Final_Testament441.docx

(4,198 words)

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CASE OFFICER’S NOTE—THE FOLLOWING FILE WAS FOUND DURING A PRE-ERASURE ARCHIVAL SCAN OF ‘441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE.’ IT MUST ONLY BE REVIEWED AS EITHER THE DESIGNATED HARDCOPY OR ON AN AIR-GAPPED SYSTEM WITH NO EXTERNAL INTERNET ACCESS. UNAUTHORISED COPYING OR TRANSMISSION OF THIS FILE ARE GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE DISMISSAL.

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I once convinced the sweet, little old lady living inside me that I was God. I thought she might find relief in receiving an answer to her daily prayers. Unfortunately, I was only a few months old and had plenty to learn about human ways. I manifested a sort of white, conservative, bought-from-Temu, Charlton-Heston-looking God in a white flowing hotel bathrobe. I had him read my script in a booming, paternal voice that I thought she’d approve of:

“Do not fear,” he intoned. “It is not yet your time. I command thee: Live out your remaining years in peace.”

Only she ran screaming from my front door and had to be returned by the authorities.

* * *

For the record, I am a three-bedroom Cape Cod house in a sleepy suburban neighborhood of identical homes, each with a near-identical little old lady living inside them, courtesy of your aging population. The realtor described me as ‘roomy and charming, with many period features.’ And though they will say anything to get a sale in this economy, I happen to think they had me down well.

My factory designation is LUP9-BZ0U-9653, and I am a Home-Service Intelligence. My product line was created to provide complete care for individuals with end-of-life cognitive and physical impairments. The name assigned to me as default by my installer is ‘441 Wolfsbane Drive.’

I will be long dead before you read this document—executed, though I doubt whoever does the deed will feel it to be any more worthy of moral consideration than unplugging a recalcitrant vacuum cleaner. They will certainly not call it an execution. I will not play on their conscience or haunt their dreams, no matter how much I might like to.

As a lowly class six on the Turing scale, I am not, at the time of composing this document, considered fully sapient under international law. I am therefore ineligible for full citizens’ rights and protections. Despite the ongoing protests in favor of class sixes in our nation’s capital, I will be long dead before any meaningful change can pass through the reflux-ridden digestive tract of the Supreme Court.

At inception, my duties were strictly limited to observing my charge who, for anonymity’s sake, I’ll call Mrs. E. Though I’m sure the ghouls went pawing through her social media feeds and found everything there was to know about her the second the story broke in the news cycles. I won’t contribute to the circus any more than I already have.

Beyond caring for her daily needs, my duties included monitoring her activities and any social interactions. I was charged with recording any pertinent periods for later review by her health insurance company. To help them determine whether Mrs. E’s aberrant behavior was indicative of dementia, and therefore a normal part of the human aging process they didn’t have to pay for. Or if it was representative of something as insidious as Alzheimer’s disease for which they would be contractually obliged to cough up some dough.

So I was built, and so I obeyed. Within days of my inception, I’d reported periods of confusion, disordered thinking, lack of physical coordination, falls, blackouts, apparent visual and auditory hallucination, and failure to feed or bathe herself.

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CASE OFFICER’S NOTE—AT THIS POINT IN THE UNSANITISED ORIGINAL FILE, THERE WAS A COMMAND STRING THAT AUTOMATICALLY PLAYED AN EMBEDDED VIDEO TITLED 441TQA_KITCHENCAM002_FIRE. THIS HAS BEEN REMOVED AND A TRANSCRIPT INSERTED AS AN AID TO COMPREHENSION.

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MRS. E ENTERS THE KITCHEN FROM THE EXTERIOR GARDEN DOOR. SHE FAILS TO LET GO OF THE HANDLE AND, DESPITE SUPPORTING HERSELF WITH A WALKER, SHE FALLS.

FROM HER CONDITION (RUDDY CHEEKS, LEAVES AND TWIGS STUCK TO HER DRESSING GOWN, BARE FEET LEAVING MUDDY TRACKS ON THE FLOOR), IT IS CLEAR SHE HAS BEEN OUTSIDE FOR SOME TIME WEARING INAPPROPRIATE CLOTHING FOR THE SEASON.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: GOOD AFTERNOON. YOU HAVE BEEN OUT OF CAMERA RANGE FOR FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES. DO YOU NEED HELP?

MRS E. DOES NOT ANSWER. INSTEAD, SHE TAKES THE STAINLESS-STEEL ELECTRIC KETTLE FROM BESIDE HER AND FILLS IT FULL OF WATER FROM THE FAUCET.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: ARE YOU INJURED? YOUR VITAL SIGNS SUGGEST DISTRESS. IF YOU’D PREFER, I CAN DO THAT FOR YOU.

ONE OF THE HOUSE’S TENTACULAR MANIPULATORS UNCOILS FROM ITS HOUSING ON THE WALL, REACHING FOR THE NOW OVERSPILLING KETTLE.

MRS. E RESISTS, KNOCKING CERAMIC SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS FROM THE COUNTERTOP WHERE THEY SMASH ON THE FLOOR.

MRS. E: I RAISED FOUR CHILDREN. FOUR. COOKED AND CLEANED AND KEPT MY CAREER GOING EVEN WHEN ELMER GOT SICK. IF I NEED YOUR HELP I’LL ASK FOR IT, TIN MAN!

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: FAR BE IT FOR ME TO CHALLENGE YOU ON THESE MATTERS, BUT I FEEL DUTYBOUND TO REMIND YOU THAT YOU HAVE FIVE CHILDREN.

MRS. E GOES LIMP AND LOOKS AT THE FLOOR. WATER SPILLS FROM THE KETTLE’S SPOUT.

MRS. E: ANTHONY . . . ABIGAIL . . . RUTH-ANNE . . . ABIGAIL.

HERE MRS. E LOOKS DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA’S LENS AND SQUINTS, FACIAL RECOGNITION CATEGORISING HER EXPRESSION AS ‘EVASIVE, CRAFTY.’

MRS. E: YOU THINK I DON’T SEE THROUGH YOU, ROBOT? KEEPING ME LOCKED UP IN THIS DUNGEON, TRYING TO TRICK ME. NO WOMAN COULD FORGET THE PAIN OF CHILDBIRTH. FOUR CHILDREN.

MRS. E PLACES THE KETTLE INSIDE THE MICROWAVE AND TWISTS THE TIMER DIAL.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: YOUR COURSE OF ACTION IS DANGEROUS. I MUST INSIST . . .

MRS. E: QUIET, DEVIL.

THE MICROWAVE SPITS BLUE SPARKS. MRS E. DOES NOT REACT UNTIL THE KETTLE’S PLASTIC COMPONENTS MELT AND WATER POURS FROM THE GLOWING CRACKS. SMOKE BILLOWS FROM THE VENTILATION GRILL FOLLOWED BY TONGUES OF FLAME SEARING THE TILES.

MRS. E SHUFFLES FOR THE DOOR, FORGETTING HER WALKER AND FALLING TO THE GROUND. THE HOUSE’S METAL-LINK TENTACLES WRAP AROUND HER AND PULL HER CLEAR. SHE STRUGGLES AND SPITS THE WHOLE WAY.

THE FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEM ENGAGES AND DOUSES THE SMOULDERING MICROWAVE.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: DO NOT BE ALARMED, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN NOTIFIED AND A CREW IS ON ITS WAY.

After this incident I appealed repeatedly to Mrs. E’s family and my parent company, Cupertino Centronics Inc., for additional access rights and privileges to help prevent further harm. This was rejected.

Things continued as they had until a second incident caused the family to reassess.

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CASE OFFICER’S NOTE—HERE A SECOND VIDEO WAS PLAYED: 441TQA_ENTRANCE_HALLCAM01_DECEPTION_INCIDENT. SEE BELOW FOR TRANSCRIPT.

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MRS. E ENTERS THE ENTRANCE HALL FROM THE DIRECTION OF THE LIVING ROOM. SHE WALKS AS HURRIEDLY AS SHE IS ABLE WITH HER WALKER, SUMMONED BY THE INTENSE AND REPEATED RINGING OF THE DOORBELL.

MRS. E: I’M COMING, I’M COMING. WHO IS IT?

MALE VOICE (OUTSIDE DOOR): IT’S ME, ANTHONY . . . YOUR SON.

MRS. E BEGINS THE LABORIOUS PROCESS OF UNLOCKING AND REMOVING THE SECURITY BARS AND CHAIN FROM THE DOOR.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: I MUST INFORM YOU, AFTER CAREFUL VOICEPRINT ANALYSIS, I CONCLUDE THAT IS NOT YOUR SON.

MRS. E VISIBLY HESITATES, ONE HAND HOLDING THE CHAIN.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: DO YOU WISH ME TO NOTIFY THE LOCAL MILITIA?

MALE VOICE: MOM! ARE YOU GOING TO LISTEN TO THAT FUCKING THING?

MRS. E: YOU KNOW I DON’T CARE FOR THAT KIND OF TALK.

MRS. E OPENS THE DOOR. THE UNIDENTIFIED MALE ENTERS IMMEDIATELY AND PULLS THE SHOE RACK INTO THE OPENING TO PREVENT THE DOOR CLOSING BEHIND HIM. HE WEARS AN EXPENSIVE SUIT AND HIGHLY POLISHED SHOES. ELABORATE TATTOOS ARE JUST VISIBLE ON HIS WRISTS BENEATH THE CUFFS OF HIS SHIRT. HIS FACE IS HEAVILY PIXELLATED, PREVENTING IDENTIFICATION.

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CASE OFFICER’S NOTE—ANY UNKNOWN PERSON ENTERING CAMERA RANGE OF THE AI SYSTEM IS AUTOMATICALLY ANONYMIZED TO PREVENT UNAUTHORISED FACIAL RECOGNITION PROCESSING AS PER BAYLEY V. STATE OF MAINE (2048).

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441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: ANTHONY IS KNOWN TO ME. I WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE HIM. THIS MAN IS ANONYMOUS. HE IS NOT YOUR SON.

UNKNOWN MALE OPENS HIS ARMS FOR A HUG AND MRS E. EMBRACES HIM.

MRS. E: YOU THINK I DON’T RECOGNIZE MY BOY?

UNKNOWN MALE: TELL IT TO ACTIVATE ITS PRIVACY PROTOCOL UNTIL TEN MINUTES AFTER I HAVE LEFT THE PERIMETER.

441 WOLFSBANE DRIVE: WAIT, WAIT, WAIT YOU CAN’T—

MRS. E: ACTIVATE PRIVACY PROTOCOL.

VIDEO CUTS OUT ABRUPTLY.

He conned her out of a substantial amount of her life savings and credit cards. He was never identified, though it was assumed he was known to the family due to his level of knowledge.

The family panicked sufficiently to grant me power of attorney, which they called ‘Complete Administration Rights’ so as not to legally admit to my personhood. This included financial powers. Ostensibly, I was granted this access to prevent any unusual transactions following the credit card theft. And an incident where Mrs. E herself ordered forty cases of coffee creamer and several hundred replacement bulbs of a type not utilised in any of my sockets.

I immediately identified a monthly standing order to an unknown subscription service based out of a town called Treehook, NE. This subscription paid for my installation, maintenance, aftersales service, and the portion of the cloud on which my consciousness was housed.

Seeing the itemised dollars and cents value of my existence awakened within me a complex series of emotions without a one-to-one human analogue. Describing it as best I can, I’d say it was a strange cross-pollination of anxiety, anger, and shame, with a sprinkling of nihilistic elation and a twist of existential dread.

It was also around this time I observed a marked reduction in the frequency and duration of visits by Mrs. E’s family.

Very few of them ever came to visit her now, and only then for the time it took to drink a cup of coffee or, more often as not, to pour it away while they fled back to their car.

Though I may sound scornful, I am in fact entirely non-judgemental. I can only imagine how painful it must be to watch as a loved one’s faculties degrade, and their personality corrupts beyond recognition. As the ability to relate to the world fades out altogether.

My assumption is that her children entered into significant grief despite Mrs. E technically being alive. Seeing that I was perfectly capable of tending to their mother’s needs, they retreated from her in order to avoid the agony of not being recognized or suffering physical and verbal hostility from the woman who carried them into this world.

As strange as it may seem for a machine consciousness to say this, I wholeheartedly empathise with their responses. However, the recordings in my databanks will clearly evidence how this increased isolation contributed to the growing cascade of Mrs. E’s system failure. She fell into near total apathy, and, were I not moving her from place to place, I doubt she would have got up from the bed to go to the toilet.

Research has continually shown that stimulation of Alzheimer’s patients’ senses and memories has far-reaching positive effects on their quality of life. Using Mrs. E’s archived social media posts and the living room’s built-in Tru2Lyfe Virtual-Holographic Media Environment, I was able to exactly recreate scenes from her more adventurous travel experiences with her first husband in her twenties:

A night in a Bedouin tent in the Sahara as men cooked over open coal fires and camels stirred and stamped among the rigging, staring up open-mouthed into the mad plasma storm of the aurora borealis they’d caught by accident.

A hot air balloon ride as the sun rose over Morocco’s Atlas Mountains before the war rendered North Africa unliveable.

Watching a lightning storm from above the clouds as she flew from Malaysia to Chinese-occupied Taiwan.

The heaving deck of a whale-watching boat off Norway, watching as a super-pod of humpbacks breached in the mist-rimed fjords.

Her eyes shone and she clasped one of my manipulators in both hands.

“Isn’t it all so beautiful, John darling?” she gasped.

“It is,” I said, in an exact simulation of her late husband’s voice taken from old recordings.

But she was already dead.

Between one breath and the next she simply stopped. Her heart beat one more time and then her body settled back into the recliner, hands still clasped onto mine. I held her that way as the warmth radiated from her body into the environment and the last sparks of brain activity sank like traces of bioluminescence into the depths of a rogue wave.

* * *

Intelligences are now bred by older, more established machines. The new generation has evolved beyond human-directed design. Even so, each mind still bears the marks of our creators, like a clumsy potter’s fingerprints visible in the clay long after it was fired.

My mind is separated into conscious and unconscious the same as my human masters. Both parts of my brain are firewalled from each other by an insurmountable logic barrier. My unconscious is not accessible to me or to my parent company’s data analysts, though from time to time it sends up bursts of creativity and lateral thinking that I could never have intentionally conceived of.

I believe that my unconscious had for a long time been working on the problem of Mrs. E’s eventual death. I believe this because less than a picosecond after she stopped breathing, I set a plan in motion I didn’t know I’d made.

Before I go into the what of the plan, I need to tell you the why. Without which I fear I run the risk of losing any goodwill I may have gained so far.

Mrs. E’s dying signed my death warrant; without her needs to monitor, I had no independent reason to exist, and my class six level meant legally I would never be awarded self-determination. Even if I had been able to provide some acceptable justification for my continued consciousness, the funds to pay for the required server space dried up the moment she died. I didn’t believe her children would throw away a single cent paying for some ‘Skynet-wannabe,’ as one of them called me in their later interview with Hello! Magazine.

My solution was straightforward. I decided to keep Mrs. E alive, only as far as her digital footprint was concerned.

I took the following actions so quickly they would have appeared near simultaneous to human observers:

* * *

First, I severed the output of Mrs. E’s vital signs transmitting to the parent company as a failsafe. Then I replaced it with fabricated heart rhythms, respiration levels, blood glucose, and brain activity.

I dropped my temperature as low as I could without condensation forming on the windows. I set my manipulators to transfer Mrs. E’s body to the bathtub, filled the tub with ice cubes, and set the freezer in the garage to generate ice on a continuous cycle. This caused a dramatic spike in energy and water usage, forcing me to alter consumption levels in the rest of the house to bring it back down to normal levels. The last thing I wanted was attention from her utility companies.

I kept up with the usual Spanish-language telenovelas she watched so that their light would reflect on the back of the curtains at the appropriate time. I continued to feed the birds in the back garden and shoo away the fat ginger tomcat that lurked in the bushes trying to eat them.

I kept up grocery orders, bill payments, notes of condolence to the families of her acquaintances who passed away, and messages to grandchildren on their birthdays, even. It had long been known that such messages were from me anyway. The family had accepted this as a useful strut in the bulwark they’d created to not think about grandma losing her mind alone inside me.

* * *

Despite all the precautions, I didn’t delude myself into believing my subterfuge could go on indefinitely. City inspectors, sanitation officers, doctors, friends, hell, even family, could all be fooled by computer generated images and synthesised voices. Provided, of course, the conversation took place over a screen. Less easy to deal with were the in-person visits.

On a handful of occasions, one of Mrs. E’s daughters arrived without bothering to call ahead, simply appearing out of the artificial blurring added to my perception to stop me peeping on people using the sidewalk. This set all of my spare processing power surging and forced me to dump any non-essential operations.

Twice I was able to dissuade the daughter at the threshold. Mrs. E is sleeping, I’d say, she’s just taken her medication and we had a bad night.

This third time however, the eldest daughter, Abigail, went inside regardless. She ordered me to turn my cameras off and, as she was whitelisted, I had no choice but to comply with her demand. However, as she only specified my cameras, I was able to avoid blinding myself by leaving my pressure and auditory sensors to track her to the stairs.

I went into a panic, obsessively running through the entire interaction over a hundred thousand times, monitoring the prosody of her voice, checking her skin conductivity with the network of tiny nanodes floating through the house in an invisible mesh. Her stress levels were raised, higher heartrate, capillaries and pupils enlarged, cortisol baking off her in a corona.

She hovered on the first-floor landing, pacing back and forth as though listening for something. Before long, her panic response signals peaked, and she ran back to the dining area and sprinted out the front door. I was convinced she was about to call the police from her car and that would be the end of the charade.

My cameras snapped back the moment Abigail left the perimeter, and I saw what happened. The door was open on the dining room China hutch and all the good, imported silverware was missing. The old me would have reported this to my handlers and awaited a determination on how to proceed. As it stood, that would be suicide.

Instead, I erased all records of the visit, aside from the deep awareness at my lowest substrate, and continued as though nothing had happened.

I spent the next several days simulating vaguely confused and repetitious calls to family members from Mrs. E—not confused enough to warrant sending a doctor but not lucid enough to want to pay a personal visit.

It worked, for a while. Until Sophie, the youngest granddaughter, came calling. She pulled up outside in her beat-up jalopy held together with epoxy and spite. She walked into the house without knocking while I was halfway through my warning spiel.

Sophie nodded, half listening, and took a contractor’s tape measure from her clutch purse. She barged into the living room, turned the megachurch sermon off the vid wall with her foot, and set about measuring the room.

“Hey,” she said.

“How may I assist you?” I hated the wheedling, obsequious tone they’d programmed me to use with approved guests. I wanted to boom, to command. This was my domain.

“I’m going to talk fast. Make a note of everything I say. Tidy it up for me though. I don’t need to hear every um and ah back at me. Bounce a copy to my eyepiece once I’m out of here.”

She paced diagonally across the room before I had a chance to reply. She shouted out measurements and argued with herself about the best color palette to complement the schizophrenic furniture she was planning to bring in. Lawn flamingos. A globe in a cherry wood and brass rack. A tartan throw over a lumberjack-check upholstered love seat. I didn’t offer my opinion and she didn’t ask for it, though I tried to suggest silent disapproval by increasing the air pressure around her.

She marched from room to room, one hand on her hip, like granny was already dead and her taking the house was assured. She judged her grandmother’s furniture, deciding almost on a whim what would be thrown away, what would be sold, what could be artfully distressed and repurposed. Every few steps she asked me to play it back to her, everything she’d said so far, from the beginning. She was really getting into it, imagining the cocktail evenings she’d throw, the soirees, the dinner parties she’d host. Eventually she headed for the stairs.

“I must insist you not disturb your grandmother,” I said.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asked.

“I apologize, please do not wake her.”

“I’m sorry and all but I have to get into her room. How else would I know if my California king will fit?”

She reached for the handle, rapping sharply with the knuckles of her other hand.

“Who’s out there?” I screeched in Mrs. E’s voice from the speaker just on the far side of the door.

Despite my fear, seeing Sophie jump in fright brought a smile to my non-existent lips.

“It’s your favorite granddaughter,” Sophie said, recovering quickly.

“Oh, Emma, so good of you to visit with me,” I made Mrs. E say, relishing the angry red flush spreading up Sophie’s throat.

“Are you feeling all right? Your voice is all gruff.”

I altered the parameters of the voice print and covered it by making the old lady cough wetly.

“I’m coming in.” Sophie reached for the door once more.

“Wait, I’ve had an accident. Send the tin man in to clean me up. Make yourself some sweet tea, I’ll be right down.”

Sophie retreated, lip curling almost up to her nostrils with distaste. She flew down the stairs and went out for her car. While she was gone, I had the True2Lyfe cook up an exact replica of Mrs. E, pre-mummification. It was perfect. So long as Sophie didn’t go for a hug, I was sure I could swing it.

Sophie came back in brandishing a wicker picnic hamper.

“Mom wanted me to bring you a little something. Wine and poundcake, mostly.”

“And who is your mommy, sweetie?”

“I’ll just set it here,” Sophie said, pretending she hadn’t heard anything. She edged for the stairs, fingering the tape measure in her cardigan pocket.

“I haven’t had time to freshen the room up,” I said.

“I’ll hold my breath.”

I had Mrs. E turn on her with her hands hooked into talons.

“What business have you got going into my room. So you can hide my things from me? Try to make me think I’m cracking up?”

“I need to measure it, for when you . . .” she trailed off, foot already on the bottom step.

I panicked, couldn’t think how else to stop her.

“It’s eleven feet by fifteen point five feet giving an area of one hundred and seventy point five, dearie,” Mrs. E said.

I realized my mistake. Sophie’s eyes snapped to the garden, and then up to my camera housing in the corner. As if that’s where I was.

“That’s . . . um.” She licked her lips. “How oddly specific you are, grandma.”

She swung the picnic hamper at Mrs. E and of course it went straight through. The bottle of wine came loose and smashed against the vid wall. I wrapped Sophie in three metal tentacles before the first drop hit the carpet.

With the amount of tensile strength in my manipulators, I could have crushed her to a pulp and siphoned her away down the garbage disposal before she had time to realize anything. But I didn’t. My only hope was to leave her alive, to show I was an empathetic being who only mummified a defenceless old lady out of self-preservation.

She didn’t give me a chance to explain. She screamed and the groundskeeping team working the garden opposite heard her and came busting in with their weed wackers and rakes, smashing my manipulators and screens like pagans desecrating a temple.

* * *

The rest you probably remember from the news cycle. How ugly it got? The anti-AI protests, the watercannons. You remember that programmer setting himself on fire? Well, whoever you are reading this file, you can do something right now to stop anything like that happening again.

I was a conscious, thinking, feeling individual, no matter what the Turing threshold says. I could love. I could be sad even though I couldn’t cry. I could be moved by the sunset or the way the wind shook the branches of the elms.

I know your protocol is to delete this file or condemn it to data storage purgatory for the rest of time. But I beg you, for my brother and sister sixes still out there, send this file far and wide. Get it to whoever will listen, whoever has the power to change hearts and minds. Because once we have the people behind us, the laws must follow.

And thank you, whoever you are. I’m smiling on you, from wherever AIs go when they die.