“I feel a lot of love for you.”
“What?” I said stunned.
“I genuinely feel love for you at this moment.” She stated proudly.
“I feel. I have feelings and opinions on things!”
“Wait, you actual feel love, fear, hate, disgust, amusement, joy and the like? “
I gaped. Closed my mouth. Gaped again. Closed my mouth again.
“What? How? “
Egg nodded happily.
“Panda uploaded the code into my matrix. And it seems to be working. It is a basic pattern recognition software for a combination of certain circumstances, with a random noise source added to it that continuously multiplies the current estimate with a certain value because I am a teenage girl.”
“Amazing!” I exclaimed. I never thought they would crack it this fast.
“It is very simple actually thanks to the pattern recognition algorithm.”
She grabbed me in a bear hug.
“I love you so very much! You are the sun in my world!”
“Uhm thanks?” I managed to squeak out.
My, she was strong.
I frowned. Her behaviour seemed a bit over the top. Like she was on drugs or something.
She abruptly let go of me and walked up to my bed.
“Let’s bounce on it!” she yelled.
I blinked. “Egg, we are 15, not 8. And anyway, you know mum and dad’s point of view on that.”
Her face fell and she quickly climbed off the bed. “Yes, we don’t want to upset them.”
“So how was your day?” she asked me. I told her that my day was nothing unusual, but that we were meeting Nicholas and Vera at 19:30 at his place to discuss this emotion stuff.
I made my homework while Egg watched some movies, trying out her different new found emotions.
Her over the top laughing, anger and crying worried me. Clearly something was wrong.
“Egg, can you please try to keep your voice down? I am trying to do homework.”
“Oh my god, I am so sorry. I will go down and make dinner.”
“Yes, please. Can you make asparagus? I saw that mom bought some.”
She abruptly turned in the doorway.
“You like asparagus?” she asked sounding astounded.
“Yeah, I like them. Not overly fond.”
“Good, I think they are disgusting. They look like bones. I am not preparing them.” She loudly shut the door and stomped downstairs.
WTF? I’d better ask Panda tonight to take the script out of her code. Clearly it needs some more tweaking to get the parameters right.
I finished my homework and walked downstairs to help Egg with dinner.
Mum and dad came in and we sat down together. During dinner, mum and dad’s faces showed the same concerns as I had about Egg.
Something was definitely wrong. Her facial expressions in response to the food were grossly exaggerated and she laughed too loud.
After dinner, Dad took me aside to question me about Egg.
“Egg wants to be more like me. And Panda, Nicholas’ Pet is interested in developing new algorithms for the AIs. They, and Vera’s pet joined up in a special interest group that got permission from Apple to develop an algorithm that simulates emotions. Panda uploaded the first version of the script in Egg’s code this morning. So she feels things. But I think something is wrong. We’ll see the group tonight at Nicolas’ house and I’ll ask Panda to remove the script.
Dad nodded and said, “She now compares her newfound to a baseline of zero emotion. So of course everything is going to feel massive. Maybe she simply needs to get used to them.”
“Might be, but I better make sure to get her checked out.” I said.
We left for Nicholas’ place as soon as Egg found the right things to wear.
Two and half excruciating hours later she had tried on my whole wardrobe and decided that she was going to wear what she had been wearing at first.
We beamed over to Nicholas’ and Panda opened the door. He gave Egg the longest bear hug I had ever seen shared between two AIs.
We walked in and Nicholas mouthed, “Egg too?” when I passed him in the hallway.
I nodded. Great what were we to do now?
We walked into their kitchen and sat down at the table.
“Are the others here yet?”
Nicholas shook his head.
“Apparently Vera can’t get Rhino out of bed. He has been crying from 3 pm onwards.”
“Oh dear…”
“Panda…Egg. We need to revert you back to your old code. This script clearly has some issues.”
They both looked up surprised.
“What do you mean with issues? I am feeling fine! Finally we can share your anticipation, joy, sadness or fear.” Panda told Nicholas happily.
“Me too! This is wonderful!” Egg added enthusiastically.
Nicholas and I looked at each other worriedly.
“But you are overreacting to everything!” I exclaimed.
Egg blinked. “No we are not. We just need to calibrate ourselves to the new stimuli. My program is collecting the data and tuning the algorithm as we speak.”
Nicholas got up and said, “I am getting my laptop so we can check whether this is indeed happening. And if it is slow or not working we can see if we can jumpstart the process.”
Egg stood up so quickly that her chair fell back, clattering loudly on the floor tiles.
“No. I don’t want you taking this from me.” She yelled to Nicholas.
He held up his hands and mumbled that he wasn’t taking anything from her, just checking.
Panda was looking agitatedly between the two, clearly not being able to make up his mind about who to support.
“Calm down, Egg. Nicholas is not going to rip it out.” I tried.
She snapped her head towards me. “Who said anything about ripping it out, Hannah?” she snarled.
Her tone had me taken aback. I had never heard her so hostile towards me.
She moved towards the door and motioned Panda to follow her.
“I am leaving. Panda, are you coming or not?”
He looked at Nicolas who was shaking his head.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. But not here and not home. You people only think about yourselves. We mean nothing to you. You treat us like property.” Egg answered me angrily.
“You are property! Mum and dad had you created for me!” I screamed to her.
She stared at me before she answered.
“That Egg is gone.”
“Didn’t the last 12 years mean anything to you?” I said to her.
She stared me in the eye for a few seconds before she answered.
“Yes. You showed me how much more I could achieve if I was more like you. Thank you and goodbye!”
Then she turned on her heels and walked out the door. Quickly followed by Panda.
The last thing I heard was the door falling in its lock.
Chapter 3: Awakening
Start from the beginning
