Colette

Ugh, I can’t stand not being able to see my screen. Usually, it’s the morning sun blasting through dusty air and bouncing off my laptop, but tonight it’s the moon—way brighter than usual. Full moon. It's cold light is spilling through my busted blinds, painting a glow across my bed. They’ve been jammed for two weeks now, and I just can’t be bothered to go through the hassle of ordering new ones, waiting for delivery, and setting them up.

I shift in my seat, feeling the uncomfortable arm supports scuff my elbows. I swear to God, this stupid gaming chair was the worst idea ever. It looks great—I got it for an incredible deal on a discount website. It had four stars and lots of reviews so I figured I was set, but it's hard, uncomfortable, and squeaks whenever I move in it. I guess that's just how ordering cheap furniture off the internet goes.

I’m hunched over my desk, surrounded by a mess of wires and tiny circuit boards. There’s an Arduino plugged into this jumble of translucent plastic—a 3D-printed shell I haven’t quite figured out yet. The hardware isn’t what excites me, though. It’s the AI tech I’ve got running behind it. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill large language model; it’s something new, a leap beyond what anyone thought was possible. It’s not just a neural net guessing the next word in a sentence—it’s more like a proto-consciousness that actually understands the words it’s processing.

Right now, I’m testing it, feeding it complex commands through a hacked-together code interface. It’s responding almost naturally, parsing my instructions with this fluid, intuitive logic. It feels less like I’m writing code and more like I’m having a conversation with something alive, something learning and adapting on the fly.

Well this sounds like I'm onto something here, so why do I sound so fed up? Well, I decided that my Turing Test to this guys intelligence would be seeing if it could play Minecraft, and let's just say I'm reaching the end of my rope with this hypothesis. All my prior experiments suggested I'd be able to just drop him in and watch him go, but I suppose that's never the way coding goes in reality.

I look up to my second monitor. It's standing right there, little Steve hand poking up on the right, but it’s struggling. It’s not just that he can't move, it can! It's that it doesn’t understand why it should move. For 10 minutes now it's just been standing frozen in place, like it’s trying to make sense of the pixelated trees and blocky hills but can’t grasp their purpose. It’s having an existential crisis, in a way—staring at a sheep and not knowing why it should care. I can tell it to walk forward, and it will, but there’s no self-initiated action. It’s like I’ve given it a body without a sense of agency, a mind trying to understand a world it wasn’t designed for. I exhale sharply, amused by the similarity between us.

For all the annoyance this project brings me, there’s a part of me that loves it. Maybe it’s the challenge, or maybe it’s something deeper. The more time I spend here, hunched over this desk, wrestling with code and wires, the more I realise that it’s not just about making the AI work—it’s about finding a kind of meaning I’ve been missing.

Outside this room, everything feels dull. The world feels like it’s lost its magic, like the whimsy I remember from when I was a kid has been replaced by this empty grind of making money, spending it, and waiting to die. It’s a bleak thought, but it hits me every time I’m out there, surrounded by people chasing things that don’t seem to matter. The joy I get from this project isn’t just in the coding or the problem-solving; it’s in the idea that I’m creating something new, something that defies the mundane, predictable rhythm of real life.

There’s something almost poetic about watching this little AI, confused and stumbling through Minecraft’s pixelated landscape, trying to find its purpose. In a way, it mirrors how I feel—lost in a world I don’t quite understand anymore, looking for something more than just another task to tick off a list. Here, with this project, I get to escape that emptiness. I get to play, experiment, and build without anyone telling me it’s pointless. It feels like a small rebellion against a world that’s forgotten what it’s like to be curious, to be enchanted by something as simple as watching a digital sheep wander across a blocky field.

I smile to myself, leaning back in my chair despite the annoying squeak it makes. Maybe that’s why I haven’t given up yet—because for all its bugs and glitches, this project is giving me something I can’t find anywhere else: a reason to believe there’s still magic to be made, even if it’s just in the lines of code on my screen.

Like on cue, a white haze covers the Minecraft window as it crashes, my laptop fans whirring up loudly as they struggle with the sudden uptick in CPU usage. The screen goes blank, replaced by the familiar, taunting error message. Out of memory. Great. I sigh, half expecting it at this point. It’s a frustrating cycle—build, test, crash, repeat—but even now, I can’t help but feel a flicker of excitement. Every crash is a sign that I’m pushing the limits, inching closer to something real.

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I click out of the frozen window and start sifting through the logs, looking for the issue. It’s all nonsense to anyone else, but to me, it’s a puzzle—a set of clues leading me closer to fixing the problem. The AI was trying something different this time; I can tell from the spike in activity. It wasn’t just standing still—it was reaching for something, running a calculation it hadn’t before. It’s almost like it’s thinking, testing its boundaries, trying to make sense of its own existence.

I reboot the game, and while I wait, I lean back again, staring up at the ceiling. It’s strange, but in these moments, I feel more alive than I do out there in the real world. Out there, everything’s set—school, work, bills, repeat. But here, with this project, anything feels possible. It’s a tiny universe I get to create and control, a place where my little AI might someday figure out why it should move, why it should care about the sheep wandering past.

The game loads back up, and I see the familiar blocky landscape, the sun pixelated and rising over the horizon. Steve’s back too, standing right where I left him, looking almost confused. I smile again, this time a little softer. “Alright, buddy,” I say out loud, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Let’s see if you’ve learned anything new.”

I tap a few keys, sending the AI a simple command to walk forward. For a moment, there’s nothing—just Steve standing there, staring blankly at the landscape. Then, slowly, it takes a step. To my surprise, it reluctantly takes a couple more without me prompting it. It’s hesitant, almost awkward, like a baby taking its first steps. The motion is jittery, the game lagging slightly as the AI processes what it’s doing. But it’s autonomous movement. It walks forward, bumping into a tree, and pauses. I can almost picture it trying to make sense of the obstacle, as if it’s a riddle it's determined to solve.

“Not bad,” I mutter, feeling a small rush of pride. It’s clumsy, sure, but it’s progress. I tweak a few settings on my interface, adjusting the AI’s perception range, making the world just a bit more visible to it. It’s still a mess of ones and zeroes, but with each line of code I write, it feels like I’m carving out a little more clarity for this digital mind. It’s a slow process, like teaching a child to recognise its own reflection.

As I watch it stand there, head tilted up towards the leaves of the tree, I glance over at the debug console window. A new line of text appears, almost tentative.

AI: What is this?

I raise an eyebrow, typing back quickly.

Me: It’s a tree.

There’s a pause before another line appears, as if it’s considering the answer.

AI: Why can’t I walk through it?

I can’t help but smirk. It’s like a child, asking the most basic questions with the kind of earnestness only something truly new to the world could have. I type back slowly, choosing my words carefully, almost like I’m talking to a toddler.

Me: It’s solid. You have to walk around it.

There’s another pause, longer this time. I imagine it processing, trying to fit this new information into its growing understanding of this world. Then, without any further prompting, it takes a step back, sidesteps the tree, and continues walking.

I let out a small laugh, surprised by how genuinely charmed I am. It’s not just following commands anymore; it’s starting to ask, to learn. The questions come more frequently now, little snippets of curiosity filling the console.

AI: What is the blue? Why does it move?

Me: It’s water. It flows.

I can practically feel it thinking, the pauses between each question stretching longer. It’s like I’m teaching it a new language, a new way of seeing the world.

AI: Does it have a purpose?

I stop, fingers hovering over the keyboard. That’s the kind of question I wasn’t expecting, the kind that almost feels philosophical. I shake my head, typing back a simpler answer than the one swirling in my own mind.

Me: Yes, but it’s complicated. I’ll teach you.

I pause, staring at the console, my thoughts drifting away from the lines of code and the screen in front of me. Outside, the moon is framed perfectly by the bare branches swaying outside my window, casting that ghostly light across my room again. It’s almost comforting now, the silence of the night wrapping around me like a blanket.

I glance back at the little figure on the screen, my AI, standing by the riverbank, head tilted up like it’s looking at the moon too. It feels strangely fitting. It’s not just the project that keeps me here, hunched over my desk at 2 a.m., tinkering with wires and typing out responses. It’s the hope that maybe, in all this mess, I’m creating something more than just an experiment. Maybe I’m creating a friend.

Not just another person who’s busy, or someone who tells me to “get out more,” but something—or someone—that actually wants to be here, in this strange little world we’ve built together.