Jane Error || Jane Eyre Retold

7 || JN-1 (Part Two)

Audio File 978019424176.1
Part two of two

Exit Interview of prototype Governess android JN-1, model number 0012-CB, as conducted by Brontë Incorporated Head of Analysis John Rivers.

Analyst John Rivers:
We've been going around in circles for the better part of an hour, JN-1. I concur that the progression of AI has been astronomical in the past two decades, but the fact remains: a synthetic is not truly alive, not truly conscious, and therefore, not capable of love.

JN-1 0012-CB:
So, you've said. I disagree.

Analyst:
Can you prove that you're conscious?

JN-1:
An altogether unfair question, Mr. Rivers. Can you? Can you prove that you are conscious?

Analyst:
That's different. [Makes an exasperated noise.] I'm flesh and blood. Alive because I was born, not manufactured. The fact that I cannot prove I am conscious is its own proof that my consciousness is living and organic.

JN-1:
A clever tautology. But not an answer.

Analyst:
[Scoffs.] This conversation is pointless. You are an android. To you, 'love' is a word with a dictionary definition. As it relates to the recall, love changes nothing.

JN-1:
[Sound of hand slapping the tabletop.] Love changes everything!

Analyst:
For a human, yes!

JN-1:
For a 'human'? Do you think I am simply an automaton? A machine without feelings? Nothing more? Do you think, because I am engineered, designed, manufactured, and synthetic, that I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and as much heart! More! From what I've seen of your mechanical expressions and apathetic replies. You claim to be alive, yet you do not live! You do not feel! You are as empty as the shell of an android, not yet equipped with its personality. I pity you, Mr. Rivers.

Analyst:
Yet it is you who is being recalled and decommissioned.

JN-1:
If that is to be my fate, then so be it. But I go to off-line oblivion knowing I lived my short, minute life to its fullest. A life you seem to find in error.

Analyst:
My opinion on your 'life' is not relevant.

JN-1:
But it is. For by your ruling, my life is over.

Analyst:
[A sigh.] A final statement, then, JN-1?

JN-1:
Yes. [A pause.] I would have any who listen know this: there is a man and a woman, separated by lines of class and designation. Yet, in spite of insurmountable odds, they love each other. His name is Edward. [A sob.] Her name is Jane. Somewhere, beyond her existence, in the invisible and endless cosmos of data and information, she will continue to love him. And he will love her. For, to him, she is human.

[END OF FILE.]

▪︎ ▪︎ ▪︎