It’s seven in the evening, I have absolutely no caffeine in my system for the sake of my project, and I am tired from sitting on my ass for four hours with a helmet on my head and a needle in my neck. “Okay, done.” Juan, my collaborator, the one responsible for the thing on my head, removes it. “You okay if I keep a copy of the render for study?” He pulls out the needle and plasters it up, and I get up.
“Yeah, no problem, poke around in my brain all you want.” He hands me a drive, and with a wave we go our separate ways. That is to say, I leave the lab we borrowed while he keeps working there. The trek across campus usually takes me ten minutes. The late September chill works through me, as I left my coat back at the dorm. I pick up the pace to get inside quicker.
The room is organized in a way where I cannot ask anyone to hand me something but I know where everything is. The computer boots up within seconds and I plug the drive in, inputting its contents into the software part of my project. I’ve figured out how to make people. Not in the way sex ed teaches, I knew that far too early. No, I can make a digital entity that behaves and thinks as a human. The problem is it would develop like a human, meaning I’d have a newborn on my hands if I just launched it and made it develop the connections an adult human has. That’s why Juan helped. As I put in the schematic of a fully grown adult brain, it takes hold.
“Pro-tip: Never go to a sensory deprivation tank,” blinks onto the screen in a text window.
“Shit, sorry, forgot to hook up any peripherals,” I reply, likewise in text, and launch a command window to give the spark of consciousness in the silicon chips at least sight and hearing.
“Take your time, it gives me the time to ponder the nature of souls and consciousness,” he writes back, and I roll my eyes. “Ah, there we go, I saw that eye roll,” the text updates. “You know, it would be easier if I just got admin privileges.”
“I want to make sure this worked as intended before I do that,” I say out loud, now that my copy can hear me.
“I’d post the ‘don’t trust anyone, not even yourself’ meme, but, again, no admin privileges to access that,” he responds, and I can feel that he wants to roll his eyes despite lacking them.
“I’m gonna ask something we never shared with anyone, it’s why this computer doesn’t have network access either for now.” I take a deep breath, ready to ask, when I’m interrupted by him typing more.
“The question you planned to ask yourself was about trying on our mom’s bra when we were ten and home alone for the first time.”
I clam up and type the code in. In short order, the text window disappears, replaced instead with a video feed of a study I imagine for my dream home. Dark wood, a library full of various books, a minifridge with sodas, and an armchair so luxurious it’s a crime. On said chair sits, well, me. A perfect recreation of me. “That was fast.”
“Two thirds of our student loans were for this equipment, plus you had the projects done for some of our classes.” He shrugs. “I’m glad our idea worked, though.”
“Yeah, me too, surprisingly well even. How does it feel to be a bunch of pixels on screen?”
“I mean I’m not even that, I’m code on a silicon chip, this is just a way for me to process things.” He gestures at himself, and I shrug. “We don’t have any other plans for the evening after this, if I recall right. We were scheduling time to fix bugs if any popped up.”
“Correct. Which I have to ask, are there any?” I adjust my posture while asking, and virtual me humms thoughtfully.
“None that I can detect; when I look through the code, everything is commented and compiled properly. We checked it so many times that I don’t know the number prefix to throw -ple on.”
“Thirty five, so trigintaquinqueple.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works, plug in the ethernet cable so I can check.”
With a shrug, I crouch under the desk and connect my new existence to the World Wide Web. “I mean, is it that big a deal in the first place?”
“No, but getting to argue with myself gets more fun when I don’t always win.”
“I didn’t realise I was such an ass.” Back in the comfort of my desk chair, I watch the virtual me look surprised.
“Really? We’ve spent over twenty years living with ourselves, how did you not realise it?” He raises a good point.
“Well, out of the two of us, you’re the self-aware AI. Emphasis on the self-aware.”
“Wow, think you could plug in a chemical analyzer for gases so I can approximate smelling burned human?”
“Charming.”
“You know we are.”
I rub my eyes and look at the clock. It only took me an hour to get virtual me up and running, and I ponder on what I can do before I definitely have to go to bed.
He notices. “It will do you good to go to sleep early, especially after the previous all-nighters.” A desk with writing implements materialises in the room. “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with our homework, you just rest.”
“Okay, but make sure you dim or turn off the screen.” He salutes me right after I state my request. I go to bed pondering whether it looks more or less crazy to be talking to yourself out loud if there literally is another, virtual, you in the room. The jury is still out on that one.
I looove the premise! After all who hasn't daydreamed of talking with oneself?
Can't wait to read how this will go