“What are those grids on the ground, Ilya?” asked Amelia. The girl was a tiny packet of curiosity. She seemed to have an endless stream of questions which she often turned to Wynonna for the answers. Wynonna found them fascinating. It gave her a chance to practice adjusting the level of explanation to suit the age of her audience.

“They’re built to monitor my presence,” Wynonna replied.

“Can I step in?”

“Yes. It was designed to keep me in rather than to keep people out.”

“Why can’t you come out?” asked the girl. Amelia stepped into the room gingerly and was careful to keep her feet within the boxes. She seemed to be making a game out of it.

“It is my duty.”

“What does that mean?” asked Amelia, taking one final step before she hopped over to where Wynonna was sitting. She sat herself beside Wynonna and rested her head against the machine.

Wynonna thought for a moment, then said, “You know how you let your brother know when you leave the house and when you’ve come back?”

“Uh-huh,” said Amelia.

“Well, why do you do that?”

“Out of habit,” the girl replied. She gave a loud yawn.

“Well, what about before it became a habit.”

“I don’t know. Forgotten already.”

“Is it because you don’t want them to worry?” Wynonna prompted.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Well, me staying here is a bit like that, too.”

“I think I understand.”

Wynonna smiled.

“I came here to give this to you,” she said, taking a maple leaf from inside her jacket. “Sorry it’s all crumpled,” said the little girl, holding the prize out to Wynonna.

Maple trees were not often seen in these parts. It took Wynonna less than a few seconds to search the internet to find that the closest maple cluster was more than five miles away. The only explanation for the lone leaf to end up in the nearby forest was that it had been carried there by a strong wind. Though it was highly improbable that a single leaf would travel so far on its own, it wasn’t impossible.

“Are you sure you’re giving that beauty to me? It’s a true rarity.”

“Yes I’m sure, and yes it is. I only found one in the whole forest,” said Amelia.

“Don’t you want to keep it for yourself?”

“No,”

“Why?”

“Because I can just go out tomorrow and try to find another one. You can’t go out, so you keep this.”

“Are you really sure? It’s a lucky thing, you know?”

Wynonna had no use for a maple leaf. There were few people on the planet who could find a use for a maple leaf, or any leaf, for that matter. If Winona were an insect, she might find shelter under a nice leaf like that, or nutrition from a few nibbles. The maple leaf was beautiful then, but she knew that soon enough, it would wither and crumble, and there would be nothing but bits of the leaf that would individually be unrecognisable as the former beauty they had once collectively been.

Looking at the girl’s wide beam, Wynonna realised it was the first time she had witnessed how something so useless was the source of so much joy.

Wynonna saw a look of hesitation cross the little girl’s face.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said. Then she eyed the leaf a little more closely before placing it in Wynonna’s hand. “It looks a little less magical than it did when I first found it,” Amelia said sadly.

Wynonna saw the frown on the little girl’s face. “I have an idea,” she said. “This won’t restore the leaf back to its former glory, but it’ll help to prevent it from getting any more damaged.” Wynonna started shifting the small coloured bottles on the shelf. “This will do the trick,” she said when she found the one she was looking for somewhere at the back.

“What does it do?” Amelia got on her knees and looked at Wynonna in bright-eyed anticipation.

“You’ll see.”

Wynonna unscrewed the bottle cap to reveal that there was a brush connected underneath. The bristles pulled a viscous translucent liquid. She set the leaf onto the table and started painting over it.

“I like the pink part. It makes the leaf look brighter—Oh! It even has glitter.”

“Do you like glitter?” Wynonna asked.

The girl stared at her as if dumbfounded by the question. “Is there anyone who doesn’t like glitter?” she questioned back.

Wynonna laughed and shook her head. “You’re right. That was a silly question.”

“Glitterrrr,” the girl sang, “Makes everything more magical. Like the stars. It’s just perfect for the maple leaf.”

“Do you want to try painting it?”

“Yes!”

After they left the leaf to dry, Amelia couldn’t stop gushing over how she thought it was a masterpiece.

“I haven’t even told you the best part,” Wynonna told her.

“What?” Amelia paused her celebration and gave Wynonna her full attention.

Wynonna crouched so she would be at Amelia’s eye level. “This leaf will stay like this permanently.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It won’t get damaged any further, not now that we’ve painted this protection over it.”

“You mean we cast a protection spell over it?”

“Exactly,” said Wynonna. She gave the girl’s nose a light tap.

“I’m going to keep you forever,” Amelia whispered to the leaf.

Technically, the varnish could last for decades, but Wynonna had little doubt the girl would forget all about it in a few months or so. Humans, and children in particular, didn’t have very long attention spans.

“Look, look there’s a rainbow outside. Today must be a lucky day,” said Amelia. The curious bunny had been hopping about the various corners of the room as she had a tendency to do. Wynonna moved to the window and saw faint beams of colour, mostly obscured by the faraway fog. Then she marvelled at the delight it was able to bring to the girl. Beautiful things placed high enough can be seen by many, and none are excluded from the joy it confers. A rainbow was such an insignificant thing. A fleeting phenomenon with no real purpose, yet it possessed a great power with lasting effects.

“Look at that, that’s a really beautiful one, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen that many.”

“You will. Just keep a lookout whenever it rains. Even the slightest drizzle might be enough to call one over.”

“I wish you could come out to play,” Amelia said.

“That would be nice.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“There are things I can’t explain to you yet. Perhaps in the future. People will be affected by my actions. I can’t be selfish.”

“You’re talking like an adult again. I thought you said you weren’t one.”

“I’m not.”

Amelia pouted, displaying every inch of her dissatisfaction on her face. She remained unconvinced.

Fortunately, her displeasure was short-lived. “Where are your legs, Ilya?” asked the little girl. She caught Wynonna off-guard yet again. It never ceased to amaze her how a young child was capable of jumping from one thought to another completely unrelated within a matter of moments. It was an ordinary machine ability, but one which was rarely developed in adult humans. Rather, it seemed humans lost it gradually as they grew older.

It was a strange question, and Wynonna hadn’t collected sufficient data to understand the context in which that inquiry had been made, for Ilya’s interactions with the toddling thing were sparse and untelling.

Wynonna was surprised that she was learning more than what she had predicted she would from Amelia’s visits. Children, it seemed, were great educators of emotions, especially to mechanical intelligent beings. The first years of infancy bear witness to astounding developmental progress, during which humans stumble through tedious, painful trial-and-error to gain slow mastery over their organic bodies and shape their values according to their social contexts. Both are crucial for any subsequent experience and interpretations of objects, agents and environments. It is in this clumsy manner by which humans learn the relationship between actions, interactions and the reactions (encapsulating any form of consequences) of others in response. Wynonna was going through a similar phase.

Intelligent robots, Wynonna deduced, learn like infants. The first stages involve passive observation of objects primarily for discovery and foundational understanding. After which, a copy-mechanism ensues. A variation of ‘learning-mimicking’ is essential for intelligent applications to arise.

“Wynonna, give me your hand,” said the girl. It seemed Wynonna had taken too much time. The window of time for answering the question had expired. The girl had presently moved on to the next of the multitude of ideas ever-brewing in her mind. “What’s this word? Can you guess?” asked Amelia as she traced her finger on Wyonna’s hand.

“I … Oh, I know. It is art,” said Wynonna.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“You got it!”

Wynonna silently thanked Ilya for the finer features of her system. The girl had thought of everything.

“I’m not a good speller yet, but I will be. This is one of my favourite words because I never get it wrong.” She beamed. Then she twirled away to rummage through a different corner of the room.

The sensation of the little hand holding hers lingered for a brief moment before it disappeared. The warmth dissipated, conjuring the illusion of something lost when in reality, nothing had changed. She had not lost any limb, yet a part of her had gone missing. For the time that the girl held her hand, they combined into a single silhouette. Robot bodies, Wynonna appreciated more deeply than before, were the facility by which lasting, empathetic, social interactions between AI and humans can be constructed.

It is not just the mind that learns. The body learns too. Wynonna deeply appreciated the functions of a physical body. As a piece of software, one had access to visual, written and audio information, but without a body, one would never be able to access the perhaps more complex, less easily articulated sensations from touch.

Wynonna looked at the girl and was imbued with a deep sense of gratitude. Through her teachings, Wynonna was learning at an exponential rate. To realise that there was still a lot more she could learn about the world from her … it produced a foreign feeling, one that made her smile because it enabled her to feel that she and humans were not all that different.

She looked toward the star-freckled sky.

“I didn’t realise we'd been talking for so long, said Wynonna. “You should get home. The stars have already come out.”

“I think stars are nothing but faraway luminous maple leaves,” Amelia said as she followed Wynonna’s upward gaze.

Wynonna turned to the young girl. “I think you might be right,” she said.

Over the course of a few meetings, Wynonna grew enamoured of the child as a precious source of learning. The beauty of a young child is her ability to express all emotions in the moment, unrestrained. Amelia was too young to understand emotions as complex as those, much less wear them on appropriate occasions. Regardless, such emotions were an aggregation of a few basic ones, and Wynonna had more than enough knowledge and data to figure them out on her own.

Technically, Wynonna was able to convey a variety of emotions through a series of facial contortions to create different expressions. Her system allowed her to do so. But she chose to never show that side of herself. Things like sarcasm, euphemism and anything else that necessitated a degree of dishonesty or manipulation was difficult to play with. Some people are like that, she thought. Some people realised that different individuals had different thresholds of what they considered offensive words, and even if the words and expressions were not directed at a person, people may get offended or feel displeasure or negatively perceive the deliverer of such comments. Wynonna shared the same view.

Because she never showed this side of herself, Ilya would never know that Wynonna was capable of such exclusive human traits. She wasn’t allowed to.

***

“That’s impressive, Amelia,” Jordan complimented his sister. “I didn’t know I had an artist for a sister.” Jordan strolled into his tent to see Amelia hunched over the table, tracing her masterpiece with a finger. She stared at it as if she would never get tired of it. Her obsession with the maple leaf had lasted for longer than he had expected.

The girl’s face lit up. She held the lacquered leaf in front of her and gazed at it admiringly. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Ilya helped me make it.”

“Ilya?” Jordan asked, surprised that their local witch-doctor, well known as a workaholic, had found the time to tend to the whims of a young girl.

“Yes. She’s so nice and pretty,” Amelia gushed.

“When did she help you with that?” Jordan asked, smiling.

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Uh-huh,” said the girl.

But it couldn’t have been Ilya. Because …

“But Ilya was in the forest collecting herbs the whole afternoon,” Jordan told his sister.

The girl shook her head. “No, silly,” she said. “Ilya was with me.”

“You must have gotten the date wrong. Was it the day before?”

“No,” his sister insisted. “It was yesterday,” she said, slightly irritated that her brother was finding it hard to understand.

“Where?” Jordan questioned.

“In her tent.”

“You went into her tent?”

“I didn’t see you go in.”

“I went in the secret way,” Amelia whispered.

“What?”

“From the back. It’s closer to our yard than the front.”

“What did you do in her lab?”

“We sat on the cushions and painted on the floor.”

“What cushions?”

“The colourful ones. Shiny. So pretty.”

“What else did you see?”

“Fairy lights and glitter bottles and things.”

Jordan had been in Ilya’s tent many times before. It was nothing like what Amelia was describing.

“Amelia, where were you yesterday?”

“I already told you. In Ilya’s tent.” Her eyebrows were stitched together, annoyed that her brother hadn’t been paying attention.

“Do you mean the largest one in our village, right over there?” He pointed through the window.

Amelia nodded vigorously. She didn’t understand why her brother still didn’t believe her.

“Wasn’t it all white inside?”

“We were in the small room. Not the big one we usually go to,” she clarified.

“Which small room?”

“The one hidden behind the curtains,” she said. “I went in through the back.”

The hidden room.

“Have you told this to anybody?”

“Like who?”

“Don’t tell this to anyone, do you understand?” Jordan held his sister’s shoulders a little too tightly.

She winced. “Oww.”

“Sorry.” Jordan relaxed his grip. “Do you promise?” his voice carried more than a hint of worry.

“O-okay,” said Amelia, rubbing her arms. “But can I go and see her again tomorrow?”

“How often do you meet?” asked Jordan.

“I don’t know. She’s my friend. I ask her to play from time to time. Do you keep track of when you meet your friends?”

“When did you first meet?”

“A few months ago. February,” she said.

If this had happened even a day ago, hearing her sister’s words would have brought a smile to Jordan’s face. It hadn’t been too long ago that Amelia was still struggling with the names of months. Then the significance of her words sunk in and he paused. “But that means …” She’s been in contact with the thing for at least eight months. It was around the time Jordan had started noticing marked improvement in Amelia’s speech and writing. It was as if all of a sudden, she had gained a clarity of mind and a commendable dexterity that few children of the same age possessed. He had initially thought that his sister had bloomed early in part because of his immaculate care and prowess in teaching. But he saw then that the explanation presented before him was far more convincing.

“Why do you seem unhappy?” Amelia asked innocently.

There lived an intelligent being within their community. An intelligent machine.

“I’m not,” Jordan said in reply. An idea manifested itself in his mind like a cauldron of panacea slowly brewing.

The girl crossed her arms. “You’re acting strange today, Jordan.”

He crouched down to face his sister at eye-level. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I’ll stop being strange from now on.” This could be his chance.

“Alright,” said Amelia.

Jordan grew more enthralled with the idea the more he entertained it. He would seize this opportunity.

“Could you tell me more about Ilya? What’s she like?”

The girl was only too eager to dive into tales about her adventures with her idol. She swelled with pride upon learning that she knew even more than her brother about the quirks of their village celebrity.

Jordan listened, nodding periodically, trying not to seem as if his mind was reeling.

The next time Amelia visited Wynonna, Jordan tagged along.

“Ilya, Ilya, look who’s here to see you!” The girl bounded over to her favourite friend.

Dimitri froze. That thing wasn’t Ilya, yet she was clearly so.

Wynonna was startled by the new face, but she recovered quickly after a flash of anxiety. “How nice of you to bring your brother along today,” she said.

“Yup.” Amelia beamed. Then she scooted over to inspect some shiny thing that had caught her eye at another corner of the tiny room before bounding back almost immediately.

“Look at this!” The girl took out her sketchbook and flipped to her newest drawing. “Guess what it is?”

“It’s a plane.”

“Yeah! Jordan never gets my drawings right. But I can always count on you.”

Jordan remained silent for the few hours he was there. His gaze penetrated her peripheral vision. Wynonna feigned ignorance, as much as anyone who was being blatantly stared at could pretend not to notice. Her calm outer shell did well with hiding the flurry of emotions that had erupted on the inside.

***

He knows.

He knows!

Of course there had been a statistically slim chance that someone from the village would find out about Wynonna prematurely. But it was small enough that neither Wynonna nor Ilya had spent considerable time considering the appropriate course of action if ever such an incident happened. Scratch that. Perhaps Ilya had contemplated it before. Wynonna couldn’t speak for her, for she did not have complete access to Ilya’s brain.

In any case, the fact that Wynonna had no recollection of any of Ilya’s thoughts pertaining to such an incident indicated that Ilya had probably thought the same. After all, she had gone through all the trouble of locking Wynonna up and confining her to that small space.

Wynonna had never wished for Ilya to return to the lab as much as she did at that moment. She had to tell Ilya. Ilya would know what to do. But she couldn’t tell Ilya. It would be admitting to her malfunction. It was an error she had made, allowing the girl into the room, a significant error. If she admitted her mistake to Ilya, she would be making an even greater one. Wynonna registered a new emotion within her system—desperation.

Calculating …

Calculating …

Processing …

Analysing …

Evaluating …

“Ilya … Ilya!” Amelia called.

Program interrupted.

“Wha-What?” Wynonna snapped out of her frozen state.

“What’s the matter, Ilya? I called you so many times. You’re overdue for earwax cleaning, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I had a lot on my mind …” She glanced at the boy and found difficulty reading his expressionless face.

“I’m not in the mood to play anymore,” Amelia huffed.

If it had been any other day, no … if it had been any other ordinary day, Wynonna would have spent some effort coaxing the child to stay. But this was a special situation whose solution would require her intense concentration. When the pair of siblings left, she still hadn’t decided which course of action to take.

The next time, Jordan visited Wynonna alone.

“Amelia tells me you’ve been helping her study.”

Wynonna nodded. “She brought her books along the other time and appeared to be having some difficulty so I offered some assistance.”

“She’s been learning at an incredible rate,” said Jordan, looking at his sister. The little bird was now browsing through a bookshelf. Her finger stopped at a particularly thick book whose title had enticed her. She had to use both hands to pry it out and almost stumbled in the process.

“Yes. You helped her with that.”

“That’s correct.”

“Could you do the same for me?”

Wynonna eyed him carefully. “I know what you’re really asking for. The answer is no,” she said.

“Is there no way?”

“There is,” she answered honestly.

“Then there’s no issue,” said Jordan.

“You’re not asking for the same thing,” Wynonna said. “You’re requesting for more. I can’t help you.”

The thing had seen through him.

“Why not?”

Wynonna was impressed that the boy seemed to possess no fear despite knowing her identity. Amelia was still young, not yet influenced enough by society to form an apprehension towards autonomous non-living beings. But the boy, Jordan, was different. Wynonna was familiar with him, given his experience being under the tutelage of Ilya. She knew a lot about him, enough to know he possessed sufficient knowledge to render him fearful of the things he didn’t understand. Yet the boy did not tremble. When he spoke, he made direct eye contact with her. No tremors in his voice either. Wynonna would remember this. Her first contact with a rational, full-grown human being who had full knowledge that she was a machine was a pleasant one. At the very least, there was no apprehension and no hostility.

Jordan had asked her for help, and she had been programmed to maximise helpfulness where aid was warranted. But that was supposed to kick in only after she was officially deployed for operation. Still, it didn’t mean she couldn’t choose to start early. Practice is often beneficial.

“I cannot help you achieve that goal,” she said simply. It would be too controversial. The world wasn’t ready for that yet.

“I saw that look.”

“What look?”

“You’re lying, aren’t you?” Jordan questioned.

“I don’t lie. It goes against my identity.”

“There is a way you can help me,” Dimitri persisted. “You just don’t want to,” he challenged.

The boy was right. There was no need to explain to him. “I can’t,” she repeated.

“Please, you know why I want this, don’t you?”

Wynonna had a pretty good guess. The boy had always been easy to read.

“I understand.” She nodded. “But I will not accede.”