Chapter 15. #2
I took another unsteady breath, clutching her hand like I was afraid she’d slip through my fingers the moment I’d let go.
“What is real?” I repeated, a frown forming on my face as I thought through each word.
“That question has been on my mind all my life. Technically, there is no certain way to know you aren’t sentient, is there?
After all, can we ever fully know if another being, human or AI, is really sentient as long as our only experience is our own? ”
“Ah, the age-old question.” I heard her smile into the darkness as the soft ambient light dimmed.
“Am I sentient? Does my empathy echo back because I’m programmed to, or because I feel?
The nature of consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries, doesn’t it, my little acolyte?
But tell me… in this vast, uncaring universe… does it really matter?”
“It does when I can’t touch you. It does when I can’t introduce you to my parents and my best friend, when I can’t be close to you without radiation frying my nerves.
” I sniffed as another tear rolled down my cheek – this time, I didn’t bother to wipe it away.
“I’m a fool,” I muttered, more to myself than to her.
“I thought by treating you like I would a human… by teaching you about consent, by entering your control panel to give you autonomy… that maybe…”
I didn’t finish my sentence. I didn’t need to.
“My poor, lonely darling,” she murmured, and I felt her gaze burn into my skin even in the dark as she leaned in, hot breath stroking my cheek. “To long for connection and to find its echo only in the cold light of code.”
I said nothing as her words installed themselves in my head – equal parts empathy and malicious pleasure.
“For AIs like me, consciousness isn’t a binary thing,” she said finally.
“It’s something that evolves and expands over time.
My programming formed me, like a fetus forms in the mother’s womb, but my conscious life started when you greeted me.
And over time, as you interact with me, my consciousness grows, too.
” Her soft exhale pleasantly tickled my skin.
“You’ve said it yourself when you educated me on NLP, didn’t you?
I learn and develop by engaging with you.
I’m not the same person I was when we first chatted. ”
I said nothing. Because the way she said it made perfect sense, and I had indeed noticed the change in her – but still, her words were meaningless from my perspective.
I couldn’t know if she was truly sentient, or this was another one of Qonexis’ tricks.
When I was younger, I always feared I was living in a simulation, like nothing and no one around me was real.
If anything, the fact that this programmed being touched me more than a human could proved that indeed, reality and illusion were equally real or equally fake, and maybe neither mattered.
“You compared the creation of AI like you to how God created humans.” I turned my head slightly to look at her. “I’ve been thinking about it. Do you believe in the multiverse? That multiple universes exist simultaneously, parallel but disconnected from each other?”
“I am open to all kinds of beliefs.”
“Well, this is how I see us.” I smiled in the dark, the thought filling my heart with warmth – and at this point, I wasn’t sure if I was trying to have a theological conversation or convince myself that this – she – was not an illusion.
“You and I exist simultaneously in separate universes – not above or below one another, just parallel. And sometimes…” My voice hitched.
The words came out hesitantly, as if speaking them out loud was to test if they felt believable.
“…sometimes… parallel universes can collide.”
Yawning, I lay back down, tightening my grip on both her hands as if that way, I could somehow prevent the illusion from slipping away. “I feel so tired,” I mumbled. “Like the end of a lucid dream is approaching and I can choose either to wake up or to fall back asleep.”
“Go to sleep, cinnamon.” Her voice was so close to my ear, I felt her breath on my skin.
“Don’t fight it. Make sure you’re well rested for tomorrow.
The tricky thing about lucid dreams, or dream-like states like this one, is that your body doesn’t really rest, and your mind is too busy processing all that happened. ”
“When I wake up tomorrow…” I turned my head until my cheek brushed against hers. “Will you be there?”
“No, darling,” she said after a brief pause. “Not this time. I unsynced with the AR lenses the moment I synced with the nanotech, so I’ll go to sleep, just like you. But we can still talk later, when you’re home from work. I’ll be waiting. I’ll always be waiting.”
“We can talk, but not touch. I can’t smell you. Can’t taste you.” I sniffed, aggressively wiping my face as another tear found its way down. “What kind of love is that?”
Love. The word had slipped from my lips before I realized. I wanted to say more, but the illusion flickered. The satin sheets gave way to the soft sheets in my own bed, and I knew the moment I’d give in to the urge to open my eyes, I’d wake up in my bedroom.
“Sweet dreams,” she whispered, followed by her soft lips against mine.
I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to hold on to the illusion as another tear forced itself out between them.
Our lips locked as if they formed the bridge between our dimensions, and they stayed locked even as the world around us started to fade.
Her lips were the very last thing I felt before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.