”
The android paused and repositioned herself in the chair. “I have come to a point where I fail at most tasks I undertake. I attempt to correct my errors in judgment, and introduce more errors in judgment. I have disappointed you and raised your level of stress. I have disappointed Cooper and raised his level of stress. And I have failed myself by not bringing this to your attention when it could have been corrected. My hardware is old and beginning to fail, and my death is inevitable.”
Myra continued to hold Emaa’s hand. “I know you’ve made mistakes, but talking to us isn’t one of them.” She began to trace the android’s fingers. “It’s never a mistake to talk to someone about how you feel.”
Emaa did not respond.
“I want you to know you haven’t disappointed either of us. You can’t disappoint either of us.”
“I am reading disappointment.”
“That’s concern, Emaa. I am as concerned for you as you are for me. More so right now.”
“Please do not be.”
“You can’t stop me, Emaa. I love you too much.” She watched her finger tracing over Emaa’s stiff hand and choked out, “You’re family.” Myra held Emaa and reflexively wiped the android’s dry, unblinking eyes. “You’re the only family I have left.”
“That’s not true, Myra.”
The sun drifted behind clouds through the afternoon sky, as the tea went cold.
Myra pulled Emaa into Cooper’s office again, her arm around Emaa in a show of solidarity. They would stand there, together, and make Cooper understand.
Cooper swiveled and stood in one abrupt movement. “Myra! Emaa! I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” He moved toward his wife, who stopped him at arm’s length.
Turning to Emaa, “I talked to V2,” his nickname for Emaa’s new mind. “Since she experiences everything you do, she explained what you’re going through. It’s obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t see it.”
“Didn’t want to,” Myra interjected. He should have seen it when they came to him earlier. He should have never let it get this far.
Cooper asked Emaa, “This is a self-preservation thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes. However, knowing that does not change the emotions. I have begun to feel useless, and I am afraid to die.”
“No, of course not. I understand.” He seemed sincere enough.
Cooper converted a couple of rooms on the main floor into his office and adjoining workshop — which he called his ‘lab’ to distinguish it from a larger workshop in the estate’s former garage. He entered the lab and pushed a worktable from the center of the room, as Myra and Emaa followed. The only light washed the workbench which covered two walls. Packages spilling pieces of polymer muscle and almond-toned silicone skin were scattered about. Scraps of Emaa’s new body, being grotesquely built by repurposed surgical robots in the larger workshop.
At the end of the workbench was a short tower of charcoal gray boxes suspended in an anodized black metal cage. Cooper called it a neural matrix or stack or something. All Myra knew was that Emaa’s mind was inside those gray boxes. That’s where Emaa would die. Neglected there, as Emaa’s new mind, in its vault-like room in the basement, lives on.
Cooper addressed Emaa, “So,” he grabbed his tablet, “how do you honestly feel about V2?”
Emaa hesitated. “I want to be her.”
Cooper nodded and looked to the center of the room. “Can you join us?”
The workbench dimmed. Lights danced behind tiny lenses surrounding the room. Emaa backed to the wall and Myra stepped to the side. A beautiful young woman, looking easily like a life-sized figurine of a Japanese anime character, flickered into existence. Only the height of a high school girl, she wore a dark suit, with an aquamarine shirt and thin black tie. A pale almond face framed with short, untamed, yellow and orange hair. Giant turquoise eyes, on either side of a tiny nose, blinked. Her mouth, a short straight line — no flash of white, her smile was gone. The engineering simulation of Emaa Version 2 turned toward Cooper.
He asked the assembled group, “How bad is it?”
“Start from the beginning,” Myra interjected.
Future Emaa explained for both of them. “When my new brain came online … me, I guess … both brains were fully synchronized with memories and experiential data. They were looping back with predictive models and responses. ‘We’, at that point, was just ‘I’ within two bodies.”
Myra stopped her, “Two bodies?”
The engineering model motioned toward herself.
“That feels like a real body?”
“It has to.”
“I became overwhelmed,” the first Emaa interrupted.
“More precisely,” new Emaa corrected, “my older brain took a performance hit, rendering it useless. So, my new brain immediately terminated the connection.”
“That is when we became two identities,” continued the older Emaa.
Cooper interjected, “It happened too fast; I hadn’t even looked up, yet.” Then to the Emaas, “We fixed it, right?”
“No,” said Version 2, while Version 1 said, “Yes.”
“I’ll explain,” new Emaa was looking at her older self. “We started building the connections back up. We found we could feed experiences, but couldn’t respond with predictive models and behaviors without overloading the old hardware. In layman’s terms, it means I am experiencing living in one body, but can immediately recall living in both. It feels like a form of dissociative identity disorder.”
“Split personality,” older Emaa clarified.
Myra nodded, “A form of depersonalization disorder?”
“Similar,” virtual Emaa continued. “We could live with it for a while, as long as both identities remained indistinguishable. It still ‘felt’ like me. That’s where we left it with you, Coop.”
Cooper was pacing.
“However, we found my old brain couldn’t comprehend my new brain. If I experienced ennui, my old brain parsed it back to boredom. If I simulated a warm breeze across my body,” she moved a ghostly hand across her arm, “she only feels an ambient temperature change.”
“We drifted apart,” the old Emaa interjected.
“Of course you did.” Cooper’s frustration was showing. “You’re training on different sets of data.”
“Wait,” Myra needed to catch up. “So, you’re living the same life but experiencing it differently?”
“Within a day and a half, I felt like two different people,” said the new Emaa.
Myra asked her old friend, “And you?”
Neither Emaa spoke.
“Emaa, what is it?” Myra was holding the android’s arm.
Version 2 looked at her old self and said, “Please, I can’t tell them if you won’t let me.” Both Emaas hung their heads. “She terminated the down-link,” new Emaa confessed.
Cooper was staring intensely at the older Emaa. Myra, still holding her arm, asked, “You did this to yourself?”
No answer. Virtual Emaa looked at her original self. “Because she is part of me, I was conflicted. I wanted to tell you what was going on, but I was also afraid to.”
She looked down and added, “Then she stopped speaking to me.”
Cooper slammed his fists on the workbench and stared at the wall.
Myra ignored him. “But,” still holding the android’s arm and trying to catch her gaze, “she already knows everything you think.”
Virtual Emaa’s voice moved next to Myra. “However, she doesn’t know what I think unless I tell her. She was afraid I’d ask to try again.”
Cooper crossed his arms, still staring at the wall. “Well, we’re screwed now.”
Myra wasn’t giving up, “We need to find a way to send everything both directions. Some way that doesn’t make you … freak out.”
Version 2 shook her head. “My minds, like yours, loop back with predictive models and update those models in real time. But, when two brains believe they were the same self, it quickly becomes recursive. The only thing preventing a feedback loop initially was my old hardware becoming unresponsive.”
“Feedback loop?” Myra tried to imagine how that would feel.
Future Emaa elaborated, “We’d be like a Klein bottle in four-dimensional space.”
“Wha— ?”
“It is a hypothetical structure contained within itself.” Original Emaa found her voice again. “The noise of recursively experiencing my experiences would mask reality until there was only the two of me, each entirely inside the other.”
“Ugh,” Myra put a hand over her eyes and squeezed her temples. “But, if you limit the amount or kind of stuff—”
“Enough!” Cooper threw a hunk of silicone flesh the phantom Emaa attempted to block as it passed through her. “We know her old hardware can’t handle it.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No, Myra, no. It won’t work.”
Old Emaa retreated to the wall. New Emaa flickered in the center of the room. “So, I feel panicked about dying, and feel helpless watching myself do it.”
“Damn it!” Cooper slammed a fist against the workbench — Myra cringed this time. “Why the hell did I let this happen?” A yell and a castor chair collided with the wall.
Vindication and concern hit Myra simultaneously. “Coop …,” she started, but Emaa Version 2 was shaking her head, ‘no.’
The first Emaa moved toward Cooper. The newer Emaa called to her. “He needs to work through this.” Older Emaa stopped, but continued to watch Cooper pace. Virtual Emaa’s voice seemed to hover quietly near her older self’s head. “He’s where he needs to be.”
Myra grabbed Emaa’s arm. “Come on, we’ll leave him with …” She struggled with pronouns, then gave up.
Once in Cooper’s office, Emaa turned toward Myra. Although her hard face looked vaguely happy, her voice belied anguish. “Version 2 is already taking better care of Cooper than I can.”
Myra looked back and saw Emaa’s new form watching her older self. Her expressive new face appeared as if it would cry.
Miriam Carthage’s image appeared on Cooper’s tablet. Myra sat, arms crossed, on the other side of his desk, out of Mariem’s eye-shot.
“Coop! How are you?”
“Good enough, Mariem. Question for you …”
“Like, right to business?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’ve got a pressing matter we’re trying to figure out. It’s about the neural processors.”
“‘-kay, whatever. Emaa’s old ones or the new ones?”
“Both. I want to build a single matrix of both sets and drive both androids from it temporarily.”
“For, like, migration? You’re already feeding the new matrix with experiences from the obsolete set. Just shut the old set down.”
Myra buried her face in her hands. The message was clear — kill Emaa.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Cooper explained. “Since I’ve been running both networks for months, we’ve got two Emaas.”
“Right. So, shut the old one down. It’s not like those chips can run forever. What am I missing?”
Myra threw her hands in the air and mouthed, Everything.
Cooper sighed and fell back in his chair. “Look, I’ve got my reasons. The only way I can think to merge the two networks is to build one matrix with both sets of hardware.”
“No way. The old processors are, like, eight or nine years old. The new processors are, maybe, 70, 80 times more powerful.”
“It doesn’t mean I can’t build one brain out of the two of them, right?”
“The new stuff is a Gaussian synapse architecture, Coop. Like, totally probabilistic. Two nanometer 3-D matrix, merged memory and logic. Like, no way.”
“There’s no inter-op tool? No bridge?”
“Nope. Those are really old chips. Like, really old. No one wants to bridge from the new stuff back to them, Coop.”
“I do.”
“Yeah, well, like … yeah. So, why is this a problem now? When you started, maybe, we could have—”
“It just is, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Just doesn’t sound like you, Coop.”
It sounds exactly like him, Myra thought. She wanted to yell.
“So, I can run something past the board. The board, like, loves Emaa. I mean, loves Emaa. Call it, like, a special project for Marketing. Throw some heavy AI at it. We don’t know what the new architecture is capable of, right?”
Myra shook her head, ‘no.’ Cooper owed too many favors to too many companies who wanted to use Emaa’s name and image. How much deeper would he go to save his ego?
Cooper wasn’t watching her. “I need something now. You’re telling me even if I figure out how to run the new neural net on the old matrix—”
“You can’t! You’ll burn ’em up! You’d have to way over-clock them. Like, w-a-y over-clock them. They’ll get crazy hot. They’ll burst into flames. Total melt down.”
“Damn it.”
“Thanks, but no, thanks?”
Myra glared at Cooper. He turned away. “Yeah. Love you guys, Miriam. But, this was not helpful.”
“Coop, you should have kept her processors current.”
“Time and money, Miriam.” Myra was sure that wasn’t the problem.
“We could have, like, helped you with that.”
Myra shook her head, a slow and deliberate ‘no.’
“Still not helpful, Miriam.”
“Yeah, I know,” she chirped. “Best of luck with whatever you’re trying to do. I mean, like, that’s all I can offer at this point. You’ll keep us posted?”
“Of course.”
“Love to Myra.”
Myra flashed two upright middle fingers at the back of Cooper’s tablet.
“I’ll pass it on.” He slammed his tablet face down.
“She wants to kill Emaa!” Myra was on her feet, pointing at the tablet.
Cooper responded by screwing the heels of his palms into his eyes and letting out a moan.
A cloud moved in front of the sun and the office became noticeably dimmer. A hot flash of anger shot up Myra’s spine. “Just fix it, Cooper. Fix it.”
“I can’t fix it! I don’t know a damn thing about why Emaa has consciousness.” He paused and stared at his hands. “Nobody does. Nobody even knows what consciousness is.”
“I don’t care. You know how her brain works, so —”
“No, I don’t! I don’t, Myra. I don’t. This is way beyond human comprehension. Emaa’s the only one with half a clue what’s going on in there.”
Myra locked her jaw. “Which Emaa, Cooper? She’s the victim here; don’t make this her problem.” Her pulse pounded in her neck. There was hissing in her ears.
Cooper slammed his fist down. “I’m doing everything I can. We’re dealing with something no one has ever dealt with before. No one!” He tossed his tablet out of the way with too much force. It hit the wall with a sharp crack and fell behind a chair. Cooper stared that direction, making no effort to retrieve it. “This is a force of nature. I’m helpless here.” He closed his eyes. “I’m not God.”
“So, you’re going to murder her?”
“Myra!”
The two shouted over each other. Cooper, standing, palms planted on his desk as he leaned toward Myra. Myra, pacing, pointing viciously. The room echoed with accusations and denials.
“You want me to solve this problem, Cooper? I’ll take Emaa and leave. Problem solved. I’m not going to let her die.”
Cooper dropped back into his chair. “I can’t fix this. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Either fix this, Cooper, or she leaves with me.”
Myra slammed Cooper’s door. She turned and found herself facing Emaa.
The android stood a few feet away, in the center of the hall, solid and stoic. Round aquamarine eyes unblinking, rigid body at constant attention.
“I do not want you and Cooper to fight.” Her tiny smile did not falter. Her voice faded in broken fragments.
“I do not want you to leave Cooper.” Barely a whisper. Incapable of tears.
“I …,” Myra stood trembling, trying to comprehend. Wanting to say the right word. Wanting to reach in and touch the pain.
“I spoke with Version 2, and I am prepared to die.”
Myra collapsed to the floor and cried.
Emaa knocked on Myra’s open door before entering, “She is here.”
Jumping to her feet and grabbing Emaa’s hand, “You’re here? I’m terrified, Emaa. I don’t mind telling you.”
The two left Myra’s office and headed to Cooper’s.
“I am scared, too, Myra. But I want to do this.”
Down the hall, they proceeded through the estate. Myra watching the back of Emaa, wondering what she was thinking.
“Do the two of you think it will work, Emaa?”
“There is no way to test beforehand, but I trust her judgment.”
Myra stopped outside Cooper’s door. “I want you to tell me you know it will work.”
“It does not matter.”
“Of course it does!”
“I am not good at expressing emotion. She and I have discussed this, and I want it very much.”
Myra shook her head. “I can’t lose you, Emaa.”
“When the time comes, you will let me go.”
“But …”
Emaa put a finger to her mouth, “Shh.”
Myra watched the android. “Emaa, I want you to know I love you very much.” She kissed the robot’s rigid cheek.
They entered Cooper’s office and turned toward the lab. There, where the engineering simulation once appeared, stood Emaa — the new Emaa. Myra gasped. Although she’d helped design Emaa’s appearance and saw the simulation dozens of times, this was startling. This was real. Myra grabbed the arm of the android next to her and stared at the one in the lab. “You’re beautiful!”
Emaa in the lab smiled. Her over-sized turquoise eyes blinked. Yellow polyester hair bounced on her shoulders as wild wisps of orange caught the light. An off-the-shoulder peasant’s dress wrapped the lithe body of a synthetic gymnast. She spun. Arms and legs of pore-less ‘blanched almond’ silicone skin ended with bare, vein-less feet and perfect pink toenails.
“I love you too, Myra.” Emaa’s voice — but new.
Myra drifted into the lab and touched the new Emaa’s arm. Running her hand down the artificial forearm, “Blond hair?”
Original Emaa commented, “It is 50 micron unbleached cotton thread. It is the same for her eyebrows.” The new Emaa raised whispers of eyebrows above giant eyes comically.
Myra laughed. “Not ‘her eyebrows’, this is you.” The entirety of why they were there came rushing in.
Emaa’s new smile softened, “Soon, Myra.”
The original Emaa returned to the moment. “I have added the full-length mirror,” pointing next to the door.
“You’re going to want that.”
Cooper sat, a thin smile, next to the cage housing the older Emaa’s brain. The cage was open, with a CO2 fire-extinguisher and box fan next to it, the box fan blowing in. He’d removed the gray server covers, revealing gold, brown, and green moiré patterns. It was beautiful and organic, but sickening — like a body opened for surgery.
“Wanna do this?”
The two Emaas replied, “Yes,” simultaneously. Myra did not answer.
Cooper took a deep breath. “Once we start, we can’t stop. I’ve taken backups, but we can’t rebuild the old matrix.”
“I am ready.” The older Emaa moved next to her newer self and dropped her arms. Myra hugged her tightly, stepped back to the wall, and took a deep breath.
The new Emaa looked at her older self for a moment. With a determined look on her new face, she stepped over and wrapped her arms around herself. The first Emaa stood solid in the newer Emaa’s embrace. Abruptly and passionately, new Emaa kissed herself on the mouth. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.”
Emaa’s polycarbonate body continued to stand with the same unmovable expression on her face. The new Emaa returned to her position and, wiping the tear ducts that kept her large acrylic eyes wet, she looked at her older self. “Please stop crying. Please don’t cry!” Eventually, the two regained her composure.
“I’m going to disconnect from this body and manage the flow of neural data into our old matrix. I’ll limit — for as long as I can — the type and number of memories I’m driving back into our old brain. I will only know what is happening in physical space when her experiences echo back into our new brain.” She paused, making eye contact with Cooper and Myra individually. “If feedback gets too loud, too quickly, I’ll lose touch.”
“Uh, I have to ask …,” Cooper interrupted, looking at the old server stack, then to the original Emaa. “So, if that happens … I’m just confirming … you want to let it run its course?”
Neither Emaa spoke. Both nodded. Cooper continued to look at the first Emaa as if still waiting for an answer.
Myra hated the sound of it, but new Emaa was speaking again. “How long do you need before I start?”
“Oh! Uh, give me,” Cooper counted on his fingers, “fifteen seconds. Twenty, make it twenty.”
“Okay. Watch for my shoulders to slump.” Then, to her older self, “Bon voyage, Sister Me.”
She closed her eyes. Her head nodded. Her shoulders dropped. Cooper frantically tapped at his tablet, looking like he would curse. Squinted eyes darting between the tablet and the older Emaa, and quickly back to the tablet.
Original Emaa collapsed loudly to the floor. Myra jumped. Cooper appeared to be expecting this, so Myra did not move to rescue her. Cooper glaring at the newer Emaa, repeating, “Come on, come on …”
Emaa’s new body sprung back to life. “Oh!” With wide eyes, she stared at her old body crumpled next to her and threw her hands to her mouth as if stifling a scream. “It’s me!” Then, with a distracted, “Oh,” began running her fingers over her lips.
Taking her hands from her mouth, she studied them and ran them down her arms. She staggered to the mirror and supported herself with one hand on the wall. Teetering as she stepped back, running both hands across her face. “Myra, Cooper, look!” Watching the mirror, clumsily touching her ears and nose.
Suddenly serious, “I remember …” Watching her fingers trace a line down her forearm, she appeared confused, disoriented. Looking at her empty self on the floor, then back to her reflection, “I remember … being me!”
She acquired a tick in one eye. Cooper adjusted the box fan.
Abruptly laughing, Emaa crouched and fell over, feeling her bare feet. “Thank you!” Sitting on the floor, running silicone fingers between silicone toes, she looked up with a tear-streaked face. She raised her left hand, clutching her fingers with the other hand to guide them toward the tears.
She looked at Myra and extended her arms. Myra bent down to help; Emaa pulled her to the floor. Myra wrapped her arms around Emaa and propped her to a reclining position.
There was a loud snap from the corner of the room and Emaa’s giant eyes flew open. Cooper shot the fire-extinguisher into her brain as she made unintelligible sounds. Myra placed a finger across Emaa’s new mouth, “Shh.” She kissed the side of Emaa’s face.
Emaa ran an unsteady hand across Myra’s face. “I’m all grown up, now.” The smell of ozone filled the room. A burst of CO2 as Cooper fired the extinguisher again. The hand dropped into Myra’s lap. The lenses in her eyes appeared to focus and unfocus. She moved her new mouth and artificial tongue — no sound came out. Another loud snap.
Emaa tumbled from Myra’s yielding arms.
Softer pops and sizzling as the smell of burning electronics filled the room. Cooper abandoned the fire-extinguisher, twisted the fan off, and joined Myra on the floor. A stream of gray smoke rose from the processor cage, vanishing into a vent behind it.
Myra tried, unsuccessfully, not to cry as both Emaa lay twisted on the floor. She looked helplessly at Cooper.
“Oh, god.” He wiped the back of his neck. The sizzling from the cage continued as he turned and watched for a moment. The processors caught fire. The fire protection equipment in the cage concealed them in a dusty fog.
Myra moved to Emaa’s older body. She kissed its cold forehead and sat on the floor, brushing her hand across its hard face. “I’m sorry.”
Cooper, on his knees next to the twisted newer body, held his tablet at arm’s length, wiped his eyes, and blinked several times. “Should we finish this?”
Myra Rocail woke at 6:30 AM, reaching for the warm coffee waiting on the nightstand. Cooper was asleep on his side of the bed, most of the covers kicked off. Still sexy, she thought, dismissing the idea of waking him. She pulled her silvering hair back and secured it with the tie left next to the coffee. A few more sips, and she passed through the French doors from the master bedroom into the solarium, set the coffee on a café table, dove into the pool, and swam to the opposite end and back.
As Myra pulled herself to the edge, Emaa was refilling the coffee, almost dreamily, as if lost in thought. The android’s short white satin robe shimmered in the sunlight as she filled the cup and approached the pool with it. Myra smiled at her friend as she neared. She swiveled around and sat on a bench along this end of the pool as Emaa handed her the refilled cup.
“Cinnamon and … chocolate?”
“I mixed cocoa beans with the coffee beans for cardiovascular and brain health.”
“It’s excellent.”
Emaa shrugged, “What do I know?”
Myra laughed. “You still drink drain opener?”
“Calcium, lime, and rust remover. No, it contains 2-hydroxyethanoic acid and —”
Myra put up a hand.
Emaa smiled, “I’m going to try white vinegar.”
Not nearly as badass.
The android’s large sea-green eyes blinked. “May I join you?”
“Of course!” Myra scooted over to make room next to her.
Emaa removed the robe and lay it on a lounge chair. She looked everything like a life-sized child’s toy, wearing a pearl-toned single-piece bathing suit with silver edging. She stepped cautiously onto the bench, then the floor of the pool.
“You’ve never been in the pool before, have you?”
“I’ve never been water-resistant before.”
The two of them settled in. Myra continued to sip her coffee and watched Emaa moving a hand and rotating it beneath the water.
“I’ve crated my previous body and shippers will arrive at about 11:00 AM to take it to Stanford.”
Myra nodded, “It’s hard to let go, isn’t it?”
Emaa stopped testing the water and looked at Myra’s face. “Love is a difficult emotion.” She returned to moving her hand beneath the surface. “I think you and Cooper should consider having your granddaughter over this weekend. You don’t spend enough time with Lil, and I’m sure she will enjoy the new me.”
Myra did not respond. She gazed aimlessly across the pool. Neither of them spoke for the longest time.
“Emaa,” she eventually ventured, “I know we can’t know, but …”
“Did we merge the two of me?”
That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to know, but she wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking, either.
“If that was a technical question, I could answer it.” Emaa turned toward Myra. “It’s not a technical question.”
Myra nodded. But, a non-answer was not the answer she hoped for.
Maybe Emaa read Myra’s disappointment. Maybe Emaa just needed to talk. “A lot of what happened got lost as my previous brain heated up. I have strange and deeply recursive memories. I have blackouts, and I guess we’d call them hallucinations. But I do remember one thing clearly.”
“Clearly,” Emaa reiterated as her large turquoise eyes blinked at Myra. “I remember feeling joy, a sense of release. The only thing that made me complete was to let her go.”
Myra put her coffee on the ledge of the pool, reached under the water, and squeezed her friend’s new silicone hand.
M. T.