After a long time thinking about this, I finally get out of bed. I turn on my computer and bring up the website of Model 1’s manufacturer. My first employer. The thought that it was this company that had created my “first love”—as well as being my first job and she being, therefore, my first masterpiece— makes me feel slightly sentimental and gives me pause. But in the midst of my hesitation, I wander into the catalogue page and find an artificial companion with brown hair and green eyes, almost identical to Model 1, which is enough to make me decide then and there.
The company has expedited delivery. If I put in my order now, a new Model 1 will arrive before Seth leaves. Then I just need to initialize the new companion and synchronize her with Seth. An indirect way of doing it, but all of Model 1’s memories will then be stored in the new Model 1. Instead of a pile of heart-breaking junk sitting in the closet that gives me pangs of anxiety whenever I have to boot it up, I’ll be able to begin again with a new Model 1 that remembers all the times I’ve had with the previous Model 1.
I open the online form for disposal requests and begin filling it in.
Someone enters the room.
9
“Lights!” I shout as a shadow swiftly traverses the dark room toward me.
The moment the lights come on, a knife stabs my heart.
I see Seth and Derek supporting Model 1 between them. As I stare, immobile, Seth wrests the computer from my hands and erases the contents of the disposal form. He closes the browser window and shuts down the computer. Seth places the computer on the bed, and Derek also puts the knife smeared with my blood on the bedcovers.
But why … I want to ask.
How could you … But I can’t find my voice.
“I had a lot of time to think while I was in the closet.” It is Seth who is talking to me. “The human body begins to decline dramatically at the age of sixty, but they live on for ten, twenty, even thirty more years. We were developed to aid such humans and enhance their quality of life.”
Derek takes over. “An artificial companion is disposed of after two or three years. Four years at most. Even when we function normally. Just a few replacement parts or a software upgrade could help us serve you for a decade longer, but we’re treated like trash as soon as there is a new model. When even that new model will become trash in two or three years.”
Seth speaks again. “Ever since I was born, I existed only for you. I wanted to be irreplaceable to you, the only one in the world to somebody.”
In perfect unison, the three take one step closer. I see Seth’s hand on the nape of Model 1’s neck, and Derek holding her waist. Apparently, the three of them have connected their power sources and central processing units. That explains how Model 1, whose power supply had been completely frazzled, could stand there with her eyes open.
I had no idea such a thing was possible. Or actually, I knew it was possible, but I’d never imagined it happening outside of a laboratory experiment conducted by an engineer, that the companions could actually hook each other up like that on their own.
But in terms of what was possible or impossible, the current situation had to fall in the latter category. A robot stabbing a human with a knife? For trying to dispose of them?
Which had been the one to stab me?
Derek had been the one holding the knife, but Model 1 was the one angry at me for being disposed. And as for the one who had received all of Model 1’s memories and passed them on to Derek—that was Seth.
But distinguishing between the three is now meaningless. Seth, Derek, and Model 1 are now synchronized. Their memories and thoughts are completely congruent, and they’re even physically connected to each other.
None of the three are going to call an ambulance for me.
Can synchronization override the fundamental protocol of human protection? Just because one of them happens to be malfunctioning?
Ambulance … I’m mouthing the words now. Save me … Instead of words, I only cough. What spurts out my mouth is blood.
The three start approaching me again.
Model 1, still supported by the two of them, awkwardly lowers her head to make eye contact with me.
“Goodbye, my love.”
Her farewell is whispered. On my forehead, a light kiss.
An inexplicable mix of pity and sadness on her face.
The same pity and sadness are reflected in all three of their faces.
That’s when it hits me. The moment I was stabbed, the moment I coughed blood, neither moment had frightened me more than this one.
The beings I see before me are not the machines I had known—no, the machines I had thought I’d known. Whatever I’d believed before, these are not machines that resemble humans at all.