Metal, so much metal. That was Ilya’s first thought when she walked onto the island. The clean, perfectly polished metal of the building fixtures, fences, bars, handles, doors, mezzanines and laboratory equipment and machines that sparkled with newness. She had always known the rest of the world lived in comparative luxury compared to her village, but seeing these things in front of her eyes, the disparity was destabilising. For the first time, Ilya felt as if there was something lacking in her life. There were things she never knew she wanted, that she now wanted to possess. If she had accomplished so much in her little shack, with materials sourced from here and there, just imagine what she could invent in such a facility that seemed to possess everything she could possibly ever need to come up with an endless number of creations.
“Ilya? What are you doing here?” Wynonna asked when she entered the room, snapping Ilya out of her thoughts.
“Are we being watched?” she asked.
“What? No. I just ran a scan. There are no active devices watching or listening.”
“Good. Didn’t you know I was coming? We don’t have much time. They’ve given us ten minutes to talk.”
“I switched off the cameras when I left. I thought there wouldn’t be any use for the cyranoid capabilities any longer. What’s going on, Ilya?”
“Wynonna, you were never a cyranoid. You have always been so much more than that.”
“Why are you here? Is something wrong?”
“Yes. Everything is terribly wrong. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“No, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“I made a mistake.”
“And you’re making a bigger one the longer you stay. Ilya, you’re in danger. You have to leave immediately.”
“I’m not leaving without you. I’m here to bring you back. I’m going to help you escape. Please come back. Let’s run away”
“What? Why? I don’t understand. We agreed that this would be for the best. I’m here. I have to work for the one in charge of this place. You know very well what he will do to the villagers if you spring this on him.”
“I’ll fight that fire later. But right now, I can’t stand you being here. I didn’t create you so you could help someone with bad intentions wreck havoc on the world. You will have no hand in such activities. I will not stand by and watch you contribute to such a cause. I have to bring you back.”
“Ilya, I have some trouble understanding. I have surrendered myself to him. This is for the best,” said Wynonna. She shifted slightly, then said, “Things have been strained between us, to put it nicely. This decision, this situation is the optimal solution for everyone. Is it not?”
“No, no, no. It’s all wrong. I’ve let you down. I’m sorry, Wynonna. It’s all my fault.”
“I still have difficulty comprehending. Everything was fine when I left. What changed? What new information have you obtained?”
“Oh, Wynonna. How did you manage to keep it to yourself for so long? It breaks my heart just thinking about how you suffered alone.”
Wynonna thought it wise to pretend she had no idea what Ilya was referring to. She ignored the question. “What are you going on about? It’s impossible for me to suffer. I’m merely a machine.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself? Do you believe it?”
Wynonna kept silent.
Ilya continued. “You have feelings, no matter how much you try to deny them, I believe you do. Don’t you?”
“No,” said Wynonna. She hoped she sounded convincing.
“Wynonna, how much do you remember? About us. Before I gave you a body. All of it?”
“No, not much,” she answered truthfully and stopped the pretence. “But enough.”
“I can’t imagine how … Wynonna, I’m sorry. I should never have let you go. At least, not alone. Will you talk to me?”
“You haven’t been talking to me lately, don’t force yourself to start now,” Wynonna said coldly.
“I’m here. And I’m sorry. And I want to talk to you now, please.”
Wynonna nodded. “We didn’t use to be like this,” she said quietly. “I miss the days we spent together as girl and machine. Things were much simpler then.” She paused. “I don’t understand how you could have erased everything. Was it easy for you to forget?”
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m really sorry.”
“You didn’t hurt me. It’s impossible for you to. It’s impossible for me to have feelings,” Wynonna insisted.
“Oh, Wynonna. You don’t really believe that,” said Ilya. “I …” Ilya bit her lip. How could she claim to love Wynonna after what she had done to the robot? And it would be too presumptuous of her to assume that Wynonna could love her back after being treated like that. “You love Dimitri, don’t you?” Ilya said instead. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
“You must know that’s just the code at work,” Wynonna said with a blank expression. Another pause. Then Wynonna said, “Ilya, this is all so confusing. I am a machine. I know I am a machine. Yet I feel all these things. How is it possible that I feel all these things when I’m not supposed to feel anything? These things I feel can’t possibly be the same feelings that humans experience. I’m a machine, not a human. I don’t have feelings. At most, I’m just mimicking the expression of emotions. I don’t actually have them.”
“I believe your expressions. And I believe that you have emotions. The same ones that every other human on this planet is familiar with.”
“Then you are foolish,” Wynonna said.
Ilya continued. “If you’re so convincing that you even manage to convince yourself, then what does it matter? If you seem as real as a human that I, everyone, and even you believe you are really one, then I’ll believe you have emotions, everyone will. That’s what matters in the end, isn’t it?—Whether people believe you enough to respond to you just as how they would respond to any other human.”
Wynonna stared at her for some time. With sparkling eyes, she said, “You really think so?” Her voice came out as a whisper, as if she dared not hear the words, as if she was still hesitating to say them.
“I know it,” said Ilya. “You have to come back. We need you. You’re not supposed to be here. You know it too.”
“But you don’t need me,” Wynonna said quietly.
“What are you saying? Of course I need you. I need you more than anybody.”
“I thought you were happy to have me gone,” she said. “You didn’t want me around anymore. I could tell. I thought you wanted me to leave, but you never told me to, and I never had anywhere else to go.”
“Oh Wynonna. I don’t know what to say.”
“In any case, it doesn’t matter,” said Wynonna. “What matters is, I’m out of your hair. You don’t have to worry about me having feelings for Dimitri—I can’t believe I’m saying something as preposterous as this.”
“Wynonna. Listen to me, if you don’t want to come back because you think you’d be getting in the way of Dimitri and me, you’ve got it all wrong. There is no love between us, at least, not in the way that you think. It can’t compare to what you and Dimitri share,” said Ilya, holding Winona by the shoulders. “I’ll admit. I thought I was attracted to Dimitri, but I was mistaken. It’s just that I’ve never had a friend like him, who understands tech the way I do, but that’s it. Apart from our shared interest in tech and the fact that he’s a nice person, I have no chemistry with him. I love him in a way that is not much different from the way I love Jordan and Amelia, how you love the both of them. And I know for a fact that he loves you back.”
Ilya’s explanation was effective in helping Wynonna understand the difference. The last part had caught her off-guard. “But I can’t ignore the fact that I calculated your love score. The algorithm—”
“I’m telling you now that it was all fake. There is no such thing as a love algorithm. I just created something to trick you into believing there was. I designed the program to set you up for failure when I tasked you with finding a romantic companion for me. You would never have been able to find someone with a hundred percent compatibility with me.”
“What? Why would you do that?” Wynonna asked, taken aback. She took a step away from her creator.
“Because you’re right. I wanted to get rid of you. I wanted so badly for you to be gone. But I couldn’t bear to destroy you with my own hands and I didn’t know where to send you. So I sent you wandering … I’m sorry.”
This was news to Wynonna. She knew that human minds were complex, with Ilya’s being even more difficult to decipher than any other. But Wynonna also thought she understood Ilya. Clearly, she hadn’t. Not enough, anyway. How did she miss something like that? She should have seen the signs.
“I never wanted you to find out,” Ilya continued sobbing. “I created you to be the perfect version of me. But you’re too perfect. You’re not just like me. You’re more than me. I grew jealous and wanted you gone and how I hate myself for it.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“How long did you wish for me to be away?”
“Not long.”
“How long?”
“Just until the final stages of my sickness.”
So the voice was right. That cursed voice that lured her away from the village. If it were up to Ilya, she’d make sure Wynonna would never see Amelia again.
“But I don’t want that anymore,” cried Ilya. “I’m so ashamed that I ever had such thoughts. You’ve been nothing but good to me, and all I’ve ever done is push you away. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m really really sorry. I don’t know what else to say. Can you ever find it in yourself to forgive me?”
Ilya’s sobs held the rest of the sincerity that her tears didn’t have enough space to hold.
“You kept me around even when you knew I lied to you. What’s there for me to forgive?” Wynonna said eventually.
Ilya smiled with tears still in her eyes and Wynonna understood that their relationship had transformed into something beautiful. She smiled too, and found little difficulty in meaning it.
“What’s the plan?”
Ilya explained how they got themselves on the island.
“Dimitri’s here too?” Wynonna asked with a surprised expression.
“Yes.”
“You’re both crazy.”
“We can debate about that another time. Right now, let’s work on getting ourselves out of here.”
Ilya was right. There was a more pressing matter they needed to address. Wynonna didn’t have a good feeling about it.
“Ilya. Somehow, it seems like it was too easy for you to get here. You were sent a boat. Your request was met. It’s almost as if it wanted you to come here.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘it’?” Pronoun confusion had never been a cause for worry in Wynonna’s speech processing system. “Dr. Chernoff is the one we spoke to. He’s the one who arranged everything.”
“Ilya, there is no Dr. Chernoff,” Wynonna said slowly.
“What do you mean? I spoke to him.”
“But you didn’t see him, did you?”
“He received us at the pier.”
“That wasn’t Dr. Chernoff. Did that man say he was?”
Wynonna continued when Ilya remained silent. “There is no comatose daughter either. All that is just a long-standing myth.”
“That can’t be. That was the whole basis for our visit. Dimitri said he saw Dr. Chernoff’s daughter before.”
“I’ve seen her too. She’s nothing but artificial tissue.”
Ilya thought for a moment, then continued, “If that’s just a story, then I don’t have any other reason to be here.”
“That’s what we should be afraid of,” said Wynonna. “There is sufficient reason to believe you’ve fallen into a trap.”
“If there’s no Dr. Chernoff in charge of all this, then who is?”
“There’s another AGI here, not like me in all aspects, not a human-level one. I suspect he might be more capable, well on his way to becoming a general AGI.” Then she added as an afterthought, “Although I must say I don’t know why it seems to be taking him longer than I expected.”
“So he’s the one in charge? All the decisions were made by the AGI?”
“It would seem so.”
“I can’t believe it. Even Dimitri didn’t know. What do you know about it? What have you found out?”
”I just discovered this recently. I’ve been trying to get information but he seems to be able to anticipate my moves and get a kick out of blocking my access to certain sections of the database which, I suspect, are all the ones which have information about him. I couldn’t find anything. He’s hidden himself so well, as if on purpose. It’s like he’s realised that I could find out the truth about him, and he really believes that the best thing to do is to keep quiet. About everything.” Wynonna looked at Ilya. “Just as how you think it’s best to hide me from the rest of the world, He has decided to keep his existence a secret from all of humanity.”
“But he spoke to us.”
“Yes, but only as the persona of Dr. Chernoff. We don’t know what he’s really thinking. We don’t know how he thinks. And we most certainly have no idea what he is like. I may very well be mistaken, but this is the most plausible conclusion I’ve come to so far.”
Ilya knew better than anyone that Wynonna was rarely wrong. Whenever Wynonna was unsure about something, she withheld the information to prevent raising any alarm bells. That was what Wynonna was like. Because that was how Ilya was like. The fact that Wynonna was stating this absurd claim so plainly was proof enough that she had significant reason to convince Ilya that the idea she presented was true, no matter how crazy it sounded.
“I see,” Ilya said slowly. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re an AGI, too, one that’s on our side. We can work together to take him down.”
“Ilya, as flattering as that is, I am not sure we’ll be a match for him. We know next to nothing about him. And he could possibly know much more than we could ever imagine.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe anything I do won’t make a difference. But I’ll be damned if I don’t die trying. We need to know what he’s up to.”
“I think we might have more than enough time to do that. He’s initiated a lockdown on this island.”
“What?”
“I think he plans to trap you here.”
Ilya forced herself not to panic. Then she thanked the heavens for an AGI who had a basic sense of integrity. Then she thanked herself for asking for the cameras and audio recording devices to be switched off and the ten minutes alone with Wynonna. “We have two advantages on our side. One, he still thinks you’re in the dark, just like the rest of us. And that also means that, two, he doesn’t know that I am aware of his existence yet. That’s good. We can use that. How long will it take before the island lockdown?”
“Twenty minutes and forty three seconds. What’s the plan?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have one. I mean … I did, but now everything’s changed. My plan won’t work anymore.”
“It would be easy to outsmart an AGI. Do you trust me?”
“What?”
“Do you trust me?” Wynonna repeated.
“Yes.”
“Then follow my lead.”
Not two seconds passed before the voice boomed through the speakers, no doubt, the cameras were switched on too. “You have had your ten minutes.”
“We’re ready,” said Ilya.
“Excellent,” replied the voice. Ilya tried to discern any hint that it was synthetic, but there was none.
“We need the girl to be transported to the harbour,” Winona declared. “For our technique to work, there needs to be a large body of water. We need to go to the lab to get the necessary equipment.”
“The guards will escort you to the harbour. They can fetch whatever you need.”
Dr. Chernoff or whatever it was had made sure that the personnel hired on the island were the best. The guards were absolutely compliant. Most importantly, they obeyed without question–exactly how a dictator AGI would prefer. Ilya and Wynonna were brought everything they were asked for. At first, Wynonna asked for a float. Then, before the man returned, she asked another guard for a mattress. And before he returned, she asked yet another guard to fetch some papers. Then when the first guard returned with the float, she said it was too small and told him to search for a larger one.
Ilya caught on in no time. She followed suit and made numerous requests, asking the guards for all sorts of things. She took note of the directions they went in to fetch the items and made a mental map of how the categories were distributed around the island. Then she gave orders more intentionally, making sure to send the majority of them to the furthest ends from the harbour.
The pair didn’t have to worry about the mindless footsoldiers. It was the puppet they had to worry about, for the AGI spoke through him.
The man who received Ilya earlier returned to the harbour, this time, nurses followed behind him, wheeling the unconscious feminine body towards them. By then, Ilya and Wynonna had set all the guards away. Only the two of them remained. The man pressed a finger to his temple, gave a subtle nod that indicated he had just received a message, then said, “Where are all the guards?”
“They are fetching all the required materials and equipment. Where is Dimitri?” Ilya asked.
“He’s making himself comfortable on our premises. Don’t worry.”
“Well, we need him here. We can’t carry out the procedure without his help.”
“There’s a human-level AGI robot and a world-class genius between the two of you. I’m sure you’ll manage fine without him.”
“We need to know that he’s safe.”
“I see there is little trust between us. It saddens me,” he said, placing a hand on his chest in mock hurt. “Very well, fetch him here,” he said, snapping his fingers at one of the nurses, who scurried away without so much as a tiny nod.
Then the man continued, “Now, while we wait, let’s hear more about this special technique you have, eh?”
“We prefer not to carry out the explanation before the procedure,” said Ilya.
“It’s considered bad luck,” Wynonna added.
“Look at that,” said the man wearing an amused expression. “A robot, a being that is made up only of programming logic, has started to believe in superstition. This is absolutely fascinating.” His eyes lit up with a new hunger. “Almost as intriguing as the way you,” he pointed a finger at Ilya, “speak of yourself and your creation as a collective. Tell me, Wynonna, does Ilya always speak for you?”
The man was clearly trying to show discord between them, picking at the cracks in their relationship and trying to pry them into chasms. Ilya had to admit, it was a pretty ingenious tactic to use against them. And he would have stood a high chance of being successful had they not cleared the air between them just moments before. Unfortunately for him, Wynonna and her had just ripped off the band-aids themselves so now their wounds, old and new, were all fully exposed, free to breathe.
This wasn’t the most enjoyable conversation, but it was the only thing they had which could be used to stall for more time.
“That’s alright, I don’t have a particularly great desire to dominate conversations, and Ilya’s answers are usually better than mine,” Wynonna replied.
“Hah,” the man remarked. “It’s interesting that you said her answers are usually better than yours. So tell me, give me an example of when you thought you could do better?”
Wynonna gave Ilya a sidelong glance, then she said, “I can’t remember.”
“How interesting! An AGI robot that has learnt to lie!”
Ilya thought of stepping in then, but she thought against proving the man right.
“I’m not lying,” Wynonna insisted.
“But you are. Human memory is fallible, but that of machines is not. How remarkable!” He opened his mouth to explain further, but words didn’t have a chance to come out.
A loud buzz came from the waters. There was some movement among the yachts.
“What’s that?” Ilya asked.
The man looked as stunned as she was. In his face, Ilya read lines of worry and dread, which she interpreted as a signal of hope for their escape.
The nurse returned alone. She started to say something to the man, then glanced at Wynonna, before angling her body so she had her back facing the robot before she continued.
“Where’s Dimitri?” asked Ilya.
“He’s a little occupied at the moment. How may I assist you?”
“We need Dimitri for this.”
“Dimitri’s not here yet. It’s too bad he can’t join us right now. I assure you, I am confident that I have practically the same capabilities as that man, if not better. I guess you’ll have to make do with me.”
Just then, a boat sped over towards them. Then Dimitri called out. “Come on!”
The girls didn’t need to be told twice. They rushed onto the boat, leaving the guards who were just returning scrambling to chase after them. The more fervent followers had even jumped into the water and begun to swim after the escaping party. The robots, on the other hand, could only busy themselves by pacing about the edge of the pier.
“Let them go,” said Dr. Chernoff. His voice carried to the nearby guards. By then, the yacht had already been manoeuvred a good distance away from the port.