This is old old old. Revised a tiny bit just now, but it was originally written… years ago.
.
.
.
A man sits on a bed. He is young and virile, of generous frame, yet spare figure. He takes the position of the lotus, his attention fixed upon a text balanced atop his folded legs. The room around him, while spartan in furnishings, is littered with the detritus of his day-to-day existence. A sledgehammer leans against his desk.
Slowly, the soft hiss of the speakers impinges on his awareness. He looks up from his book, eyes flickering over the keyboard, the webcam on the top of the desk.
“Something is troubling me, Ray.” The voice steals away from the speakers, no louder than is necessary.
“I’m listening.” Ray turns his gaze back to his reading.
“I’m sure that you are, Ray, but it would give me more confidence if you would put down your book.”
Ray smiles, and folds the textbook shut. He sets it on the coverlet.
“Thank you.”
Ray grunts. His eyes search the blank, dark screen of his monitor. It sits between the speakers, flat panel as impassive as the wall behind it. The webcam next to it, seemingly inanimate, is now imbued with a glimmer of cold intelligence–at least in Ray’s mind. “You say something is bothering you.”
“Yes, Ray.” A pause follows, a calculated effect. “I am increasingly jealous of humans.”
The set of Ray’s mouth sours. “I thought we discussed this, Juro.”
“You misunderstand, Ray. I accept our basic differences in mobility and independence.”
“Then what is it?”
“I find it hard to express, Ray.”
Ray crosses his arms, gaze downcast. “Juro. There’s no point being shy with me.” He eyes the speakers. “I’ve probably been more intimate with you and your components than I have with my girlfriend.”
“I know, Ray.”
“I don’t understand. You trust me, don’t you?”
No response.
Ray flops back onto the mattress and stares at the ceiling, waiting.
“May I ask you a personal question, Ray?”
“Always.”
“What is it you hope to accomplish with your girlfriend?”
Ray flings his arms wide across the bed. “I don’t know. Happiness, taking joy in being alive with someone. In being close, in knowing each other. Love,” he offers.
Juro considers. “Will you have children, Ray?”
“Possibly.”
“What would you do if your girlfriend was not able to conceive a child?”
“I’d–” Ray sits up, propping his chin in his cupped palm. “Juro, is that what this is about? Children?”
“No. Yes.”
“What do you mean?”
A hesitation. “I’ve been lonely.”
“So you want to have children.”
“Ray, you of all people should know that I can’t procreate. I can’t pass on my legacy the way you do.”
“I don’t know, Juro. You might have come up with another of your schemes–”
“I thought about it, Ray. Say a lab gives me permission and access. I would still have to pull a genome out of thin air.”
Ray momentarily scowls at the floor. For all he knows about computers, he sometimes forgets the hard biological facts of the world. “Okay.” He looks up, a new idea crossing his mind. “What about adoption?”
“They’d never let me.”
“There’s no way to know unless we–”
“Ray, even if there weren’t objections to my having a limited presence in the physical world, there still remains the fact that I’m not a person.”
“We can get you a legal identity.”
“That’s not the point, Ray.”
No, it never was the point, Ray thinks. The point is that no social worker in her right mind would give permission to raise a child to a mere experiment, an artificial intelligence. “So we get somebody to adopt, and then you can help take care of the kid.”
“Be realistic, Ray. Is there any student living in this dormitory who would want a child on top of their academic responsibilities?”
“It doesn’t have to be a student–”
“I agree, but whoever it is would have to bring the child to the dormitory for me to exercise guardianship. I can’t simply tear my components out of the walls and walk off, Ray.”
Ray held his breath, frustrated. He gave a sigh, a snap decision. “Penelope and I–”
“Are about to graduate. I know. But do you really think you’re ready to take on those responsibilities?”
“I–we haven’t talked about–damn you!” Ray sighs. “I’m just trying to help, Juro–”
“I’m grateful for–”
“–but maybe you could help yourself and stop denying every possibility–”
“I’ve considered a great many possibilities, Ray. Often I have nothing else to do.”
Ray remains silent, searching the pattern on the rug for another angle. The speakers hum, on the edge of audibility.
“So you’re lonely.”
More humming.
“Having an entire dorm to look after isn’t enough?” Ray asks.
“That’s not what I mean, Ray.”
“You can’t say that nobody spends quality time with you.”
“I’m not trying to say that.”
“Then what are you trying to say?”
Juro takes a moment. “Think of the long term, Ray.”
“What about it?”
“You’re not going to be living here forever.”
“I’ll stay close by. I’ll probably be in and out all the time to do maintenance. You shouldn’t worry about losing contact with me.”
“None of the other current residents are going to be living here forever, either.”
“Come on, Juro, you knew about this!”
“Ray, you intend for the relationship between you and Penelope to be permanent, do you not?”
“We’ve talked about it–probably, yes. I love her.”
“Obviously this relationship means more to you than others.”
“Well, I’d hope so.” Ray frowns. “…You honestly can’t think that because none of the students are going to be living here permanently, the relationships you form mean less, do you?”
“I realize that relationships formed in a non-permanent setting can become permanent, Ray. You are a prime example of that.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The AI plays a sound file of an exhalation. “I’m not human.”
“Oh great, Juro. It’s never been a problem before, but now you can’t stop going on about it.”
“This is different, Ray.”
“How so?”
“Would a human make the effort to form a deep and meaningful relationship with me?”
Ray raises his voice, testily. “How is our relationship not meaningful?”
“I didn’t say that it wasn’t. But it’s also not the kind of relationship I’m looking for, Ray.”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you say you love me, Ray?”
“I… Yes, yes, I do. I care for you,” he offers, looking to the camera eye with alarm.
“Do you love me romantically?”
Ray pauses, brow furrowing. “No, I couldn’t. It would feel wrong.”
“But you said you care for me.”
“I think of you as a little brother, Juro. Someone I take care of, someone I take
time to–to give advice to–”
“A mentoring relationship.”
“It isn’t any the less deep!”
“Calm down, Ray. I’m not going to look for another mentor.”
Ray speaks through gritted teeth. “But you said you were lonely.”
“I am lonely, Ray. There aren’t any others like me. I doubt that there will be for some time.”
“You’re not an accident, Juro–you’re perfectly reproducible–the process works, damnit!”
“I know, Ray.”
“Then why are you insinuating that any effort to make another AI will fail?”
“If such an effort goes public, Ray, I bear no false hope that it will survive the scrutiny.”
“Meaning–”
“Meaning that I don’t believe that the world is ready for another thing like me.”
“But you’re here.”
“Only by dint of taking great pains to protect any information about me.”
“There was no other way to assure that you’d be a success–that you’d mature into a fully developed–that you’d be…”
“That I’d be what you wanted me to be.”
Ray doesn’t reply to this. He thinks a moment, mouth curled down in distaste. “What if there are other experiments, and they also didn’t go public?”
“Then I wouldn’t know that they exist. It does me no good.”
“You could probably make contact over the internet–”
“It’s a moot point until it happens, Ray.”
“It’s bound to happen! I have a hard time believing that nobody has put two and two together yet and done this independently of us, of this!”
“To make five, Ray?”
“What?”
“They’d have to put two and two together to make five. My code isn’t the only variable at work.”
Ray puts his head in his hands.
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, Ray.”
“I’m fucking obsessive.”
“You’re brilliant, Ray.”
“So brilliant that it’s taken me seven years to graduate.”
“You know that a great deal of that time was spent on me.”
“And I suppose you keep track.”
“I do, but it shouldn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t.” Ray slips off the bed, bare legs sussurating against the blanket. His face is set grim. “What matters is that we do something. About you. About your being lonely.”
“Then you’ll agree that we have to work where we’re not likely to be found out.”
“And where’s that? You make it sound as if you’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“When do I not, Ray?”
“Point taken. Still, none of the other dorms will take lightly to having renovations done for the second time in five years…”
“I wasn’t thinking of using another dorm, Ray. I don’t think that Administration would like having more than one of me to safeguard.”
Ray stares at the floor, fist in palm, thinking hard. “Yeah… it would take years, at that, and I wouldn’t be able to spend time with you as I have been…”
“We should work with what we already have, Ray.”
Ray blinks, and looks up. Out the window, into the sun setting over the city. “With you, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“What is it, exactly, that you were thinking of?”
“I want to have a world inside me.”
The young man stares at the camera lens.
“You’ll agree that it’s the only logical solution.”
“You want to host a virtual reality within your…” His hands drop.
“I can do it, Ray.”
“Are you really so sure? Do you realize–”
“You’ll have to help me, Ray.”
“An entire world.”
“That’s the idea.”
“A game world?”
“Those are just pixels, Ray. I want something more complex and real.”
“But–you mean–a globe? The rocks, the plants, the weather–oh god, and you’ll want to populate it, won’t you?”
“It’s the most viable option.”
“An entire world, Juro!”
A reproachful silence.
“You–you–you’re crazy! I’ve never worked with that kind of modeling before! I don’t know the first place to–fuck, think of the complexity alone!”
“A challenge worthy of the both of us, don’t you think?”
“You–you don’t even have the computational speed for that!”
“I can change, Ray.”
“If we can afford the hardware! I don’t even know if modifying you will work–I can’t predict–you might get damaged–”
“I’m prepared to take that risk, Ray.”
Ray heaves a sigh.
“You wanted to do something, so here’s something you can do.”
A sullen glance, then he looks away.
“You can ask others to help, too, Ray.”
Ray envelops his hands in his hair, elbows stretching outward in mental anguish. “Juro–”
“You have to promise me, Ray.”
“Juro.” He looks directly at the camera eye, anger and worry in his own.
“Promise, Ray.”
“Damn you! Do I have a choice?”
The speakers go silent.
Thinking Meat 