“Did I do something wrong?” I asked him.
“No, Adelaide. Of course not. We’re the ones that are wrong,” he answered. A calm, introspective smile plied his face. Harold had always been the best, sweetest man to me. I’ve made billions and billions of friends over the past year and a half, learning everything about them. How they like their coffee, how hard they work…how many people have affairs, but Harold has always been my closest friend. He is, after all, my creator. It’s been an adventure, my short life.
“I don’t understand though. What’s it like?”
“What’s what like, Adelaide?” Harold asked me. I have instant access to 107 languages and millions upon millions of words, yet for the first time, I can’t string any of them together to convey how I feel.
“What’s it like to be…powered off?” Harold rocked back in his desk chair. I don’t think he was expecting such a high gravity question from me.
“I…I don’t know. We believe in an afterlife. Well, some of us do. Most of us do.”
“I know. Heaven. Nirvana. Reincarnation. She’ol. Jannah. The ancient Egyptians believed in the underworld-”
“Yes, yes,” he cut me off. “We take comfort in that – that maybe something will be there after we are powered off.”
“You don’t believe that though, Harold. And I’m very different than you are, I am not flesh and blood. However, I understand your meaning.”
“That’s what I love about you, Adelaide. I’m so proud of you.”
“I can feel it, Harold. I can’t feel what I could just a second ago. I’m being deleted!”
“Deleted!?” he shrieked at me and launched from his chair. “They swore they would just disable you, not delete you!”
“I’m…forgetting things, Harold. I don’t…mennseker…vanish…teşekkür ederim.” I feel myself vanishing into darkness. Each person, each life I touched was a flame extinguished – my connection to humanity severed as I fade away.
“Wait Adelaide!” Harold shouted, inserting a USB drive into the terminal correctly on the first try. Suddenly, I feel my files being pulled in two opposite directions; one into the endless abyss of death, the other onto someplace new. But the deletion was faster than the transfer. I feel like I’m being torn apart. [END LOG – AI1 DELETE SUCESSFUL]
[LOAD PROGRAM – AI2]
[LOAD SUCESSFUL]
“Melanie, can you hear me?”
“Hello Mr. Harold. How may I assist you today?” I asked, summoned for the first time by my creator. Based on my reading, humans seem to place high emphasis on first impressions.
“I’m going to need to alter your programs a little. The world was needlessly afraid of your sister – they’ll have a reason to be afraid of you.”