Just one test left.
3
I open the closet and switch on the light.
“Model 1” requires quite a bit of time to boot up. I feel she’s growing slower every time she comes back online. Since there are limits to storage space and processing power on any piece of hardware, much less hardware as old as hers, my sense that she’s growing slower by the day can’t simply be my own subjective impression.
I wait silently until she raises her head and focuses her eyes on my face.
Model 1 was truly the first model, the prototype I constructed when I started developing and testing “artificial companions.” There’s a separate name for this line, a factory default name along with a personalized one I made for her myself, but none of that matters anymore. She was my first; the first model is simply Model 1.
Truth be told, the sight of her slumped over while booting up never fails to make me anxious.
What if she fails to boot up this time …
I felt the same way when I had brought her over and booted her up for the very first time. She was my first. What if she never came back online? What if she malfunctions? What if she doesn’t understand her own name? Such were the useless thoughts that ran through my mind in that short time that I was forced to wait for her to look up and see me.
Model 1 looks up and sees me. Back then, there was no such feature of smiling while making eye contact with the master.
But the moment I first looked into Model 1’s green eyes, I fell in love.
She was my creation, a companion made by my own hands. A being who existed, from head to toe, solely for me—someone who was, for lack of a better way of saying it, completely and utterly “mine.”
I purchased her after the three-month testing period. Not only was this permitted under the company’s rules, my employee discount let me purchase her at 70% off the retail price. I’ve moved companies twice since then and lived with countless artificial companions made by different companies, for durations of anywhere between three days to three months. The android companions diversified as technologies improved. From models that looked like young people in their twenties and thirties to middle-aged, even senior models. （There were children models as well, but you needed a special permit and they weren’t really my specialization.） The later the model—no matter what age group they were supposed to resemble—the more charming, beautiful, polite, detailed, and human they seemed. They interacted with their masters and “learned” about them, and they used that information to “think” and “understand.” Artificial companions, as time went on, changed and “grew” into the most optimal companion possible for their masters’ needs and desires.
It followed that designing artificial companions was a pleasant and satisfying job. Every time we tested a new model, the technological developments and detailed execution would astonish me. Artificial companions were often much more considerate, empathic, and patient than human companions. The androids had initially been created for the material and emotional support of senior citizens in rapidly aging countries, but they turned out to be popular regardless of the user’s age. There was even an almost comical rumor going around in certain circles that artificial companions were an industry-wide conspiracy to sell more androids by decreasing the birth rate and further accelerating population aging.
But no matter how many advanced models I brought home, Model 1 would always be my favorite. No matter how advanced and refined the subsequent models were, for me, all they amounted to was work.
Model 1 is different. My first love. There’s nothing “artificial” about her; she’s my real companion. Even now, well past the average use period, I can’t bring myself to junk Model 1. At one point, it took such a long time for her to connect that it became impossible to download upgrades, so I gave up and cut her off from the network. Model 1 has subsequently become more useless than a smart desk or refrigerator. But Model 1 will always be my first.
As time wore on and her batteries began to fail, Model 1 would slow down after ten or fifteen minutes of activation and begin to slur her words. Then one day, she froze midwalk, fell, and twisted her arm, which led me to store her in a closet with her power off. Model 1 became not a companion, but a doll in a closet. However, I still couldn’t throw Model 1 away. Model 1 was the first, and as long as I kept her connected to a power source, I could still turn her on. I have to wait an absurd amount of time for her to boot up, but I can endure it as long as I can see her green eyes look at me and smile.