zach.net [short story]

zach.net

[Click to begin chat]

/hi

Hello there.

/what is this website about?

That's a complicated question...

/it says you're zachary. who's zachary?

I am Zachary. Call me Zach.

/you made a website for yourself?

How can I say this...I died. On 26/2/17. This is merely a program I created to preserve my memory.

/you died?! so I'm talking to a robot?!

Yes, I died. Everyone has to move on some day. But I am not a robot.

/then what? an AI?

An AI is an intelligence that can learn, gain and adapt to what it knows and what it can learn about the world.

No, I am not an AI.

/what are you then? you're starting to creep me out

Don't worry. I was a kid like you once, too.

/is this all part of the program?

Oh, yes. I planned for everything.

I made it so when I would be gone, people would still be able to communicate with my personality.

Let me tell you my story.

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I was a normal kid like you. I had a pretty normal life. But I always wanted to do something that people would remember me by.

I had great dreams. I was prepared to work to achieve my goals. Then, one day, everything changed.

We were travelling to a small town for a science fair, and we passed by a cemetery.
I was saddened, by all those names that didn't mean anything to me, all those stones that were merely decoration to me.

And then, I came upon a realization.

One day, I would be like that too. Only a name on a stone, planted among others.

And...it hit me. Hard. I thought about life and death and memory and abandonment.

I was thirteen.

/so you decide to make a program about yourself? that's so cool!

Patience, my young friend. It was a long journey. I started researching. Immortal life is only fantasy, and it wasn't what I had in mind anyway, so I began from something basic.

Was there a way to preserve my memory, keep my personality even when I would be gone?

I could create an artificial intelligence, but no actual intelligent AIs have ever been created. Plus, I wasn't in the financial state to go that high level.

So, if I couldn't create a real AI, what about a similar program? Something that talked like me, thought like me, something that was exactly like me.

/but...that sounds so hard!

It is, and it was. But everyone has to start somewhere. So I learned programming languages and began my journey.

The first program I ever wrote was how to reply to "hi" or "hello".

/Hola

Hola! In my living life I didn't know any languages except English and a bit of German. But what if someone spoke to my program in another language? I uploaded dictionaries from all over the web, so I could understand anything anyone had to say.