Dimitri had been a city dweller and was easily mesmerised by the foreignness of this town. Its strangeness bordered on the edges of the unimaginable. Things like that usually enjoyed dichotomised receptions. Yet it seemed to Dimitri that the village possessed a charm that rendered it effortlessly alluring, and not just because of the silly values and superstitions she was always pointing out to him. The simplicity in their lifestyles, the lack of material desires and the overwhelming acceptance and generosity far outweighed the lack of modernization, modern technology (save for the gadgets Ilya created).

Just a few weeks in the forest community was sufficient for Dimitri to discover just how deceiving the town’s appearance was. The girl, he realised, was a true embodiment of her village. Just as a place in the ditches was hardly a sign of a thriving technology hub, a brilliant brain resided behind those tired eyes. Both were living proof that nothing was impossible.

“Your community is so fascinating, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it,” Dimitri said to one of the villagers, eyes shining as he took in the scenery before him.

It was as if Dimitri had stumbled into a cyberpunk society filled with things he never dared to dream. The e-waste village was not a dump. Far from it. It was a prospering tech-hub with vast potential to be transformed into a tech-haven. They had all the raw materials nearby, granted they were all recycled ones, but conservation and reuse was the direction the world was heading towards, was it not?

To people from other towns, it might have seemed like in its isolation, the village was dreadfully lacking in the many luxuries of the modern, integrated world, but its people were thriving. They didn’t live off the land there. Instead, people took long walks to the faraway forest to gather what they needed. They led simple lifestyles and seemed to have little worries.

The village was in essence a forest of metal and rust, with a floor woven of broken pieces of hardware and wiring. The children seemed to think of it as the ultimate playground. They picked up broken pieces and tried to connect them between the grooves. That was how they made toy swords to play with. They were light-hearted and carefree. But it didn’t change the fact that they were running around in a wasteland. It was a common pastime amongst them to collect some plastic containers and fill them up later with chemicals they could light up to hold a piece of magic in their hands. On an afternoon with good weather, adults lay on the ground, daydreaming while they wait for the rain to wash the dirt from their faces. Day after day, the villagers scratched their feet against the prickly bits of metal and wiring as if without noticing, like clownfish who have gotten used to the stings of anemone. Dimitri was simultaneously amazed and appalled by the phenomena—from an early age, it seemed, those people had grown immune to physical pains. It was as if there was an invisible shield around their skin. Most of the villagers didn’t wear shoes unless they were going into the neighbouring town where one had to wear shoes to fit in.

There was a little stream, runoff from one of the large heaps where batteries leaked. The villagers got their water for drinking from the taps. Just judging from the colour of the water, it was improbable that clean water was supplied, but the villagers seemed to trust that the remedies Ilya provided them were effective in offsetting any harmful effects it had on their body.

The waste people hunted for parts to make solar cells. And they only ever used solar power, so electricity wasn’t a problem most of the time since one only had to wait until morning if ever a part of them powered down.

Some of the cyborg people were, in a way, like plants as they harnessed energy from the sun. Those fitted with robotic parts wore a solar panel on their chest like a badge of honour to feed their mechanical parts. They ran faster than their unmodified friends and laughed louder with their voice amplifiers. The fact that they could be upgraded and customised made many less unfortunate jealous. It was as if those blessed with a change were envied in the way people often do towards others whom they perceive as being better.

A positive consequence of this, Dimitri found, was that the villagers judged the individual only by his mind and heart, which explained why they had so readily accepted him despite his alien skin. Some of them had talked to him about his condition and their conversation ended with the conclusion that his skin and their solar cells were pretty much the same thing.

Dimitri put forth the argument that it was different for him because he looked strange with that skin and that he didn’t have a choice whether he wanted to put it on or not. But a man wearing an exoskeleton Ilya had made shot it down easily, saying that he too, looked strange in the metal garb and that he didn’t have a choice whether or not he wanted to wear it if he wanted the movement and independence that the exoskeleton conferred upon him. It was an easy and obvious choice.

It wasn’t difficult for Dimitri to fit in with those people who had traded their human parts for … non-human parts. The constituent elements and mechanics of their robotic prosthetics and his own chlorophyll-infused skin were not technically the same, but Dimitri felt like he belonged. The ways in which they were not wholly human were vastly different. But Dimitri took comfort in the fact that they were partially human, and in that sense, they were the same for as long as he continued to be burdened by his condition. An overwhelming elation surged through Dimitri as he came to that realisation.

Of course, the wonder did not blind Dimitri to their sufferings. Dimitri saw clearly that despite their vibrancy, the people had sickness of their own—how could they not? For they were living among trash, eating, drinking and breathing it all in. These were the waste people Dimitri had only heard about. Society tended to avoid speaking about them whenever it wasn’t necessary. It astonished Dimitri that their sickness didn’t seem to impede their activities. People with sizable tumours sticking out of their skin still went about their days, without showing even a hint of the underlying excruciating pain.

“Ilya gave me something for the pain,” said a man. “Now I hardly feel anything.”

In addition to their diminished life expectancy, most of the waste people fell into the misfortune of being born incomplete, usually lacking some part of the body—another misfortune befallen upon them by their proximity to the toxins. They were all victims of global pollution and, plagued by mutations and illnesses, were ugly in every kind of way. Yet they were happy people who had seemed to find the secret to a prosperous life. Some of them who were unlucky enough to be born without a limb had been fitted with a mechanical prosthetic that worked even better than their other limbs of flesh.

For the most part, their guardian from the pain remained hidden from the town. Everyone always knew where to find her. She would be in the tent, tinkering away at something or mixing some solutions. The tasks on her list were never-ending.

Dimitri looked over to Ilya presently sitting at her work desk tinkering away at some metal chunk. His contemplation had led him to full admiration of the goddess behind those inventions.

Over time, Dimitri learned even more about the village and the girl. The former, he was able to decipher through his many interactions with the townsfolk. The latter grew even more mystifying the more information he gathered.

Dimitri had known that Ilya was a prodigy. But he had underestimated the true extent of her genius, which could hardly be considered any fault of his because the girl demonstrated a level of intellect that was possibly on par with … he couldn’t think of a suitable object for comparison. She was a special one. Dimitri realised he had been severely underestimating her abilities when he had assumed earlier she was just another one of those geniuses. Dimitri couldn’t seem to find any areas she had dabbled in which she didn’t exhibit an innate talent for the tasks.

When the girl had nodded along to Dimitri’s tales of his engineering expertise in their journey to the village, he had assumed it had been a simple coincidence that she shared the same passion for mechanics, or that she had simply been patronising. But he was wrong.

This girl was operating on a whole other level. She was a one-in-a-billion prodigy, and had practically taught herself everything. Without a doubt, she was one of the greatest polymaths the world had ever seen—well, technically, the world wasn’t aware of her existence yet because she kept a low profile, serving only her villagers of whom none could possibly comprehend the level of her genius. It was as if Ilya was a culmination of numerous of the most brilliant scientists, psychologists and polymaths who ever lived, to the extent that (for lack of better expression) her mind seemed to operate at computer-speed. Dimitri felt ridiculous just thinking it. He clearly understood that this was not possible, but he saw no other way to explain what he had analysed about the girl. Her fingers worked a little slower, nevertheless, they achieved superhuman levels of efficiency. And she had levels of insight way beyond her years.

A part of Dimitri revelled in the thought that he had discovered this gem of a person and wished to keep this precious thing safely tucked in his pocket, to remain a secret from the world so that she would not be tarnished in any way. Yet he simultaneously felt that it would be such a waste if her talent continued to be squandered away for as long as she remained unknown to the world on a global level. For a brief moment, the realisation of her mountainous intellect sparked in Dimitri a desire to reveal her to the world, for it would be the greatest tragedy to let this genius remain undiscovered. The world would have suffered the greatest loss known to mankind with the fleetingness of her life. The girl was a unique case. She was naturally gifted. It only made sense to Dimitri how she had slipped through the systems when he found out that she hadn’t ever been registered in any.

“I can’t believe how fast your mind works. It’s like you’re a computer.” Ilya looked at Dimitri with a strange expression when he said that.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, turning away.

Dimitri trailed a finger on the tabletop absently. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to learn everything that you seem to do so easily.” She probably slowed her pace to match his and everyone else’s all the time. How tiring must that be? Dimitri found himself wondering.

Ilya didn’t hide her opinion then. The fact was that her level of intelligence far surpassed that of even the most intellectually gifted humans. In that respect, she was somewhat of an alien compared to the rest. Long ago, she had deduced that this precious ability must have been a consequence of a rare mutation in the brain, but she had no way of affirming her suspicion, nor was there a need to.

“You learn quickly enough,” Ilya said. She put on some makeshift goggles made of tinted glass, then poured a strange-coloured liquid from a conical flask into a beaker. The fluid was a pale orange-pink, but appeared a yellowish green under the glare of the sunlight streaming in. Of late, Dimitri found all shades of green revolting. The substance was far more viscous than the impression its colour had given.

“Could you teach me?”

“About what? I think you know that you’re more than capable of teaching yourself.”

“Yeah, but I could still learn a lot from you.”

“I tried to teach for about a year before we gave up,” said Ilya.

“Who was learning?”

“Does it matter?” asked Ilya, eyes fixed on the liquid.

“I guess not.”

“It’s because I’m not a good teacher.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“That’s nice to hear. But I know my talents … and teaching is unfortunately not one of them.”

The growing din outside cut into their conversation.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“What’s that happening outside?” asked Dimitri, peering out of the window between the blinds. Outside, the children ran without fear for their feet regardless of the battery liquid or metal bits that littered the ground all around. A commotion was buzzing.

Ilya set down the conical flask she was holding. “They’re preparing for the campfire next week. You should join in. It’s a lot of fun,” Ilya told him. Then she reached for one of the racks before her and started rearranging the positions of various vials.

“Aren’t you going?”

“No, I don’t go for those things,” she said, not lifting her gaze from the tubes.

Dimitri turned to face her. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Why not?”

“It’s nice and all, but I have so much to do here.”

“Your work won’t run away from you, you know. I’m surprised no one has ever pulled you out.”

“Some of the children used to pester me to join, but I’ve always rejected them because I usually have work, which is great because I prefer working to dancing anyway, probably because I have two left feet so it works out,” she said with a laugh.

“Come on, aren’t you going to be a good host and show your guests around town?”

“You’ve been here for a few weeks. You can hardly consider yourself as a guest. Go on and join them, I want to hear about the great time you had when you get back.” She shooed him away.

“How can I go when my benefactor is staying inside this workshop, surrounded by work?”

“Come to think of it, here’s a problem I can’t solve,” Ilya brought a finger to her chin. “I can’t get away from this mountain of work, and I can’t reject the people who want me to participate without them feeling sad.”

“That’s a difficult problem indeed,” said Dimitri, completely oblivious to her plan.

“But fret not, no problem is too difficult for me … I think I’ve just found my solution,” Ilya said. Dimitri heard the smile in her voice.

“Why are you looking at me and not saying anything?” asked Dimitri.

“You’ll be my representative,” Ilya declared.

“I won’t be your substitute.”

“Of course you can. Besides, the kids love you. They’ll be thrilled. You’ll go as a representative of Ilya’s tent.”

Dimitri laughed. “Alright, but I’m not telling you anything that happens outside. If you want to know, you’ll have to come out and see for yourself,” he teased.

“Are you trying to lure me out of my cave?” Ilya raised a brow, amused.

“Is it working?” Dimitri asked with a hopeful expression.

“No,” Ilya said flatly.

“It was worth a shot.” He shrugged. Then leaned back, propping himself with his elbows resting on the table behind him. “I still can’t believe you made these on your own,” said Dimitri, gawking at the equipment in the room.

“I did, but I had some help with the sourcing of parts. Kids are the best helpers you can get for scavenging. They think everything is interesting and valuable and treat tasks like a great game,” she said.

Dimitri smiled. He could see that.

It wasn’t just the kids who rummaged through the junk, she told him. All the villagers regularly went to the recycled metals heap to dig out some useful parts to use in their inventions. Dimitri hadn’t thought such a place existed. The people who lived there were all hardware experts. They let the little ones tinker around with hammers and nails without worry and the teenagers could easily make their own remote-controlled cars and planes from scraps. They made their own fun because they didn’t have money to buy any. That was what they did for work, for recreation, and sometimes just to pass the time. That was what they occupied themselves with all the time.

“Aren’t they afraid of the dirt and the metal cutting against their soles?” he asked.

“Most of us have grown up running barefoot through the heaps.” Ilya shrugged. “The cuts, we get used to. Infections are more concerning. But I have remedies for that, so there’s no cause for worry.”

“Aren’t the women afraid the scars would make them less beautiful?” asked Dimitri.

When asked why they don’t share the same worship of aesthetics on the outside, Ilya doubled over and struggled to compose herself for several minutes, leaving Dimitri greatly puzzled.

When the girl finally regained her composure, she asked, “Why would they be concerned with that? In our community, beauty is only what lies on the inside. A kind and beautiful mind is the most captivating of all.” Then she asked Dimitri if he knew that his nails were made of keratin. When he said that he did, she asked him again if he was aware that his hair was made of keratin. When Dimitri replied in the affirmative, Ilya asked him if he knew the skin all those silly people who lived outside their village worried about was also made of the same thing. Then he laughed as hard as she had a few moments before and explained to her puzzled face that she was right and all the people in her village were very wise. Ilya smiled at the compliment.

Then Dimitri asked the girl if she wanted to hear something else that was really funny. She nodded her head vigorously, anticipating what new discovery he would reveal to her. He told her that the silly people who lived outside their village sometimes put silicone under their skin.

“What? But that’s so strange. Why would they do that?”

Dimitri replied that they were the same silly people who hadn't realised that their skin was also made of keratin. He thought people should be content in their natural form. “That’s when they’re the most beautiful,” he said.

At this, Ilya shook her head and chuckled. “The world is a crazy place.”

Despite her light-hearted reply, Dimitri caught a sad expression flitting across Ilya’s face. He considered pressing for an explanation, but the chance was lost when Ilya continued.

“You’d be surprised by the stuff you can find among the things people throw away,” she said. “Someone, somewhere in the world is throwing something valuable away without a second thought. All you have to do is wait in a place like this, and you have to be willing to look for it. With a little bit of luck, when that thing gets here, it could be intact, or only slightly damaged … well, maybe not exactly, but nothing unfixable … and it could be yours.”

“It seems like you’d be able to fix anything,” Dimitri said admiringly.

Ilya blushed, then beamed. She was proud that her efforts were being recognised. Ilya had never been short of praise from the villagers. They were always showering her with compliments for it was a way they used to show their gratitude, but hearing a compliment from Dimitri, someone not from her town, a schooled person, a worldly person, Ilya couldn’t hide her smile.

“Well, not everything,” she said modestly, “but … I believe there’s a solution to every problem. Someone just needs to work on it for long enough, but often, people don’t have the time or the patience. Too many people give up halfway. It’s not always bad to give up, but…I don’t know…” Ilya bit her lip.

“Go on,” said Dimitri, seeing that the girl had something she hesitated to say.

“It’s a pity how so many people give up too soon to see the truly wonderful things.”

“Has there been any problem you haven’t been able to solve?” asked Dimitri.

Ilya brought a hand to her face and pondered. “I have to say, I haven’t… Although, it’s also probably because we don’t have too many complicated situations happening around here,” she said.

The girl was far too humble. From what he had seen, he would believe her if she told him she was capable of recreating the most state-of-the-art technology from memory in one sitting.

“Have you ever tried to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI) robot?” asked Dimitri.

Ilya visibly tensed, surprised by the question. “Artificial general intelligence?” she repeated.

“Yeah. That’s the goal that everybody’s currently working towards,” Dimitri said. “That’s proving to be quite challenging. Some doubt we’ll ever be able to achieve it. But if there’s really nothing that has ever fazed you, perhaps you’d be able to.”

“How do you know about it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s been the hottest topic for years now.”

Ilya nodded in understanding but said nothing.

“So have you ever tried working on one? I think if anyone could do it, it would be you,” Dimitri said, sincerity evident from his gaze.

Ilya let her hair fall to hide her face. “But that thing is like a danger magnet, isn’t it?”

“What makes you say so?” Dimitri was well aware that a subject like this had two main camps. From the girl’s reply, it seemed she fell into the opposition party. He was familiar with the arguments against the creation of an AGI, but he still wanted to hear her reasoning. The more he learned about her, the more he found her intriguing.“You’ve worked on one, haven’t you?”

Ilya said nothing at first. Then she caved under Dimitri’s scrutinising gaze. “I tried.”

“Could you tell me about it, the one you were working on. How did you get started on it? What was your approach?”

“Why? It’s meaningless.”

“As a fellow scientist, surely you understand the obsession one develops over the topic of their project. I worked on it, you know. It was the project I was the most passionate about. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, humour me. These kinds of conversations are the only thing that brings me joy these days,” he said dramatically, eliciting a grin from Ilya.

Dimitri learned that she had carried out experiments and tests almost all on her own while she had been developing a superintelligent AI. Her purpose? To create a whole new person, or rather, a body for which a mind could be transplanted into. Too many times had she seen people grieve over someone’s death. And death happened alarmingly frequently in their community, no doubt because of the pollution and waste. Though the waste people had a life expectancy of only half the global average, none of them complained. Their people had strong hearts which made up for their relatively short lifespans. They said they understood that it was all a part of life and were even more thankful that they had an awareness that this was the case, so they cherished their lives even more than others and lived each day to the fullest. They had grown up in the statistics and had gotten used to it, but that didn’t mean they were immune.

Grief affects the living more, and Ilya couldn’t stand it if any more people died. A more selfish desire: she wanted to create the brain-integration technology to use it on herself so that she would be able to preserve her mind forever, then she would have all the time in the world to teach the children and save the sick and develop even more helpful things for her community. She explained to him that she had been trying to create a machine that could take instructions from a brain and let the mind live on forever in a body that could move. That’s how it began.

Later, she realised that, limited by her mortality and lack of time, it was far too difficult a feat to accomplish on her own. So she tried working on something ‘relatively simpler’. She wondered if she could create a mind for the machine. It would then follow that she would attempt to nudge the artificial mind in the directions she desired.

Dimitri nodded along as if he was perfectly unfazed by the fact that the girl was explaining some elaborate ideas to him without batting an eyelid. When he recovered from the awe of her aspirations, he started to offer his opinions. “The body would come later. It was secondary—”

No it was not. Ilya was adamant about making that clear.

The way Dimitri saw it, the body could always be remoulded into whatever they wanted. Creating the mind posed a much more formidable task. Countless scientists have racked their brains over the parameters, tools and methods that would lead to the conception of a system as powerful as the human mind. But Ilya was firm about her stance that the body was as crucial as the mind. A superintelligent AI must be embodied for it to be able to truly replicate the human experience because the body is necessary as an input interface between the mind and the environment for the experience and capture of sensations which are inherently linked to emotion. Emotion was at the core of their being. It was what made the distinction between humans and machines. If a machine had any chance in becoming ‘super’, more human-like, it lay in the system’s capacity to capture emotion.

By the end of their conversation, Dimitri found that she had somehow convinced him of her reasoning and he was more than happy to switch to the other camp.

When Dimitri asked if Ilya had ever heard of cloning, she told him she had, but disagreed with the notion that the mind in a clone was the same as the one in its parent. After all, wouldn’t it act on its own accord and make decisions different from its parents not too long after birth? Besides, clones would not have the same memories, only the same DNA. But what was the point in creating a new person who didn’t remember anything about all the interactions he had with others before? It may as well be a baby.

Their conversations often took such sharp turns, which the both of them found to be extremely pleasing.

“What if …”

“What do you think …”

“How do you …”

“But does that necessarily mean …”

“Can we assume …”

“What would it mean for …”

“Do we have …”

“Would it be right …”

“How much time would it take for …”

“What about the people who …”

The conversations flowed unceasingly. Often, they dove so deep into the rabbit hole that the day seemed to pass by within moments. If neither of them had enough sense to check the time—which was more often than one might think—they would only be alerted by the grumble of Ilya’s stomach after it had long passed the time she had last eaten. Dimitri’s body didn’t work quite the same way with his new skin.