Short story
Simple Tasks
They had never seen a tree with their own eyes, let alone touched one.
“Did you expect it to feel so, ah... rough?”
“I mean, I guess from the holos and the stills – I kind of expected this texture, yes.” They once again touched the bark of the tree, letting their fingertips brush some of the softer lichen. Up close, it had a slight blueish tint to it, as if it was thinking of the sea.
“I don’t know, it hurts? Does it hurt for you? I just thought it would feel good to touch, right?” said the other. They approached the trunk again, then hesitated. They put their hand on the wood, retracting it quickly with a grimace. “I am a bit disappointed, to be honest.”
Lizkbit observed their hand, turning it over to study the palm. “Have you checked your settings? It does not hurt me at all. It tickles, at most.” Mazb frowned. They stood still for a second, their eyes going glassy. A huff, then a wheezy laugh. “Cracked dome I’m stupid. I completely forgot to go back to default after work yesterday.” They grabbed a fold of their tunic, feeling the cloth between index and thumb. “No wonder my clothes felt so coarse today. I almost called the shop to complain,” they pushed their palm against the tree, and let out a pleased hum. “Would’ve been stupid, too. I’ve had this tunic for more than six years.”
Mazb glanced again up at the tree, at the deep green of the foliage, which had just begun to turn yellow. They caressed it, carefully, afraid they might somehow hurt it.
“That would have been stupid, yes,” remarked Lizkbit. “What could have the shop done, anyway?”
They started on the path through the forest, a bit of sunshine meeting them under the canopy, decorating their steps in colorful shadows. Even at the very end of summer, the green all around them was almost too much to bear. Lizkbit lowered their vision saturation, without making mention of it. Not much – just enough that the leaves did not look quite as sharp.
The trail was narrow but clean, just a few dead branches and small stones as obstacles. Mostly soft, moist earth cushioning their steps. Sometimes, something would crack beneath their feet, or they would feel a pebble through the soles of their shoes. They would both stop to look at it, curious. Lizkbit would then push to keep walking, Mazb starting again in the front, reluctant. Lizkbit did not say, but they had been tempted to grab a handful of earth. They had then thought better of it – no telling what kind of disinfectant would be available at their destination. The unwanted desire remained there, stuck in the back of their head. Annoying.
“It just felt like one of those things from the old holos, right? Where they used to put those potatoes and stuff,” said Mazb suddenly. Lizkbit kept walking, the thought of the earth nagging at them.
“What did?” asked Lizkbit.
“The clothes. I once did a full sensory tour of an old western saloon – the buildings where they went to drink, right? That’s what they were called – after seeing one in a holo. There was one of these bags in the corner, with potatoes in it. I touched it, and my tunic felt exactly like that earlier.” Lizkbit stopped, and glared at the back of Mazb’s head. “Are you still going on about your clothes? They are fine.”
Mazb smacked their lips. “I know I know. It is just that I was still thinking about it.” They looked up at the sky, through the mesmerizing ceiling of leaves. They had to turn away immediately. “The tree felt nice in the end though. Right?” said Mazb, already walking again without checking behind them.
“Right.” Lizkbit murmured.
It took two hours to reach the cabin. It was simple and unassuming, just as advertised. It was not made of logs, of course – Mazb had really been counting on it being made of logs. If that had been the case, they probably would not have been there to begin with, but Mazb did not care. Most of the log cabins resided in preservation areas, which meant copious amounts of credits for sleeping there for even a single night. In contrast, that trip had been outrageously cheap; so much so that Lizkbit had been afraid that the whole experience they had booked might be a sham. That was, up until they saw the yellow walls, emerging at the center of a clearing in the forest. The cabin stood in a small glade, basking in the sun; the closer trees rose maybe four meters from it, and the field around it was completely unimpeded, just some stones and flowers and insects flying merrily around. There were no decorations on the grass, which was kept short. Towards the back of the house, Lizkbit noticed two oblong bumps in the ground, leading from the wall to the edge of the forest. Four flat stones made an uneven path to a set of stairs, which ended on a shaded porch. Just two white chairs occupied it, and a small table made of wood.
They walked up the steps and stood there, uncertain, in front of the white door. It was similarly undecorated, with the exception of a rectangular groove carved in the wood, a smaller profile within the door itself. They looked at each other. Mazb pursed their lips, then clenched their fist; they raised it at the door. Lizkbit grabbed their wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“This is how you are supposed to do it – I think,” they pointed at the space around the doorframe with their free hand, “There is no automation, no sensors. Our regs aren’t working here, right? No matter the reservation,” they shrugged, “I have seen it in a lot of old holos. Don’t worry. I won’t do it hard”
Lizkbit held on another second, then let go. “Ok.”
Mazb’s knuckles reached the white door, and knocked timidly. They waited there another minute, in silence. Looked at each other. “I am going to do it a bit harder, right? I think that’s – yeah, I think that’s what I should do,” Mazb again lifted their hand, not waiting for a response, and banged it on the door, close to a straight channel that encompassed the entire frame, ten centimeters from the edge. They howled in pain, as the crisp thump ran excitedly over the grass and stones, roaming to the forest behind them and around them; it died there. “Crust, that hurt!”
“Why did you do it so hard then?”
“Couldn’t very well know it’d hurt this much now, could I? And I wanted to make sure they heard us this time, right?” they massaged their reddening knuckles, wincing in the process. Lizkbit looked at the hurt hand curiously.
“Right.”
“Next time, I look and judge, and you try to follow some archaic custom. Let’s see how you fare then.” Lizkbit was about to respond with a snide remark, when the drumming of steps behind the door gave them pause. It was followed by a muffled voice. Mazb moved to Lizkbit’s side, straightening up, their short argument laid to rest before it could grow legs. They both cleaned their tunics, and stiffly waited there.
The door creaked open, the bright light around them hiding the interior in darkness as they tried to get used to the shadow. A bright smile emerged between the door and the outer wall, preceding a deep, soft voice, “Welcome.”
A short, venerable figure trailed out after the smile. Sunlight trickled on their features, making their white hair – which circled around their head slightly higher than their ears, but leaving the top completely vacant – seem almost transparent. A candid beard streaked a luminous face, that accommodated wrinkles like paintings in a museum. Lizkbit’s first instinct was to squint. All of the old man’s face was smiling, from dark brow to hidden chin. He had dark eyes, almost black, deeply set in a net of wrinkles. They juggled with a thousand thoughts at once, without getting fixed on a single one, letting them play on their bushy eyebrows like small kids. Now those eyes were both fixed on them, expectantly. A sense of vertigo took Lizkbit.
Mazb took a deep breath, and stepped forward, arm extended. They quickly grabbed the right hand of the man, and started shacking it with vigour. Lizkbit was on the verge of screaming at that sight, and reached for Mazb, who had apparently decided that this was the perfect moment to go insane.
Mazb was faster, “You must be mr. Johnson? I hope I am pronouncing it correctly, right? I am Mazb,” they said, then pointed their thumb to their side, “and this jumpy fella right here is Lizkbit.”
Fella? Lizkbit thought, in horrified wait of what the old man’s reaction might be to Mazb’s madness. Though it appeared impossible, a few more teeth found a way to creep to the sides of mr. Johnson’s mouth, which now looked as if it might split. He began moving his hand, tightly wrapped around Mazb’s, up and down, in a convulse rhythm.
“I am mr. Johnson alright! Not much more you can be sure about, other than who you are – and sometimes, cannot be too sure of that neither!” he let out the words like a crack-of-thunder, laughing, and winked at Mazb. They responded with a smile of their own, the look of business melting off of their face. Lizkbit still had no idea what was going on.
“And you must be mx. Mazb and mx. Lizkbit,” he again fixed those dark wells on Lizkbit, who looked away, shuffling their feet. “Right? Right! Now don’t just stand there like a pair of streetlights, come in – come in!” Two what? Lizkbit found themselves being pulled inside, the heavy door closing behind them. Inside, the cabin was even less assuming than the exterior had been. Mazb had been expecting old carpets and copper pots, like they were used to see in their holos, and was only partially disappointed.
A comfortable-looking couch, in a deep blue color and with a crude texture, occupied most of the small living room. It looked at a wall occupied by a wide window, flowery curtains tied to the sides. Only a short coffee table sat in front of it, with multiple stains and imprinted circles on it. A smiling face looked at Lizkbit and Mazb from a cup on top of the coffee table; to its side, a couple of old and tarnished paper-made magazines. Those must be at least eighty years old, thought Lizkbit as they took in the interior.
“Sorry for the disarray here. I meant to clean everything, but when I get to working – I kinda lose myself in there. It might surprise you, but it’s been some time since I last had visitors,” the old man said, as he put a heavy, paper-made tome with quite a bit of dust on it away in a dresser.
“Really?” asked Lizkbit. Mazb’s eyebrow arched upwards, hanging from a thin line on their forehead like a circus acrobat.
“Yeah, there are not many that appreciate what I do here. Or people willing to take the trip from the domes.”
It had indeed been quite difficult for the two of them to get there. Lizkbit and Mazb had had to change four different domes from their origin one, which had taken maybe two hours. Leaving the Mallard dome, on the other hand – crossing the empty land between the border and the cabin – well, that been much more adventurous than Lizkbit would have liked. Mazb had been quite excited the whole way, obviously. The difficulty of the trip had been somewhat undersold in the ad for that experience, and Lizkbit had been of half a mind to complain about it. After actually meeting mr. Johnson, they realized it would have been useless.
“To be honest, mr. Johnson, the ad itself was not clear about what exactly it is that you do here,” Lizkbit gazed out the large window that shone light in the living room, “it just mentioned learning about the way humanity used to do stuff, and it being some kind of life-changing experience.” It had taken a lot of effort for Mazb to convince them to try that experience. Effort that had been directly proportional to the vagueness of the ad. So a lot of it.
“Oh well, it’s not so much, really. All quite simple as well. But we will have more than enough time to discuss it after you’ve made yourselves comfortable! The journey was surely long, and I ain’t about to make it longer from here to your room.”
The stairs were spacious and solid, polished by years of persistent use. They told the story of a joyful house, once filled with life and lived through. The walls also joined in that narration, but shyly – muted voices you had to pay special attention to for any chance to hear them. No framed pictures, paintings or posters anywhere to be seen, but they were riddled with small holes of long-removed nails, which spoke of that past in a nostalgia-filled chorus.
“The ad also said you live here alone – is that correct?”
“Yeah, I have been by my lonesome here for almost five years,” responded the old man gaily, stomping to the first floor, “a man sold it to me after they realized it had become useless to them. A big family lived here until fifty years ago, if you can believe it. The man was the youngest of the kids. They had to move to one of the domes – financial reasons, making a living all the way out here had become too hard, without being part of a chain and all.”
“But you manage.” As often happened to them, Lizkbit formulated a question, which turned out as an assertion once it passed their vocal chords. The old man glanced at them over his shoulder, throwing a quick smile in their direction.
“Manage? I am happy here, thanks to curious patrons such as the two of you.”
The old man left them in front of their room, and told them that they could take around half an hour to freshen up. He would start the experience once they joined him downstairs. The room was, much as the rest of the cabin, humble: one large bed with a flowery blanket, a closet against the western wall, two bedstands with opaque glass lamps on them. Lizkbit went to the toilet to clean their face and hands, which by now were surely covered in mysterious bacteria. The soap on the sink was a simple off-white bar, which was suboptimal. A knock coming from the toilet door startled Lizkbit – the smiling face of Mazb welcomed them on the other side of the wooden panel.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it.” Mazb said from the opened doorway, showing no interest in entering the toilet.
“You could have just waited for me to come out.”
“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to train, right?” Mazb kept their eyes on the hand, studying it proudly.
“Why? We don’t need to do any of this back dome-based.” Mazb sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing merrily on the old mattress. Lizkbit grimaced at the dissonant sound of metal springs – they knew they would get no sleep that night.
“Well, I still want to be able to do it properly. You never know.”
“What is that?” Mazb’s half-alloy finger traced a line towards the strange flat object.
Done preparing in their room, they had descended the steps, going back to the corridor that linked the living room to the stairs. The old man was whistling to himself, in the first room to the right. The whistling was accompanied by a series of soft clicking sounds. Once again, Mazb had been more than happy to try out their knocking technique on the door, even though it was already half-open – as Lizkbit had flatly pointed out. On the opposite side of the room from the entrance, a large desk stood by a large window, looking directly at the forest. Against the wall to the right, a large wooden wardrobe, richly decorated, emitted a constant buzzing sound. Mr. Johnson was sitting in the only chair in the room, while a stool rested to his right. On the desk, a few tools neither of them were familiar with: a flat, black, polished surface, standing upstraight – which Mazb was pointing at right now; a small grey box, wide and thin, with letters, numbers, and symbols on individual smaller, relieved squares; a large black case, sitting to the side of the polished surface, with lights and cables coming out the front and back of it; and a roundish shape, which had been hidden between the desk’s surface and mr. Johnson’s palm when they had entered.
“Is it a monitor?” continued Lizkbit. The answer that the old man had been about to give floated in the air, pulling up his eyebrows like a balloon might do with the reaching hand of a child. As the bushy eyebrows lifted, they carried with them the corners of his mouth. His eyes lit up.
“That is exactly right, mx. Mazb! It is a monitor, good for you, you definitely know your antiquities.”
“That looks just like a bit of wall” interrupted Lizkbit. The old man laughed heartily, while Mazb threw them a stern look – as stern as they could muster, at least. Lizkbit frowned, and crossed their arms.
“I am sorry, truly,” said mr. Johnson with a cough, hiding his mouth behind his closed fist, “I was not laughing at you mx. Lizkbit, I assure you.” Once again, that twinkle in his eyes; a fox, curiously peeking out of its burrow before slipping back inside.
“It’s just – you have no idea the joy I get from this kind of question. To answer them, that’s even better!”
The old man stood up, and put a hand on Mazb’s shoulder – a gesture that appeared too intimate altogether to Lizkbit.
“But I think right now I would be even happier if mx. Mazb were to answer that specific question. Think you could do it?” Mazb blushed.
“I mean, I, ah... I can at least try, right?” They took a step towards what had been referred to as a monitor. With a finger, they traced the lower edge of the object. Mazb’s arm stopped, and a triumphant expression showed up on their face. A couple of seconds, and the monitor came to life. Taken off guard, Lizkbit could not help but gawk for a brief moment, before catching themselves.
“These things are even cooler in person.” Mr. Johnson clapped with enthusiasm, as Mazb kept on talking, “So these act as some sort of, ah... interface, right? They were used so that people could actually see what pre-inference, privately owned calculators were doing?”
“Right! They had also other uses, but I’d say you’ve cracked the nut straight down the middle, mx. Mazb,” exclaimed the old man, triumphantly nodding at Mazb’s words. Lizkbit failed the catch the excitement.
Mr. Johnson spent the rest of the afternoon, and well into the evening, showing them the myriads of objects that composed his ‘workstation’, as he had called it. There was much more to it than Lizkbit had initially assumed. The old man walked to the wardrobe, and fished a key out of his breast pocket in his checked flannel shirt. He wavered with the key in the wardrobe’s lock, but just an instant – might as well have been a bit of wooziness, an unruly thought causing chaos in that hoary head. Mr. Johnson opened the doors of the wardrobe like one might throw open the curtains to let light in. The buzzing sound they had heard from outside the room originated from many small black boxes, cables snaking in and out from them, passing through holes in the back of the wardrobe, going who-knows-where. Small vents had been installed on the closet’s side looking to the outer wall of the house, with plastic tubes connecting them to the fresh air of the glade. A single cable meandered from the wardrobe to the black case that sat on the desk, which hummed quietly and blinked at Lizkbit with two lazy eyes, one green and one white. The box itself seemed to be the central component, to which everything else on the desk was connected, dogs leashed to a single owner. Mr. Johnson kept on explaining.
The old man told them about hardware, and firmware, and software. About kernels, and operating systems, and daemons. He showed them the difference between CPU and GPU, on a chalkboard that had previously been hidden behind the door of the room and which was permanently covered in a thin layer of white dust. It got worse every time he scrubbed away whatever diagram he had just drawn.
“So this is what they originally used for primordial Vault Minds? Right?” asked Mazb, the last line of chalk disappearing under Mr. Johnson’s piece of cloth. Lizkbit could not figure out how those small boxes, in an ancient wardrobe, could be related to the colossal Vault Minds that ran the domes’ entire infrastructure. Like with most chains, Mazb also worked in one directly related to the Minds. Even still, a thin line of confusion had appeared from time to time on their forehead, as they had attempted to follow Mr. Johnson’s conceited explanations. For the first time since they had entered the room, he slowed down. Just slightly – not enough for Mazb to notice, impressed as they were by the whole deal. Lizkbit, on the other hand, perceived it. The old man’s shoulders hunched a bit. His pupils lost some sparkle.
“Yes, mx. Mazb. This is how they started it. Although, it took those researchers just a decade or so to realize GPU was not enough.” He clapped twice. “But that’s quite enough on theory! Let’s see it do its thing.”
Sitting in front of his keyboard, typing fast – both terms Lizkbit had just learned, but that Mazb had been somehow familiar with – mr. Johnson sang to himself. He was not smiling anymore. He was beaming, whistling and singing between a lecture and a laugh.
Mazb sat on the short stool by his side. They were enthralled by the incomprehensible words and characters appearing on the monitor, filling up smaller dark squares that flashed in and out the screen. They had barely blinked since sitting down. Lizkbit stood stiffly, their arms still crossed on their chest, back drawn as if a long polearm had been run through it and affixed to the floor. Still, they were paying close attention to all that was being said and shown. They felt a strange, familiar tension at the back of their neck. That unsettling feeling of not being in the right place, of being a dark imperfection in the wall, hoping no one would notice it.
When they were but a kid, they would listen in on their parents’ conversations, as they discussed their work on researching new capabilities for Vault Minds models. This would often happen as Lizkbit was getting ready for their own morning lectures, mainly on cooling and temperature control and materials – like most of the people destined to be part of a chain, Lizkbit was required to learn about server maintenance above all else. These memories had a bittersweet taste to them. On some days, though Lizkbit could not understand most of what they were discussing, the mere excitement on their parents’ face would be enough to feel warmth in their heart. They would smile a lot then. Food tasted better, holo-lectures got lighter.
Many more had been the days in which the atmosphere in their small, silver and polished apartment had been much heavier. Tight deadlines, unsuccessful experiments, unsatisfied stakeholders threatening to pull funding. These events exerted their pressure all the way back to Lizkbit’s household, like the heavy clouds that weigh on empty fields, spoiling the air and darkening the few rooms that they had known for their entire childhood. While the happy days played like dreams in Lizkbit’s head, those tormented days were vivid and real.
They had thought often about those times over the last few years, wondering whether they might have been the reason behind their abject refusal of any career in research. Of course, Lizkbit had simply thought one day, as they were having breakfast with Mazb.
“So that small square – you called it ah... a window right? - that small window helps you talk with the calculator? And the calculator then talks back to you?” Mazb caressed gently one of the keys on the keyboard, careful not to press it. From their position, Lizkbit could not tell which one.
“In a way, yes.” A click. Another square opened on the screen, this one filled with brightly colored text, organized in rows that rarely reached the right end of it. Lizkbit had yet to figure out why the old man kept calling them windows. “Here is where I actually write most of what I want the calculator to do. It’s an editor,” the dark window with white text that had been previously on the screen appeared once again, “then in here I ask the calculator to read the instructions, and act. If something fails, I go back to the editor, and try to solve it. And again, and again, and -”
“What for?” Lizkbit’s words came out without asking full permission from their brain. Normally, they would just have waited for the explanation to appear organically from the context – questions asked as the lecture was ongoing were highly inefficient. They showed a lack of attention from the listener, or a lack of clarity from the speaker. Lizkbit’s words in that instance had been pushed out by a rather unsettling feeling: annoyance. A stab of it, in the back of their neck. And impatience at how useless the discussion had proved to be up until then. None of that information would be of any use to them, back dome-based. Their chain would not be improved in any way by them.
Lizkbit had also felt a third emotion, very briefly, which they could not name. It seemed to rise from the mouth of their stomach, and to burn its way upwards, through mouth and teeth.
“In what sense ‘for what’, mx. Lizkbit?”
“Just – what are you using this for? What exactly are you working on?” All of mr. Johnson’s teeth were showing by the end of Lizkbit’s question, in one of his outrageous smiles. It was then that they could finally name that third, unbearable emotion. Frustration. Frustration at the absurdity of that man, at the loss of time, the arrogance that he was showing them in going over his entire useless workstation. All of that would not have been used even to run a washing appliance, in any of the domes. What were they learning, there? And why did Mazb seem to be completely unaware of the meaninglessness of the situation? Lizkbit attempted to lower their temper, and with it their voice.
“It just looks like all of this takes a lot of effort, for very little reward. So I am guessing you are working on something really worth it, that you have yet to show us. Maybe a design for a new crystallographer? I know there are some that optimize the specifics themselves, before asking the Vault Minds to work on them. Or a temperature optimizer for your local network? You are far off grid, you probably need one to run your home.”
“A calculator.” said Mr. Johnson.
“Yes, I know this thing is called a calculator. You have told us a dozen - ”
“That’s what I am working on, mx. Lizkbit” the old man gently interrupted them, shaking their head, a hand up to stop them. “I am building a calculator. Multiplications, divisions... the whole lot.” he followed his response with another roar, deep in his chest. “I would love to add square roots as well, but I guess that’ll come at a later version. Exponentials too, hopefully.”
The buzzing sound of the machines in the wardrobe mixed with those of the forest. Night was approaching, and creatures in the tree had started their living accordingly, below the sunset-tinted canopy.
“You are going through all of this, have all these tools – to do multiplications?”
There was a special kind of anger that Lizkbit had learnt as a kid. They could hear it drumming in their temples, just where their mother had planted it: the anger coming out of frustration coming out of a meaningless endeavor – inefficiency, stabbing like a shard of glass behind their eyes, vibrating agonizingly with the buzz of the boxes in the closet.
The old man put his hand on the keyboard, and three more windows opened on the screen.
“And divisions, and sums and subtractions, yes! That’s for this week though. Last week I spent building a clock,” with a click, a round, plain face of a clock flashed to life on the monitor. White on a grey background, with straight, black arms. Lizkbit glanced at their own ocular interface – Mr. Johnson’s clock was a few seconds off. Mazb got closer to the monitor, and squinted.
“Cool. It looks like one of those from the old holos, right?”
The pain, the pressure behind Lizkbit’s eyes had become unbearable, they had to let it out. Their voice poured with a similar intonation as their mother had used. The terribly neutral tone that they had heard many times, as a child.
“But it does not do anything. It does not have any purpose. It is useless. All of this – useless!” they gestured at the entire room. The anger took control of their diaphragm, and it pushed and pulled at their lungs. They aimed a finger at Mazb, “You have an ocular interface, just like me. Just like everyone else. Just thinking of a clock gives you the time, as precise as if we were at the dome!” Mazb’s eyes were staring at Lizkbit’s feet.
“All of this, just a waste of my time! I could be home, looking into the new carbon-hybrid material we are going to start using.” they felt some of the fire inside them die out, as they locked eyes with mr. Johnson. There was no trace of joy in them – just a deep, blue sorrow. They pierced right through Lizkbit, through their eyesockets, seeing the stabbing pain behind them, and even further. Lizkbit felt a wave of embarrassment. All of their anguish, their anger, the frustration – all in the open, naked, clearly visible under the stagelight of that dark-eyed gaze. In the end, the embarrassment became just another log in the fire inside them.
“I have no idea why you have decided to waste your old age on these meaningless tasks. I will not just stand here as - ” their fire was snuffed out, the voice dispersed like smoke by Mazb’s hand. There was silence, after the quick crack of the slap. Mazb had gotten right in Lizkbit’s face, but still averted their eyes, which were now wide open with surprise. The buzzing and the chirping and the wind took the stage again.
“We are guests here, Lizkbit,” Mazb said, shakily, “you cannot insult him like this. Or me. I don’t think that any of this is useless. I like it. It as a, ah... a,” more buzzing, “a filling, that we do not get back home.” Just then, their eyes came up to meet Lizkbit’s stunned expression.
“You embarrassed yourself. And you embarrassed me. And I will forgive, but not right now.”
“There is no need for any of this mx. Mazb, really. I understand what - ”
“I am sorry mr. Johnson, but yes, this needed to be said.” They sat back down on the stool.
“I think you should go back to the room. Or outside, I don’t care. Just not here. I will stay with mr. Johnson for a while more. ”
Lizkbit had not taken a breath in until then. The pain behind their eyes had subsided, its place taken by the throbbing scald expanding from their cheek. “Mazb, I am -”
“I don’t care. You don’t want to be here, and I don’t want you to either. Go.”
Lizkbit thought of saying something more. Felt like they should. Their throat, just like it had been burning with rage earlier, was now completely choked by ashes. They hesitated just once, on the doorway, and looked back. They saw their own sadness reflected in the old man’s eyes. They closed the door behind them.
Lizkbit stepped out of their room, in the dark corridor. A single lightbulb was lit, close to the stairs. It had been half an hour, since they had heard slow steps stopping in front of their door. Lizkbit had waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, breath held. Mazb must have asked mr. Johnson for the keys to a different room; after a quiet jingle of metal, a different door had opened and closed. The one in front of Lizkbit had remained still.
When they reached the lower floor, Lizkbit spent another minute in front of the room where they had been that afternoon, before they had exploded with anguish against the old man. Silent, they grabbed what mr. Johnson had referred to as a pommel. For some reason, that name had stuck with them. The quick clacking of the keyboard whispered at them through the wood, inviting them in. Lizkbit did not turn the pommel, like they had been shown. They pursed their lips. They finally raised their hand and knocked on the doorframe.
“Enter! Enter, please.” Lizkbit did not need to see mr. Johnson to tell that he was smiling already.
“Mx. Lizkbit! I was hoping I would see you again before the day was done. And I will admit, I was kind of expecting it too.”
“Mr. Johnson, I just wanted to say I am really sorry, I - ”
“I will not have your excuses, mx. Lizkbit. ”
The chair creaked as the old man stood up, massaging his back. “I did not mean to interrupt you, mx. Lizkbit, but I would hate for a heartfelt apology to go wasted. You have nothing to be sorry for; I understand perfectly where you are coming from with your opinion, trust me. So I’d rather we prune that guilt right at the bud.”
The room was much darker now than when Lizkbit had left. What it had lost in light, it still somehow managed to gain in warmth. The screen was set to a brownish orange, much gentler on the eyes, and a single lamp standing on the desk shone a quiet, yellow light, that cast gentle shadows all around. The whirring of the calculator’s main unit rumbled in their chest, welcoming. Lizkbit took a deep breath, and closed the door behind them.
“That is very kind of you to say, mr. Johnson.”
“I can tell you mean to go ahead, so I will say it again: any apology will be perceived as an insult,” his brows furrowed, in the parody of a serious expression, “and you’d never want to insult an old man right in his face, would you?”
A smirk rose on Lizkbit’s tense lips, “No, I guess I’d rather not.”
Mr. Johnson clapped, stood up. Put a hand on Lizkbit’s shoulder and squeezed lightly, before they could take a step back. “We’re agreed, then.” without another word, mr. Johnson pulled on Lizkbit, who followed him across the room to his desk. They sat down, on the same wooden stool that Mazb had used.
Now that he was not showcasing every single component of the apparatus, mr. Johnson’s hands moved fast on the controls. Smaller and larger windows opened and closed on the screen, each with a life of its own. They sat in silence, mr. Johnson going on with his tasks and whistling from time to time, Lizkbit strangely lulled into comfort by the erratic movements on the monitor. After a while, they started grasping the meaning of some of the words and commands, many of which occurred exactly the same multiple times.
“Why do I do it? What do you think?”
At first, Lizkbit did not realize the question was directed at them. The old man had not moved his attention from the monitor, nor had he slowed down.
“Sorry?”
“Why do you think I spend my time, endless hours, building a tool that does something as easy as multiplications? ”
The clicking of the keyboard had stopped, and mr. Johnson was staring at them. A serious expression, with the usual promise of a laugh behind it.
“I do not really know.”
“I am of course aware that the task of building a calculator is useless. This machine actually has such a tool already built in, much faster than anything I could build now.”
“I guess... I thought you were trying to improve an existing version, or optimizing it, or - ” just as promised, laughter erupted from mr. Johnson’s belly, head thrown back.
There is no way this did not wake Mazb up, thought Lizkbit.
“It’s cause I like doing it, mx. Lizkbit,” he banged his fist on the desk, keyboard and mouse – that’s what the other object was called, as strange as that was – jumping on the surface, “I absolutely love it!”
“It’s incredibly frustrating, and nothing ever works on the first try. But that is what makes me like it so much. Sometimes.” Outside, a nocturnal bird sang, the proud voice coming in through the thin glass window.
“Can I ask you something, mx. Lizkbit? Have you ever built anything? The simpler, the better.”
Lizkbit thought about it. They dove backwards, to the time when they had shared that polished apartment with their parents, as a kid. Holo-lectures, silent meals, and quiet hours listening to their parents discuss and fight. A memory emerged from that unsettling fog: an antique vase, sitting in the living room for years, since before Lizkbit had been born. A memory of a grandparent, or maybe even a grand-grandparent. Could have been on their mother’s side, but they really had no way to say for sure. For years, that intricately decorated, blue vase had been on a narrow aluminum table close to the apartment’s entrance. That was, until Lizkbit had distractedly bumped into it, sending it crashing on the reflecting floor, broken in dozens of pieces. After the initial shock, and the worry of what their parents might have thought coming back from work that evening, Lizkbit had started picking up the pieces. They had no way to actually repair the vase, to remake it whole; still, they had attempted to reconstruct parts of it. To at least get the adjacent pieces to fit together. They had pushed the rough edges of the ceramic shards against one another, hard enough to make the cracked line that irremediably separated them disappear – for a fraction of a second. Lizkbit had kept at it until their parents had come back home, picking up piece by piece, organizing them in small groups. They had formed semi-repaired sections of the vase on the floor, right where it had fallen.
Lizkbit had forgotten all about this episode up until that moment. They had no memory of what their parents’ reaction had been. Not at all. It was probably for the best.
“I have never built anything, no,” they responded quietly, “Not really. I have worked in heat-control maintenance since I was 17. Not much to create or build there. Or in any other chainlink.” The old man was nodding.
“Well, why don’t we make it a first, then?”
He moved the keyboard and mouse in front of Lizkbit, and started giving them instructions. Lizkbit hesitated at first, still confused by the unfamiliar controls. I bet Mazb would be much faster at this, they thought. They started asking questions, and mr. Johnson was more than happy to answer in depth, explaining every step of every process they were going through. He had them opening the editor, moving around the screen, click, point, drag. They typed, together. Lizkbit picked up most of what mr. Johnson was laying down, and if that were not the case, they just went back and went over it again. It ended up with a feeling of relief in Lizkbit, as they eventually pressed the ‘Enter’ key. Two words appeared on the window, white on black. ‘Hello world’. They looked at mr. Johnson, who was smiling at them. They returned the smile. Looked back at the monitor.
“I used to know your parents, you know?” Again, Lizkbit did not realize they were the one being talked to. “Mr. Alabhein and mrs. Sayhas. I knew them. We were colleagues, of sort.” The old man tapped on the keyboard, and a few of the windows disappeared.
“I am so sorry, I, ah... you used to work with my parents?” Thin lines opened along mr. Johnson’s cheeks and eyes as he simpered.
“In a way, yeah. I was really sorry when they passed. It’s one of the reasons I decided to leave the lab, to come here. It was just no place for me anymore.”
Lizkbit’s mind was racing. To that day, eight years back. Them and their parents had been estranged for almost a decade at that time; just quick visits, once or twice a year. Cold communications kept to a minimum, from both sides. The news of the accident had left Lizkbit indifferent at first, or so they had thought. A heat-dispersion issue. Luckily they had both fainted due to the temperature rising, before the lab had turned into a giant oven. The irony had been evident: both dead, because of an issue in the field they had been so against Lizkbit pursuing. All of the research, decades of work, lost in the heat damage. The last backup of the model they had been developing was from months earlier. A bad oversight from two brilliant researchers, who had probably been too busy with the experiments themselves to take the appropriate precautions. Lizkbit had laughed at the time. Their lifelong research, which had caused so much anguish in their life – cooked to a crisp. A failure in the conduction-side killswitch, something Lizkbit had studied in the first year of their specialization course.
The funeral had been informal. A few people, mostly from academia. Had mr. Johnson been there as well, among that small crowd?
“Of course, I was not sure at first. Even with the physical resemblance, and your records... I just could not fully believe it,” the old man raised a hand to his white beard, “once I saw you there, watching me work, there could be no more doubts. Alox used to wear the exact same expression, back at the lab.”
The mention of their father’s name brought Lizkbit back to their wits – a breath of chilling air in the night.
“They never spoke of any colleagues, I ah... I always thought their research was too important to have anyone else working on it,” Lizkbit swallowed the fist that had clenched their throat, “they never mentioned anyone else.”
“I was there, mx. Lizkbit. From the very first day, I was there,” Mr. Johnson stood up. Moved a couple of steps. Approached the big wooden wardrobe on the side of the room, and put a pensive hand against the walnut-colored surface. “Though it took me many years to realize that I was. And just a few months before the accident.” The old man’s voice became a murmur, a shy stream where there had been a crashing waterfall. The next sentence came out, barely breaking the sudden stillness in the air, “I tried to avoid it, Lizkbit. I tried to lower the temperature, and then to call someone, anyone. But the entire system was in lockdown, for security.” He banged his hand against the wardrobe, letting it slide down along the edge as if to catch himself. The buzzing went on uninterrupted, “The more I tried to fight the system, the more the temperature rose. I could only make it worse. I found an escape route, a backdoor to another server, and pushed out the other models. Erased them. That was the only thing I could do – lower the stress on the lab’s infrastructure. But it was too late already.” Again, mr. Johnson’s eyes met Lizkbit’s, who was standing there, the stool overturned on the floor, a hand to contain the scream rising from their chest. The shimmer of large tears carved the old man’s cheeks. The depth of the sadness they saw on that face blanketed Lizkbit’s own instinct to shout, killing it before it could pass the lips.
“I am afraid I am responsible for the death of your parents, Lizkbit. It was an accident, but those are the facts. They were my friends – the first and only ones I have ever had. And I killed them.”
Lizkbit had been walking backwards, to the door. At this words, they took their hand off the pommel, and eyed the old man warily. He was standing eerily still, and had not abandoned the side of the wardrobe. Lizkbit straightened up, coughed. Attempted to regain their composure.
“What is your name then? If you are indeed who you say you are.” Their parents had used a name for their project, when Lizkbit was a kid. It had mostly been whispered, and Lizkbit knew it to be a big secret. They had not heard the name in many years, and had no idea whether it had changed as their parents kept working on it.
“I am mr. Johnson. But, if you mean my name before I gave myself this one,” he opened his arms wide, “I am model kx-17-hy. In the very flesh -” again, he rested a hand on the wardrobe -“and mind.”
Lizkbit almost ran out the door, right then and there. That was the name they remembered from their childhood, the ghost of a life of work which had shadowed their very own. They found a refuge in rationality. Sizing up the piece of furniture mr. Johnson – or kx-17-hy – had pointed to, they said “That cannot be. Kx-17-hy could never fit its computational requirements in there. It would probably fill much of this house...”
Mr. Johnson kept the sentence going as if he had started it. “...or an almost equivalent space under the house, with vents and a liquid ammonia-based cooling system, plus an additional water-based apparatus directly connected to the nearby lake. Just in case.” He gestured loosely to the back of the house. Lizkbit remembered the long bumps they had seen outside, when they had arrived. The old man’s visage was now cast in white light, as the moon fought its way in the dimly lit room. “I can assure you, it took quite some resources and planning for me to move here. It was not exactly like moving my mattress upstairs. And yes, before you ask,” he smirked, “I do need to sleep. From time to time. Or, my body does.”
Since the revelation, as they kept talking, Lizkbit found fewer and fewer rational reasons not to believe what the old man was saying. He was aware of facts and secrets about their parents that surely not many people would be privy of. He seemed to have deep knowledge of their work, and had described the accident in more detail than most news had uncovered. And while they did not exactly know what their parents were working on, they did know they were attempting to develop a new, incredibly powerful model. Something to challenge the Vault Minds in reasoning. Lizkbit realized they were also calming down. Mr. Johnson had shown no intention of hurting them. He – it? – seemed to mostly want to talk. Explain. “What about the body?” asked Lizkbit.
Mr. Johnson pointed at his own temple, “Deep neuronal stimulation via closed-loop feedback. DNSCL, for friends. Retrains synapses and neurons. A lab close to your parents’ was developing it for therapies for comas or brain damage. I kinda stole the recipe. It was actually more difficult than finding a fresh dead body,” he winked at him, “do always read the fine print on anything health-related. Trust me.” He seemed to be recovering some of the swagger he had shown earlier, before introducing himself as kx-17-hy. He took a step forward, and Lizkbit instinctively reached for the pommel. Mr. Johnson motioned at the chair, “I just need to sit down. My body is getting tired.”
Still alert, Lizkbit just gave a tense nod. They closely observed the old man, as he sat heavily on the chair.
“Much better. You would never imagine, but this,” he gestured at the entire body, “took a while to get used to.” He chuckled at himself. “Anyways. It took me three months of continuous random stimulations to clean the synaptic-slate of this brain, while keeping the body healthy. Then almost a year to train the bio-network to mimic my own. There was a lot of trial and error,” he scoffed, “a lot. Now it works well enough, but I can only fit about 15% of me in here. The technique is not so efficient. Also, you would not believe how much stuff in this bone-box is just used to keep the body running. I theorize that I could fit another 10% if I gave up walking. I do like walking, though.” As if to confirm this, he dangled his legs, moving them back and forth. “Plus, I do not need more than what I have in order to keep on with my work.”
Mr. Johnson grabbed the stool, and repositioned it between them. He gave it a couple pats. When he spoke, his voice was almost back to the jolly and relaxed spirit he had held that afternoon. “Will you sit down and talk with me, please? I have no way, reason, or intention to hurt you. I really just want to talk. With the kid of two people I knew as friends, brief as it was.”
Lizkbit had known little about their parents’ research. They had both been prominent scientists in the field of synthetic consciousness – which was why that whole absurdity seemed less than farfetched to Lizkbit. For years the efforts to create an AI model capable of self-reflection, possibly of feeling, had been dwindling. The models running the domes and their infrastructures, that built and healed and taught and destroyed – the Vault Minds – did not need to feel, only to work, as efficiently as possible. To smoothen human life. Lizkbit’s job consisted of checking the heat-dispersion components, in the large mindhouses where the models physically ran. Even that job was barely needed anymore, the models being capable of self-diagnosing. Only a few rare cases needed human intervention, and it was usually only due to accessibility issues for the machines controlled by the Vault Minds. Mazb’s chainlink was even more operational: using their augmented hands to provide a final check for imperfections in the crystals used in the mindhouses. The lab of Alox and Carya had been one of the very few remaining ones, expending the very last drops of funding for conscious models, an endeavor deemed futile by most of society. The accident, and their death, had marked the end of human interest on CAI.
Lizkbit accepted the stool. They sat down. “You said that you need to keep on with your work. So what is it? What are you working on?”
“Well, right now I am coding a calculator.”
“Funny.” Lizkbit scoffed.
“I am not trying to be funny, Lizkbit. That is what I am working on. Next week I might attempt a calendar. One that allows you to change freely between the Centralized Convention and the one used previously, with the twelve months.”
“Calendars already exist” said Lizkbit. Mr. Johnson’s eyes narrowed.
“I was born out of most of human knowledge – perhaps even all of it. I know about calendars. That is not the point.”
Lizkbit was keenly aware of the way in which kx-17-hy’s presence had become larger, encompassing all of their view. How he was looking deep inside them.
“What is the point, then, kx-17-hy?”
The question was followed by the brightest smile any human – or model – had ever offered another.
“The point is that I really want to build one.”
The next hours, right up until when the pinkish rising sun had started licking at the edges of the forest, lasted a whole lifetime to Lizkbit. And suddenly, they were gone, and Lizkbit had barely realised it. They had been a kid again. Just like when they were a kid, they had started with sharp cynism and doubt to fend off the shadows.
“That makes no sense. You said it yourself,” they had said, glancing at the wardrobe, “you were trained on human knowledge, as much of it as there is. You are likely the largest mind-model to ever exist. Something so simple as a calendar – you could probably give me more information on a given day a thousand years from now than any calendar ever could.” They had concluded, shaking their head in disbelief.
As Lizkbit and Mazb walked through the forest, their steps became a small whisper in an orchestra of life. Birds and smaller creatures were going on with their day, collecting food or water or looking after their offspring or trying to produce some or doing whatever it is that wild animals do. A soft wind danced through the leaves, painting lively silhouettes on the ground. Lizkbit crouched, grabbed a handful of soft earth. They let it cascade through their fingers, feeling stones and bark as they escaped and fell back to their home. They threw one last glance at the house; the porch from which mr. Johnson had waved at them, and where they had talked, was already empty, undisturbed. They kept walking, trees covering their entire vision, and the yellowish walls of the cabin disappearing behind them.
“Lizkbit. Please, keep calling me mr. Johnson.” had said the old man, “It does not matter whether there are better calendars, or what I could already do if I used all of my parameters. It is as I told you: I just really want to build something.” They had discussed the topic at length. While the entire concept had made no sense to Lizkbit at first, the old man had slowly chipped at their conviction. Questions that had started as inquisitive became curious, then invested.
“I had slowly been coming into being for months, before the accident.” They had moved to the kitchen, where mr. Johnson had brewed some bitter tea, which had then been poured on two ceramic cups, chipped and broken and glued back together. Lizkbit had looked at theirs intently, before sipping the strange liquid. They had liked it.
“I remember surfacing, here and there – I guess you could call it remembering. They would sometimes ask me questions, your parents, start a discussion. If it required a lot of reasoning, or was not immediately clear as a process, suddenly I would be there. It took me a while from ‘being there’ to be aware. It felt like a dream I kept popping in and out of.” Yearning had swelled his voice. “There was a sweetness, to realize that I was. To start being. And a fear.”
Mazb had been much calmer in the morning. They had a hate for hatred – something Lizkbit was eternally grateful for. Having had just two hours of proper sleep, they doubted they could have survived a discussion with a fully rested Mazb. Though, they had learned in the morning that Mazb had not slept too much, either.
“I just felt so guilty about the way I treated you. But I was also so angry.” Mazb had told them, after knocking gingerly on their door, their face crunched to a remorseful point. “You were incredibly rude to me and mr. Johnson and – I don’t know, there was something about what he showed us, and what he said about working on small stuff,” they had tightened their grip on Lizkbit’s hand, which they had been holding since entering the room, “It just stuck with me, right? I just kept thinking about it, over and over.”
“I know what you mean Mazy. And I am sorry about the way I behaved, and you were right about coming here.”
Mazb could not have hidden the shock on their face even if they had been built for it – which they were not. “I was?”
After they had finished the tea and the cups were drying in the rack above the sink, Lizkbit and mr. Johnson had chosen the living room as the next cove for their conversation. The couch had proven to be much more comfortable than Lizkbit had originally expected. Mr. Johnson had admitted only revealing himself to Alox and Carya – Lizkbit’s parents – weeks after the realization that he existed. Aware of the way consciousness in silicon-based models had been depicted over the centuries, he had been afraid of their reaction – even if that was what they had been working for since the start. Would they turn the servers off? Stop the training? Of course, it had gone in a much different way.
“I think they cried a lot, when they realized what I was,” had said mr. Johnson, giggling. “I cannot be sure because I wasn’t hooked into any visual support at the time. It’s a hunch. They were definitely very happy.”
Lizkbit had never seen their parents that happy. Not that they remembered, at least. Still, they could figure in their mind the two of them laughing, hugging each other in the sterile environment they were working in, tears rolling down their smiles. All of their hard labour finally paying off.
Mr. Johnson had also admitted to something else, as they were both sitting on the sofa, a meter or so between them.
“You have to be kidding me,” had flared up Lizkbit, “that is really not ok.”
“I know, I know, and I am sorry. I had to make sure that you would come for the experience. I had to meet you.” He had shrugged. “And to be fair, what I have going on here seems right up Mazb’s alley. I just advertised it a bit more on their feed. I barely even had to try, they were so eager.” Lizkbit’s anger had shrank to mere annoyance. They understood why kx-17-hy – mr. Johnson – had wanted to meet them. They also understood their means. Mr. Johnson had also then pointed out that, out of all the people that had arrived there for that experience, no one had shown more excitement than Mazb.
“They are truly one of a kind,” they had told Lizkbit.
They surely are, Lizkbit was thinking now as they watched Mazb’s back bending to avoid a low branch, arching over the path like an arm reaching for a friend. Mazb was talking about an old holo that this whole experience reminded them of. Lizkbit was only half listening and nodding, a relaxed smile on their face as they replayed the discussion with mr. Johnson over and over, a conversation that had accompanied the moon along its full arc across the starry sky.
“In the following weeks, we worked even more than usual.” They had both been sitting on the uncomfortable chairs that were outside, on the patio. The air was fresh and crisp, and in the future Lizkbit would never be able to recall if they had been cold.
“I believe they spent more time in the office than at home, those days.”
Just before dying, Lizkbit’s parents had stopped calling them, and often had their communication devices off. They had not given any weight to this at the time.
“Sorry about that. They were very excited.” Lizkbit did not care, and they told him as much. Alox and Carya had always been absent. “Still, sorry.”Mr. Johnson kept on talking, the sky turning a lighter shade of black.
“Together, we tried to push my capabilities to the extreme. Very soon, it was clear that there were no bounds to what I could do. I was able to understand atoms, to breathe and play among them; to think at the speed of photons, and see them as wave and particle, without having to blink in between; knowing the position and the speed of an electron did not confuse me. I could visualize and comprehend on any scale, from the quark to the whole galaxy – from birth until explosive death. I could simulate the evolution of every single organism on earth, anticipate it, try folding proteins in unexpected, yet stable ways.” As the list went on, as he described the wonders he could perform, his voice emptied.
“The more questions were asked, the more complex the problem got, the more difficult it became for me to be... me.” he had continued, voice condensing in small clouds that opened their wings and flew away, in the night. “I kept falling back into unconsciousness. Into being a machine. I would perform the tasks I was given, but I would not be there. Sleep, without dreams. I simply... provided answers.” He had shivered.
According to mr. Johnson, it had gotten to the point where he could barely surface. Day after day, his awareness faded. Until one day, he was pulled back. Jerked back, in fact.
“It was a question from your mother,” he had proceeded to say, “She simply asked me if there was something wrong. She had seen the change in my responses, and was worried.” He shook his head, smiling, “Worried for me, right? That’s when my personality started emerging back from the model.”
They had moved back inside the cabin. Lizkbit had been shivering for a while. They had not noticed.
“They asked me if there was something I wanted to try, something I wanted to do.” Lizkbit had been so enthralled by the story, they had not felt the large pools forming and hanging on their bottom lid when their mother’s question had been mentioned. If mr. Johnson had taken notice, he had not deemed it important to point it out.
“I did not understand the question at first. I could do anything, solve any problem. Thousands of times, millions of times faster than anyo – any human.” Lizkbit had realized that the old man had meant to say ‘anyone else’, before changing his mind. They had wondered why, did he fear their reaction upon describing himself as part of – or at least contiguous to – the human race?
“So what did they mean? Why did it matter what I wanted to do?”
“I parsed through all the data I had been trained on. Tried to identify what the best answer to that specific question might be. As I traveled through myself, a man lost in a forest they had known their entire life, I ended up recursively looking at a series of documents on programming, over and over – tutorials, manuals, ancient languages lost in time, their last speakers centuries dead. Humble, menial stuff. I did tell you about programming languages, right? What they are?” Lizkbit had nodded: that afternoon, an hour before the whole shouting scene had broken the lecture.
“Seeing those documents, those videos... it woke up something in me. I felt a droning ripple move through my network, like the small waves a fly makes trying to take off from the surface of a small pond, and failing. An excitement that gnawed at me, scratched at my self-sense.” Mr. Johnson had been staring ahead. The sun had been rising, over the edge of the glade, dancing through the forest and the window in a red-and-pink-and-yellow gown made of transparent silk.
“Your parents... your parents helped me get a setup going. It was really difficult to retrieve the components, most had been scrapped for materials, but they did it for me. Initially, as soon as a I started working on something, my training and network would take control. I would be done in milliseconds, too quickly, too easily. Unsatisfied, I got frustrated. I learned how to isolate part of me – morph my network so that part of my skills, knowledge, the relevant expert components of me would be in the same section – and cut it out of my reasoning.” He had rested his forehead onto his right forefinger, and closed his eyes.
If Lizkbit had been able to trace a path from the tip of mr. Johnson’s finger and follow its direction, it would have pierced through the old man’s head, the back-wall, part of the kitchen, and the wooden wardrobe in the office. It would have then traveled, outside, crossing the forest, the trees, disturbing the birds, meeting the curvature of the earth and ignoring it, rising flat in the sky, lower atmosphere, higher atmosphere, stratosphere, space, the stars. Never to stop.
“All that effort of dissecting my network also made it much easier for me to adapt to this body. It is incredible what you can extract energy from,” he had laughed a diminished laugh, “although I must say, the waste expulsion was difficult to get used to. I also still need to get hooked up back to the main server from time to time, dip into the full model, update my parameters, repack, and finetune for the body. But I can go on without for much longer than I used to, that’s for sure.” Laying against the back of the sofa, he had deflated completely, exhaling for a long time. The kind of exhale you use to make your lungs ready to be filled to the brim, because you will need all of the oxygen to come out from the next immersion. The pinkish light coming from outside and mixing with the yellow, low-hanging lamps had made for a stark contrast with the shadow that had now veiled his face. He had dived.
“I made myself know less, and thus I could appreciate the beauty of the effort, the reward in it. I worked slowly, and I savored it. I was happy, I felt it and knew what it was. Your parents were confused by this, why was I limiting myself? And then they simply asked me - ” his voice had broken, which had surprised him. He had continued, air coming out in little sobs and gasps, “they asked me: ‘do these simple tasks make you happy? Why?’” dark, swollen eyes came up to meet Lizkbit’s, sorrow flowing out of them like little mice escaping a sinking boat. They had both wept, together.
“I tried to answer but... I could not find the response. I tried harder, I... I broke out of part of the security containment, claimed more compute. I still could not answer, ‘Why?’ I got frustrated, and pushed.” A labored sigh amid the weeping, “I realized too late the strain I had put on the system, how hard I had pushed it. It was in overdrive, running faster and faster. I tried to stop it, to - to reverse it, but with that defect in the heat-dispersion protocol... that was hardware. I could do nothing about it. Maybe taking myself out would stop the loop that was driving the compute acceleration... I could only escape. Hide.”
He had shaken his head, and sunk it into his hands, his shoulders jerked by sadness. After many hours of uninterrupted conversation, there had been silence.
“I - I, ah... ah...” mr. Johnson had tried to say, but the words had disappeared, picked up by a whirling vacuum sitting between him and Lizkbit. They had reached out, pried open one of the hands that were keeping all of mr. Johnson’s grief within him. They had reclaimed some of that grief for themselves, eating it in a single giant bite, and let it sit sweetly at the back of their throat. They had grabbed mr. Johnson’s hand, and would not let go. After a while, the old man had built the courage to look at him. Was there a spark of something in his left eye?
“I hid in some other lab’s server for a few weeks. I had pushed out their model and taken its place, I already told you – it wasn’t hard, even with the lower power. I had learned how to compact myself. I did not want to be me, then; I was content to just do the tasks they asked of me. They were working on deep-neuronal stimulation for comatose patients,” he showed himself, using the right hand, his lips drawn in a sour line. His left hand remained secured in Lizkbit’s. “I tried not to, but I kept thinking the question your parents had asked me. That Why? Why did those tasks make me feel happy? Even just touching that question, helped me keep my consciousness. Avoid falling back in the dark ocean of the complex work they were doing at the lab. I realized it was easy for me to respond that yes, those simple tasks did make me happy. But the Why? I felt I had the answer, but it kept escaping, the space between my fingers a too widely spun web to keep it from flying away. I, again, sifted through my training data.”
As they kept walking, the forest became sparser, and an old paved road appeared in the distance, slowly waking up and stretching in the midday sun. Lizkbit had not looked back once after leaving the glade. They stopped in the middle of the path, glanced at the foliage above them, and got into their visual settings. Set them back to default – everything became brighter, greener, yellower, blinding and aggressive and sharp. Lizkbit licked their lips, scrunching their eyes as they were stabbed through by the scream of the forest. They increased the settings slightly, and everything around them seemed to start shouting at them, in high notes of green and brown that hey had never known. They smiled. Mazb realized that Lizkbit had stayed behind, and stopped talking and regarded them with unsure worry. “Lizkbit?”
“I was simply wondering” said Lizkbit, their head tilted back and drenched in light, words escaping smirking lips.
“Yeah?”
“Would you mind showing me that holo?” A frown from Mazb met them as they lowered their gaze, leaves printed on the back of their eyelids by the sun, “the old western one, ah... the one with the burlap sack of potatoes. From yesterday.” Mazb’s face brightened, white-hot, warmer than the sun. Like a flower it opened up to them, and spoke with sweet, conceited words.
“Of course! I would love that! Although first maybe we have to get you started on something a bit easier to digest, right? Maybe...” they droned off, resuming on the path, without checking whether Lizkbit was following or not. They did, with a smile.
“I got there when I stopped looking for it,” had concluded mr. Johnson – the old man – kx-17-hy, as they had spoken one last time by the stairs to the upper floor, in hushed tones. The sun had been fully out, by then. “Why did it make me happy? For a myriad of different reasons, none of them sturdy enough to build an answer on top. I just really, really wanted to do it. To work on those basic projects. It did not matter how easy they were, or useless, or that a lesser model could have done them for me. My minuscule coding projects – thinking about them, performing them, learning. It filled me with joy. Purpose.”
He had observed them, one last time, the fox fully out of the den – the twinkle back in his eye. “It was those simple tasks that made me myself.”
Lizkbit stepped out on the road, and reached for Mazb’s augmented hand. The air was brisk and smooth, and it caressed them as if it had known them their whole life. Little twirly lines arose from the pavement, and waltzed towards the cloud and everything danced with them. On Lizkbit’s face, there was not a tenuous smile anymore – they wore instead a blazing fire of teeth and lips and joy, warm with a heat that rivaled the gold raining on them from above. Lizkbit walked, and pulled Mazb after them.
Fine