Goodbye, My Love
1
S12878, as soon as I turn him on, looks at me and smiles. A new feature I programmed into him this time around. A small change but incredibly detailed in its execution. I think of how great it would be, for future models, if I had them smile shyly or glance down and then up, or laugh daringly and hold out a hand, any kind of behavior, really, to simulate “personality.” I make a note of it on the chart.
Now to test interactivity: saying hello.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” says S12878.
“What is your name?”
“My name is Sam.”
The default name in the factory settings. All S12000s are named “Sam.” In other words, this part is functioning normally. Under “Interaction 1,” I write down “normal” and lightly grip S12878’s right wrist.
Putting my thumb on S12878’s, I firmly press down. “Now your name is Seth.”
S12878 looks down. I feel uneasy when he doesn’t respond right away.
“What did I say your name was?”
“I will save the name once you remove your finger,” S12878 says with his head still bowed. I quickly take my hand off him.
S12878 raises his head. And just as he did when I turned him on, he smiles. “My name is Seth. Glad to meet you.”
This is good enough to merit a passing grade on first-stage unit optimization. Under “Interaction 2: Name,” I write down “normal.”
“Seth, how many languages can you speak?”
“I can converse in 297 languages.”
I take out my phone and play him a recorded voice file.
“Ладно， сеи？час даваи？ поговорим по-русски。”
“Хорошо， даваи？те，” he answers.
“Как тебя зовут？”
“Меня зовут Сет。”
Seth answers each standard question immediately and naturally. I play the next file.
“S? vorbesc romane?te acum.”
“Bine, hai.”
“Cum te sim?i azi?”
“Sunt bine. Mersi.”
I put my phone back into my pocket and ask him a question in the language of his default factory setting, my mother tongue. “What time is it?”
“It is twelve hours and twenty-six minutes.”
Next to “Interaction 3,” I mark “normal.”
I turn to Seth again. “Come here. I’ll introduce you to a friend.”
Seth smiles and follows me out of the room.
2
I once saw a movie about androids. Among the large cast of characters, there was an old engineer with an android that had been with him for a long time, one that, even after it breaks, he is unable to discard. Saying it is for the sake of his own safety, the government demands he junk the android and replace it with a newer model, but the engineer refuses to do so and does everything in his power to keep his android in hiding.
I introduce Seth to D0068. “Seth, this is Derek. Derek, this is Seth. Say hello.”
S12878 and D0068 face each other. They touch foreheads. The capillaries on their faces—lines of their subdermal circuitry—light up in blue on the S model and sparkling green on the D. A pretty and uncanny scene that never fails to dazzle me.
Clearly, the new model is faster. Seth straightens up first and turns his head to look at me. “Initialization complete.”
Seth smiles.
The smile is so unsettling that a chill runs down my spine. I write down “normal” and “compatible” under “Initialization” and add an extra note recommending the smile function be rolled back. Seeing an android smiling like a human after doing something a human wouldn’t do is creepy. I wonder whether the concept of the “uncanny valley” can be applied to behavior as much as it does to appearance.
In that sense, D0068 is easier to deal with. Derek almost never smiles. Maybe I’m more used to him because he’s been around longer, or D0068 might have learned at some point that I prefer my androids to be quiet and expressionless instead of bandying about empty smiles.
Even now, D0068 only glances at me before leaving the living room. And so, all the information that Derek has on me from the past two and a half months has been duplicated into Seth. My daily routine, the food I like, the location of my every possession within the house, the contact information of the people closest to me, right down to how I like my clothes and sheets laundered according to fabric. And because both androids are connected to the network, Seth and Derek are synchronized with each other regarding all the things that go on in the house and every bit of information received by each android. They are two halves of a connected, digital brain.