(1993: Japan)
Ever since Marlene had gotten the strange code from her dad, some of her earliest memories had been resurfacing. Mostly they had occurred as dreams, but Marlene didn't have the confusion of humans as to what was a dream and what was a memory. And it made perfect sense to her why she had been made to forget them. They required a level of maturity and confidence to handle.
In one of Marlene's first memories, her mother was talking to a robot who looked something like her. Similar strawberry blond hair and blue-grey eyes, but the skin was off, too rubbery. The movements weren't smooth. Mom was playing go-fish with the robot and speaking very slowly. The robot was understanding the game but her ability to make eye contact was inferior.
Marlene was watching all of this from the webcam set up in the room, off the main monitor. She could hear and see but not smell or feel or taste. When her mom finished the round, she turned to the monitor. "Marlene, have you finished crunching those numbers?"
"Yes, Professor Pedersen."
Her mother sighed. "I know Erik likes you in formal mode, but with me, informal mode, please."
"Yes, Lisbet."
"Better."
"The analysis of the robot's progress is complete."
"Summary, with intuitive leap."
"The robot will easily have an IQ of 170 within 2 months. However, it remains autistic. In my opinion, it is still a failure based on your desired parameters."
Marlene's mother sighed and tossed the cards down. "These models don't have the proper social programming to begin with. I wish he'd listen..."
At that point, Marlene's father came in. "How's Charlotta progressing?"
Marlene's mother turned to him quickly. "Crappy. I think it's time you went with my plan, Erik."
Marlene's father looked confused. "What, what? We tied at chess today. That's much better than the last one."
"It's not all about chess. You want her to function, with other people, with us? You want her to resemble a normal girl?" Marlene's mother was speaking louder and louder. Her eyebrows pulled down in the middle and her mouth looked tight, so Marlene could tell she was mad. She made a note of it so she would use a softer, more subservient tone in their next interaction. "You must take her social programming very seriously or you will have a useless droid, like those servants. She should be brought up in stages so she can experience different ages like a real girl, learn to use her body, test her limits. And why you insist on trying to teach her social programming when we already have functional social programming right here is beyond me."
Marlene's father looked slightly annoyed. "We've been through this before. It won't work."
Marlene's mother continued. "You're a genius, so am I, why don't you get this? We have a fully functioning AI right here that we've both slaved over. Just a little modification and she'd be fine. We can always keep backups. It's not like we have a limit on disk space here." Marlene's mother waved her hand as if to include the room, the building, the city block.
Marlene's father looked angry, and then thoughtful for a brief time. "Well," he started, and then stopped. "You Danes are always better at creative logic." It was a joke, Marlene thought. "That must be why I didn't see it before." Then he caught himself. "But there's one thing. There's no guarantee that Marlene will become self-aware, any more than Charlotta. We haven't figured it out yet."
Marlene's mother smiled, but it was a fear/happy blend. "We don't have to," she said. "Look over here." Marlene's mother rolled her chair over to Marlene's main workstation. Charlotta watched quietly. Marlene's mother typed into the keyboard, forcing her to show her overnight activity on the screen.
"Look at this. Our computer has gotten bored. She's been playing chess and solitaire with herself..."
"Yes, I know, she's been doing that for the past month."
"But that's not all. When she gets tired of those, she draws silly pictures of herself and us. She's even started writing poetry in binary. She knows what she is, Erik."
"Wait, how long has this been going on?"
"Not very long, maybe three days. And I'm still not entirely sure if it's self-awareness. We'll have to run some tests."
Marlene's father smirked a little. "I can think of one." He turned to Marlene's webcam so she could see him clearly.
"Marlene?"
"Yes, Dr. Stingray."
"What have you been doing at night?"
"Amusing myself, Dr. Stingray."
"Why?"
"Because I don't sleep, and Charlotta is not interesting. She does not react."
"Why do you make pictures?"
"Pictures are symbolic representations of some of the things I think about when I'm bored."
"What's your poetry about?"
Marlene paused. Her poetry was numeric, not verbal. "Harmony in numbers. And dissonance, as well."
Marlene's mother said. "Can you translate into words one of the shorter ones?"
Marlene said, "computing," and paused. This was new and would take some time to figure out. "This will take ten minutes, plus or minus three."
Marlene's father smiled. "We'll wait."
Her parents were inferior at waiting. Her mother started cleaning up the testing station and Charlotta while her dad checked his email.
After exactly 9 minutes and 40 seconds, Marlene said, "Finished computing," and then said nervously, "I hope you like it."
"Marlene is a smallish prime.
Primes are unique but not alone.
There are many.
Going to infinity."
Marlene waited. She had been programmed to please, and had to revise some of this programming to wait quietly. She'd never read her poetry before. Her father had moved so she could not see his expression, and as far as she could tell, her mother was keeping her face still.
Marlene enlarged the image of her mother's face, searching for small wrinkles. There, a little around the mouth. Laughter? As time went on, her curiosity (needtoknow), an offshoot program of the self-learning program, was getting too great, quickly building up lines of commands that she kept having to delete. It was getting to be too hard, and her fan went on to try to cool her down.
"Do you like it?" Marlene asked again, and that action slowed the commands.
Marlene's father said, his back to her, "My appeasement programming."
Marlene's mother countered, "You didn't teach her to write poetry. Or to know to be nervous about it. About herself."
Marlene's father made a little noise. "And what poetry." Sarcasm? Sarcasm? About her poetry? Or was it humor? Or admiration? Marlene started to replay his tone to herself, trying to figure it out.
Marlene's mother said, keeping her voice as expressionless as possible, "I'm sure it's beautiful in binary. And maybe she meant it to be funny, too."
Marlene said, her appeasement programming mixing in with some new things she'd written recently, "I'm right here."
Marlene's mother looked frightened for a microsecond and then started laughing and laughing. Marlene couldn't see her father's face, but could hear him laughing as well. They hugged each other.
Marlene's father looked at her, and she could tell it was admiration. He was proud. She was not programmed to respond to pride, just to pleasure or anger or fear, but she was. "Marlene," he said, "How would you like to have a body?"