mTNtOfk.jpg [https://i.imgur.com/mTNtOfk.jpg]
All art is by Aisaku.
Dida
egWVNKJ.png [https://i.imgur.com/egWVNKJ.png]
Part 2 - Children
I brushed the dampness from my hair. It would’ve been nice to just reassure Dida that everyone made mistakes. But that was from a human perspective. For a computer system, a mistake could cripple and destroy everything.
The second song began to play. It was a quiet, pensive melody.
After taking a towel from the rack and wrapping it around myself, I reassured Dida, “It was nothing. Move on.”
IHdFMX0.png [https://i.imgur.com/IHdFMX0.png]
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“How do you expect me to 'move on'!?”
Mother’s massive face heaved and curled in itself with a thousand, pointed agonies. Father sat, resolute and calm.
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing?...” The word seemed to cut through her without mercy.
I was young. Kary was out. I was supposed to be playing in the den. I heard the shouting and felt scared.
Mother screamed, as though trying to summon all the air around into her lungs.
“NOT NOTHING!”
Father remained as the mountains against a furious storm.
“It wasn’t strong enough. It passed into the void.”
Mother bit her fist. “SHE! She was alive…and I killed her.”
Father leaned back. “You didn’t even notice it was gone until you visited the doctor.”
“I felt so cold and empty…” Mother rubbed her lower abdomen as though it were a gaping wound.
Father pressed his hands together. “The doctor told you he noticed irregularities from the last visit.”
“BUT HE DIDN’T TELL ME WHY IT HAPPENED!” She shouted to the heavens. I leaned back from the door, afraid they would see me crouching.
Father cleared his throat. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
Mother whimpered. “I would’ve had a pretty little girl…but I killed her…”
“The doctor suspected external factors ranging from exposure to Fusarium mold to diet.”
Mother shook her head. “Scapegoats! I forced her out! I killed her!”
Father leaned forward with his face rigid. “Stop being irrational.” Then his eyes shifted and caught me.
Mother sobbed into her hands.
yPR03a3.png [https://i.imgur.com/yPR03a3.png]
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I could hear Dida’s sniffling sound file.
“Dida?”
She gasped.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, sir! Yes, Mr. Glossian?”
I dried my hair. “Forget what I said, Dida. It’s not nothing. But don’t waste your processes dwelling on the error. You understand?”
It didn’t take long for Dida to respond, “Acknowledged. I promise to focus my resources on giving you the best of my abilities. But I’ll still do everything I can to prevent errors.”
I uttered a soft ‘mmm’ and informed her, “Just as I expect from you. Now, let’s settle on a lighter topic. Could you give me the morning news and prepare my clothes?”
“Right away!”
As my suit sorted itself to the front, I heard Dida clutch her virtual newspaper and read from it. I could imagine her tiny form hunched over a desk and searching the headlines for items that corresponded with my presets.
She began, “Tuesday the Seventeenth of February. Scientists now suspect that a manmade virus is responsible for the incidents during Mardi Gras exactly one week ago. Customized retroviral ‘pranks’ have been on the rise since legal changes to the bioengineering industry several years ago. Positive highlights include the Mantlemay Foundation recently established by Dr. Arnold Feldon and the Hatching New Lives Foundation proposed by pioneering tech leader, Simona Hatch...”
It would be the most optimistic item of news on her list. If I didn’t suspect he already knew, I would’ve forwarded the news to Kary. He usually got a kick out of things like that.
A string of increasingly-worse incidents piled up as she read, until I finally told her to pause.
Dida squeaked, “Shall I update your preferences? I’m sorry if it upset you.”
I shook my head. “You can’t change the way the news is, Dida. Everything is in flux, especially what it means to be human.”
I gave myself a little, amused snort after I’d said those words.
Dida seemed particularly vigilant about my mannerisms as I slipped on my trousers. “Is there something on your mind, Mr. Glossian?”
I adjusted the waistband and told her the truth. “It’s been a long time since I talked to my father.”
The shirt came next.
“Oh…umm…” Dida queued the hand-rubbing sound. “Your father isn’t on any of my informational databases. Should I add him?”
My left eye twitched ever so slightly.
“Thank you, Dida. But it was my choice to leave him out.”
Dida gave a little, mew-like whimper. I gathered breath to explain but the air soon deflated.
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I busied myself with buttoning my shirt.
Dida controlled the covers with slow undulations and brought my tie within easy reach. I picked it up and adjusted the loop.
As I pulled it snug, I cringed from the silence.
“Continue with the playlist please, Dida.”
None of her cute audio files triggered, just a quick rummaging-sound and another quiet melody. I slowly nodded my head with the notes as I combed my hair.
Dida always said she couldn’t feel any external sensations. ‘Little girls locked in dark boxes and forced to serve us’, some cried. I used to stand beside those who were afraid of Installation. They only had the long needles when I made my decision.
I used to think of random, specific images and ideas several times a day to test if Dida could interface with them. She would just lock up or stammer if I tested her.
I picked up my wallet from the desk and tucked it in my pocket.
Dida only knew what I gave her and could only ‘read my mind’ so far as what her adaptive prediction AI rated as a high probability of my future needs.
The song volume lowered a moment.
“Mr. Glossian?”
“Yes, Dida.”
Dida gave a deep breath sound. “I know I’ve already said sorry, but I wanted to make sure you knew that I only want to make you happy and better, Mr. Glossian.”
“I know, Dida. I appreciate that. I’m just not in a talkative mood. I’m thinking of the past.”
A bit of her energy seemed to return. “Oh! You’re doing something like data compiling and indexing. Those can eat up a lot of key processes. Is that why your mood seems to be different than usual, if I may note that?”
“You may. It’s a fair comparison, although, I’ve never done any of those things myself.”
Dida voiced a soft ‘ah’. “I enjoy both very much, they improve my processes!”
I slid my feet into my shoes. “Define what you mean by ‘enjoy’, Dida?”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I’m being redundant, I think. I mean that they improve my processes. If my processes are more effective then I have a better probability of being useful to you, Mr. Glossian.”
I tapped the heels. “It didn’t seem redundant, Dida. You’ve used the term before. I know there are things you ‘enjoy’. What does the word mean to you?”
She didn’t give a quick response. She was thinking about it.
“Well…it’s a human word, so I’m only supposing meaning, but I ‘enjoy’ whatever gives me purpose and improves my purpose. Is that a suitable definition, Mr. Glossian?”
Maybe it was just a redundancy.
Kary’s curious theories about ‘FungAI Emergence’ settled back from where I’d stirred them.
“Perfectly. Thank you for bearing with me, Dida. Let’s head to work.”
She giggled again, all her tension lifted. “Yay! I’ll place a breakfast order the usual way!”
I opened and shut the front door. I soon wished I’d left weather forecasts as one of Dida’s headlines. A blast of stagnant air pressed on me.
I could tell it was going to be another hot day approaching ninety.
I stood in the spotted shade of a neighbor’s Chitalpa. A dry wind curled at my hair. The tract of homes stretched to the horizon. The music, which had returned to a normal level, fit.
I waited.
Dida hummed as an idle sequence.
I asked for the time. Dida recited it efficiently and then returned to where she’d left off in her hum.
My bus was late. Dida dialed their server.
“Hiyos! I’m calling for Mr. Glossian. He needs to know when his bus will get to this address. Please check my DPIP for confirmation.”
I heard a groan from the other end. The voice was female, still child-like, but raspy like a kid who had a vicious sore throat. “Must you prod me so early in my uptake cycle?”
Dida didn’t retreat from prodding. “Mr. Glossian needs his bus! He has very important work to do today and he mustn’t be late or it’ll be reaaal bad.”
“I manage the tech support of eighty-thousand citizens. Do you know how many AIs have the nerve to prod me like this? Just you!”
Dida huffed. “Weelll…if you kept your buses where they should be then you wouldn’t need to hear from me.”
The other AI wheezed/groaned. “Alright, I’ll do a diagnostic of the routes.”
A breezy, quiet moment passed.
There came a grunt and the AI responded, “The B-23 schedule defaulted to the weekend route rather than the weekday one. The bus would’ve arrived twenty minutes off schedule. Fixing now.”
It offered what sounded like a begrudging, “Thanks for your…input. Now get off this line. And grow some manners the next time you ping.”
Dida reacted strongly with a raspberry sound file and commented to me, “The nerve! She was a meanie!” when the server logged off.
EviWI9Y.jpg [https://i.imgur.com/EviWI9Y.jpg]