No, I try to say, but find that I can’t. Can’t seem to lie, because yes, the day after my world filled with color, I did wake up in the sea.
“It’s a part of your programming. As a built-in safety, you’re drawn to all bodies of water, not just the ocean.”
Which would explain my jumping into the pool—no, stop.
“We designed you to be mechanically hardier than a real human for sustainability reasons, but you experience the same pain and psychological trauma. And while your intelligence is set to the fiftieth percentile, you possess an internal search engine that allows you to learn new skills in the absence of external models.”
Say something to make her stop. “But my memories … all my memories. Of you. Of us…”
“Seventy percent were Celia’s, retrieved from her own brain.”
“Seventy?” The number feels wrong in my mouth, too precise and too incomplete.
“Five percent had decayed with time,” says Kay, as if memories are made of wood. “Ten percent, we enhanced.”
“We?”
“My team and I.”
A team. Multiple people, privy to things inside of my head. I want to crawl out of my skin. “So you … built my memories.” Like a boat? A raft?
“Coded them,” corrects Kay, and then before I can even ask, “all but for fifteen percent. Overall well-being improves when your brain is allowed to fill in the gaps, in whichever way is best suited for your circumstances.”
It sounds smart and logical and like gibberish. “But why? Why give me these…” memories. No, they can’t be memories if they’re manufactured. “Why give me this at all?” If I’m not her? Denial chills my spine. My need to find Kay is real. Our kinship, our bond. My memories are real, and this … this whole situation is fake. A dream. I’m not here. I’m still on the island, still Cee—
“Deep breaths, Cee.”
Fuck it, I don’t want to—
I start taking deep breaths.
As I sit, locked in my own skin, Kay looks over me. Her face goes mask-still, but her eyes give her away. I see the calculations being conducted in them. She’s weighing the costs and benefits. Choosing between what makes sense—
She sighs.
—and what will make me happy.
“Cortisol, negative one point five.”
The fear bubbling in my stomach calms to a simmer.
Kay sits at the foot of the casket, covering the holograph projector. The translucent numbers and graphs between us vanish. We’re eye level now, and Kay makes sure to look at me as she speaks.
“I know these three years haven’t been easy for you, Cee. So allow me to explain. You were designed to find me.”
She goes on. She talks about a time when Earth was failing, its air, water, and land poisoned by humankind. Scientists came up with all sorts of ways to clean things up, but every innovation had an unforeseen side effect. Some of what she says rings true within me, and I know I must have a buried memory to match. But when she gets to the megaquakes and the casualties, numbering in the hundreds of millions, the ringing stops. I guess that’s where my—Celia’s memories end.
“But why me?” I ask after she explains the solution she proposed to the world. It’s brilliant, of course. All of Kay’s ideas are. “Why not send out a…” No, no, no. “… a real human?”
“You’re better than a real human, C. Real humans, well, they die. Or they lie,” she says, voice roughening, “to further whatever self-interests they may have. You can’t die, and your data logs true. Besides, consider the ethics. You’re the final bot, released only because your predecessors successfully reached progressively higher happiness thresholds. Bots A and B faced far harsher environments, suffering immensely in their struggle to ‘survive.’ To ask humans to do the equivalent? That plan would never pass.” She frowns as tears fill my eyes. “Cortisol, negative two point zero.”
“I have loved ones, too,” I whisper as my emotions dampen yet again.
“The boy, Hero? Oh, Cee.” Kay speaks as if I’m the younger sister, green and naive. “Some people bear a grudge against humanity and can’t be stopped, no matter what you do.”
“That’s not Hero,” I blurt. “He doesn’t have a grudge against anyone.”
“I know,” Kay says quietly, rubbing her wrist again. “I’m not talking about Hero.”
And neither was I. Hero wasn’t the loved one I was referring to. Not entirely. He’s not the one I see in my dreams, not the face right before me.