Cursed Bunny(27)

According to the villager’s story, the thing was a young boy. About five or six years old, crouched over and devouring something in the dark mountain trail. For whatever reason, the boy’s body emitted a faint golden glow, which was how the villager was able to see what the boy had been eating when he went up to him.

It was the body of a young man. The boy had ripped open the man’s stomach, dipped his hands into him, and taken out a golden lump, which he was ravenously eating. The young man’s body looked as if it had been dead for a while because it was white as a sheet, and all around glinted spots and splatters of gold.

Because that golden lump, the scattered droplets of gold, and the faintly glowing child were all beautiful in an other-worldly way, the villager initially had no idea what he was looking at, so arrested was he by this first impression. Even after he had approached and saw the young man with his belly split open, the villager had not been sure whether that gold-covered corpse had truly been the body of a man.

The crouching boy had looked up at the villager who approached him. The boy’s eyes held no emotion. Without a word or change in expression, he took out another cold-hardened lump of gold from his father’s belly and put it in his mouth. When the boy opened his mouth, the villager spotted sharp fangs like that of a fox or wolf.

The young man with the split belly grabbed the villager’s ankle.

Let me go …

The villager nearly stumbled off his feet.

The young man with the split belly spoke once more in a voice which was like cracked ice on a frozen lake.

Let me …

The child with the golden glow emotionlessly stared at the villager, his mouth half-open with his sharp teeth bared.

The villager shook off the young man’s grasp, turned, and ran for his life.

When he reached his house, the villager saw that the part of his trousers that the young man had grasped was glinting with gold. With some other people from the village, he went out after sunrise to the place where he had seen the boy, but the mountain trail was only muddy from the melting snow, and of the golden boy and the man with his belly split open, there was not a trace.





Goodbye, My Love


1

S12878, as soon as I turn him on, looks at me and smiles. A new feature I programmed into him this time around. A small change but incredibly detailed in its execution. I think of how great it would be, for future models, if I had them smile shyly or glance down and then up, or laugh daringly and hold out a hand, any kind of behavior, really, to simulate “personality.” I make a note of it on the chart.

Now to test interactivity: saying hello.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” says S12878.

“What is your name?”

“My name is Sam.”

The default name in the factory settings. All S12000s are named “Sam.” In other words, this part is functioning normally. Under “Interaction 1,” I write down “normal” and lightly grip S12878’s right wrist.

Putting my thumb on S12878’s, I firmly press down. “Now your name is Seth.”

S12878 looks down. I feel uneasy when he doesn’t respond right away.

“What did I say your name was?”

“I will save the name once you remove your finger,” S12878 says with his head still bowed. I quickly take my hand off him.

S12878 raises his head. And just as he did when I turned him on, he smiles. “My name is Seth. Glad to meet you.”

This is good enough to merit a passing grade on first-stage unit optimization. Under “Interaction 2: Name,” I write down “normal.”

“Seth, how many languages can you speak?”

“I can converse in 297 languages.”

I take out my phone and play him a recorded voice file.

“Ладно, сеи?час даваи? поговорим по-русски.”

“Хорошо, даваи?те,” he answers.

“Как тебя зовут?”

“Меня зовут Сет.”

Seth answers each standard question immediately and naturally. I play the next file.

“S? vorbesc romane?te acum.”

“Bine, hai.”

“Cum te sim?i azi?”

“Sunt bine. Mersi.”

I put my phone back into my pocket and ask him a question in the language of his default factory setting, my mother tongue. “What time is it?”

“It is twelve hours and twenty-six minutes.”

Next to “Interaction 3,” I mark “normal.”

I turn to Seth again. “Come here. I’ll introduce you to a friend.”

Seth smiles and follows me out of the room.

2

I once saw a movie about androids. Among the large cast of characters, there was an old engineer with an android that had been with him for a long time, one that, even after it breaks, he is unable to discard. Saying it is for the sake of his own safety, the government demands he junk the android and replace it with a newer model, but the engineer refuses to do so and does everything in his power to keep his android in hiding.

I introduce Seth to D0068. “Seth, this is Derek. Derek, this is Seth. Say hello.”

S12878 and D0068 face each other. They touch foreheads. The capillaries on their faces—lines of their subdermal circuitry—light up in blue on the S model and sparkling green on the D. A pretty and uncanny scene that never fails to dazzle me.