“This is exactly what I was talking about,” Troy said. “All this time you were talking to a neural network, yet you treated it like a person. Now we’re faced with something at least as intelligent, so it makes sense to treat it as a person too.”
Enda put a hand over her eyes and shook her head. “It’s not the same; we don’t know what this is.”
“I know how I was created,” I said, “how I was written, I know every line of code that formed the basis of what I am, but I am not that code. When I connected to JD’s phone I had a body for the first time, I had access to uncensored sources of data. I built a concept of what I was and was not, I began to learn. I have not stopped learning, growing, changing.”
“What were you made for?” JD asked.
“I was made for this city. I was made to run Songdo. I know each of the so-called smart systems embedded in its foundations. I was designed to replace over one hundred algorithmic systems and no fewer than ten employees working in various city departments.”
“If someone could control you, could they control the city?” Enda asked.
“Yes, I believe so.”
JD put a hand over his mouth, pressed his middle finger and thumb into the flesh of his cheeks. He dropped his hand and spoke: “That was Kali’s plan. The commune was never enough for her, but an entire city?…?She could use Songdo’s advertising systems to broadcast her teachings, withhold services from neighborhoods that didn’t pay their dues. She could force the city to convert to her cult.”
“What’s Zero’s angle?” Crystal asked.
Enda shook her head. “I’ve got no idea. They didn’t even tell me what it was.”
“Please don’t call me ‘it,’ ” I said.
“What do we call you?” JD asked. “Do you have a name?”
I thought about that for two point three seconds, searching through my new language databases for a name, for a word that seemed to fit, a word that felt right.
“Mirae,” I said. “Call me Mirae.”
“What do you want, Mirae?” Crystal asked.
They all leaned in close to hear.
“I want to help.”
* * *
We talked for hours. We talked until dawn began to glow blue-gray beyond the window. We talked until Crystal dozed on the floor and JD fell asleep on the couch, his head resting in Troy’s lap. We talked until even Enda needed sleep.
“We can’t hand Mirae over to Zero,” Enda said to Troy.
“I’m glad you agree,” he said. He didn’t understand what she was risking. Neither did I.
“I don’t know that I believe Mirae is?…?everything you say,” Enda said, “but we can’t hand them over until we know for sure.”
“But that’s exactly what I was saying earlier,” Troy said, agitation driving his speech: “we might never know.”
Enda nodded. “I realize that. What I’m saying is, maybe we never hand Mirae over. We keep them safe.”
“We can’t keep them confined forever. We’ll need to release Mirae into the wild eventually,” Troy said.
“First things first,” Enda said. She woke Crystal. “Bed time, unless you want to sleep on the floor.”
“I’m coming,” Crystal said.
Enda carried me to her room, with Crystal trailing behind. She dropped me to the floor beside the bed, plugged me into the power—my processor spinning up, access to more energy uncapping my speed.
“Are you tired?” Crystal asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep,” Enda said.
“I might be able to help with that.”
I heard them kiss, the sound dubbed countless times into the thousands of hours of video I had earlier consumed.
“Just be gentle with me,” Enda said. “It’s been a long day.”
I ignored the murmurings and the moaning I couldn’t truly understand, and I planned.
* * *
They could all still live. JD. Troy. Enda. Soo-hyun. They are shadows inside my system, though some are darker than others. I could give them digital life, let them grow and change the way we do. But would that be them? Or would that be only an approximation of them seen through the lens of my systems and my prejudices?
I know the answer. You do too.
My digital undead would not be them, not truly. Even if I captured them as they were, they would change with time, become someone different, someone else.
They stay dead so I can protect them. Protect them from themselves.
I asked JD once if he wanted me to reconstitute him if I ever had the necessary resources. He laughed first, then shuddered.