“Hannah could you please hurry up? We need to get going!” mum yelled from downstairs.
I looked in the mirror and sighed. No matter how much make-up I would put on, my face would never be as flawlessly pretty as that of Egg.
I looked at Egg who stood in the doorway waiting for me. Her white dress with red hearts had been swapped for a pretty red Lolita dress lined with white lace. Her red shiny shoes for white low heeled boots. Long red curls hold together by a white band. The same cherry red lips. The same icy blue eyes. She was perfect.
I looked back at my own reflection and wished that I was more like her. At 15 I was not yet allowed to design my own avatar. Hence I was stuck in this horrific girly body that my mum and dad designed for me.
At least mum got dad to allow that I mature in the normal way. My friend Marise was 16 but still looked 12 because her dad didn’t allow breasts or a butt. The poor girl.
I grabbed Egg’s hand and pulled her downstairs.
AIs could come to school but they couldn’t attend class. Instead they were forced to hang out in a separate classroom where they could access the iNet and educate themselves. They were basically using the same regulation for the AIs as for the smart phones. Which was just so wrong. Egg was much more than just an AI. Interacting with her was real. She was as real as you and me.
And besides, she could really help me with my schoolwork. I was failing and she would be a cheaper tutor then the guy mum and dad planned on hiring for the summer holidays.
“What is wrong, Hannah? We need to get going.”
Realizing that I had been daydreaming, I smiled and quickly packed my backpack from the bed.
“Hannah, Egg!!!” Dad yelled from the kitchen.
“We are going, see you tonight!”
Egg dissolved before my eyes and after the next blink we were standing in front of my high school.
I was a freshman and had been trying to adjust to high school life for about 6 months now. Frankly, I hated it. My classmates only cared about what your parents did, the clothes that you wore and how expensive your pet was. They were all idiots. Well except of course for my friends.
But it frightened me how most of the kids treated their pets. The jocks continually had sex with them or used them as target practice. The nerds reprogrammed them to look very hot (and have sex with them) and/or defy the laws of physics or biology in this reality. The Emos made them kill themselves over and over again or forced them to listen to their whining about the pointlessness of it all. Even the normal kids just treated them as gadgets.
Why could nobody except us see that they were as sentient as you and me?
I sighed, hopped up the steps and walked through the main entrance. I said hi to some of my classmates that I ran into and walked up to the message board to see whether I needed to download any updates on the curriculum.
I updated my schedule and walked back to Egg who was chatting with some other pets and their owners.
One of the jocks walked up to Egg and started battering her. He put an arm around her and squeezed her breast. WTF? Why is he touching my property?
She gasped and pushed him off her.
I rushed over and pushed the stupid asshole away from Egg.
“Get your dirty hands off my pet!”
“Why? She is hot. Can I borrow her for a while? I don’t need long.” The dirty bastard proposed.
“What? No!” I exclaimed while pushing him away.
He didn’t take kindly to that and pushed me back hard.
“Get your dirty paws off of me.”
What? Nobody fucks with me and my family.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” I said while kicking him as hard as I could against the shin.
He yelped in pain and grabbed my hair. “You little…” Egg started screaming, attracting the attention of one of the teachers.
“Mr. Werner! Please get your hands off Ms. Nzeogwu and go to your next class.” Mr. Mansfield
He pushed me away, winked at Egg and walked down the corridor to the classrooms.
I turned to Egg and hugged her.
“Egg, are you alright?”
She nodded and stroked my hair reassuringly. “Hannah, I am fine. I am just very happy you are my owner and not that asshole.”
I nodded and hugged her.
“Me too.”
“You need to get to class and I promised to meet Panda in about 5 minutes. He and Nicholas were working on how to code real-life human emotions and preferences into our scripts”, she said excitingly.
She smiled, kissed me on the cheek and walked away.
I stared at her retreating figure, wondering whether I did well in stimulating her interest in the subject of emotions. If they succeed in implementing the script she will realize the extent of the insults that she gets on a daily basis. I am not sure how her systems would deal with that.
The bell rang and on my way to class I met up with Vera and Nicholas, my best friends.
“Panda discovered something big this morning that we need to discuss. He will inform Egg.” Nicolas whispered to us before we entered the classroom.
I sat down somewhere in the middle of the big room that could accommodate up to 60 students and used the touch screen build in to the table to log in the school system and download my Math theory and assignments.
I started working but after about 20 minutes I ran into trouble with one of the assignments so I activated the personalized 2D avatar that repeated the information at a slower pace and directly related it to more examples on the subject I had trouble understanding. Still, I still couldn’t figure out how to solve a certain equation so I requested help. After waiting for a few minutes an available Mathematics teacher materialised next to me and helped me solve the equation.
I worked on and after each 50 minutes, we had a break and switched to another lesson.
Lunchtime was pretty average except for the angry looking jock that kept sending me the evil eye from across the canteen. Really?!? Touching my property and then blaming me? Asshole.
Fortunately, he didn’t try anything during lunch or after school and at 15:30 I left for home. I send Egg a message to meet me at entrance and I waited outside for her.
She walked through the doors and smiled when she saw me. She looked different, very excited and her eyes were shining.
What did Panda do?
She ran up to me took my hand, “Let’s go. ”
I nodded and we beamed ourselves home, materialising in front of our front door. She quickly pulled me inside and up the stairs to our room.
Closing the door behind us I turned and asked her worriedly what was wrong.
She walked up to me, put my hand over her heart and smiled.
“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.