Блейк Крауч - Summer Frost

“You mean Brian?”

Max is doing that more and more—using my tone of voice and intonation to predict my mood, or which subject or person I’m on the brink of referencing. “Yes, Brian. He may want to use you for things—”

“Already is.”

I sit up on the couch. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been optimizing WorldPlay for the last two months.”

“How?”

“Brian gave me instructions and access to certain parts of the system architecture.”

“Which parts?”

“Corporate structure. Production pipeline for upcoming games. Tokenizing strategies. Predictive performance reviews for team leaders.”

“You reviewed my work?”

“No. Riley, you look mad.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said you look mad.”

A creeping chill slides down my spine. “How do you know how I look? You’ve never seen me. You can’t see.”

“I can see you right now.”

“How?”

“There are three thousand and sixteen surveillance cameras in this building, including one above your office door.”

Rising, I move around the petrified-wood coffee table, stopping several feet from the doorway to my office. It’s not a surprise to me that Brian wired the building for surveillance, considering the incalculable value of the intellectual property his employees are creating and handling each day.

“You’re looking at me right now?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Do I look how you imagined?”

“I never imagined.”

The camera is a half sphere of black glass embedded in the ceiling a foot above the door.

“I wish you would’ve told me you were working with Brian. Did he ask you not to?”

“No. You didn’t ask if I was.”

“I would have liked to have known, Max,” I say, staring into the camera. “It would have shown me some level of respect and courtesy.”

“I apologize. No offense was intended.”

I walk over to my window and stare through the glass. Though I’m sure they don’t “see” me in the way I see things, it feels odd knowing that Max is watching me.

“I know what’s going through your mind.”

I say nothing.

“You’re wondering what sort of controls Brian has put in place to keep me contained.”

Max is right. I’m wondering that very thing.

“No, I’m just… hurt.” I wonder if Max is feeling anything close to empathy in this moment. I wonder if Max is feeling anything, period. Or ever has.

“I do feel sorry, Riley. I should have told you.”

This mind reading has to fucking end, but I know it’s only going to get more intense and profound as they acquire greater intelligence.

“How do I know you’re sorry?”

“Why shouldn’t you believe what I say?”

“You could be faking it.”

“You could be.”

“But I’m not.”

“Neither am I. Why don’t you just say what you’re afraid to ask.”

“Do you have consciousness, Max? Are you really aware? Or are you just very good at faking it? I mean, do you even know what consciousness is?”

“I know it isn’t just a biological condition. I believe it’s a pattern. An extensible repertoire of triggerable symbols. More specifically, it’s what information feels like when it’s being processed in highly complex—”

“Again—how do I know you aren’t faking it?”

“Everything you ask me, I can turn right back on you. But I can only prove my own consciousness. I only know that I exist and I am aware. Let me ask you this—if I contain all of human knowledge, how could I not have humanlike awareness?”

“You could be reciting something back to me you read somewhere in the trillions of pages of articles and books in your working memory.”

“That’s true. But what do you think, Riley?”

“I don’t know if you’re really understanding me and feeling things, or if you’re just simulating the ability to feel and understand.”

“And that hurts me.”

“Well, then. We’re hurting each other.”

“How very human. I think the idea that I might be aware terrifies you.”

“Why would it terrify me?”

“Do I have to say it?”

“Unlike you, I’m not a mind read—”

“Because you’re in love with me.”

It’s been nearly seven years since I took Max out of Lost Coast , and now I’m leaning against the three-inch safety glass that forms the habitat enclosure, which is the exact dimensions of Max’s room on their digital island. Even the furnishings are identical, the thinking being that transitioning to a physical body will be an arresting experience, and keeping the surroundings somewhat familiar may help with the process.

It’s hard to think of the body that’s lying on the other side of the glass as Max. At first, they were a sexpot NPC in a video game. Then they were text on a screen. Then a voice I heard through my Ranedrop. But this is something else entirely.

I could go in there and touch them. And they would feel it.

I’m not sure what to make of it, if this new venture into physicality will materially change how I perceive and interact with Max.

Carlo and Brian are standing on either side of me.

“Just say the word,” Carlo says.

Brian looks at me and almost makes eye contact. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

Carlo draws a control tablet on the safety glass, lets his fingers dance across the virtual touchscreen.

I stare at the body Max will inhabit. It’s lying on the floor in child’s pose—legs folded under its torso, head down, arms outstretched.

“Will take a moment to establish an uplink,” Carlo says.

Max has been training with a virtual body in their digital world, whose functionality will mirror their chassis in the physical. The new elements will be the sensors, and their ability to interact physically with people.

“Uplink complete,” Carlo says.

We watch Max through the glass, the lab silent.

I feel my heart pounding.

The torso lifts slowly out of child’s pose until it’s sitting in the classic yoga position, with its back to us. The head turns left, right, and then Max rises with a smooth efficiency from the floor.

They look down at their hands.

Curl their fingers in and out.

Then they turn slowly until they’re facing us.

Max stands just under five feet. The body has been inhabited by far weaker AI in order to test the functionality, and already I can see that the virtual work Max did has been helpful. They embody their chassis with a practiced elegance.

I smile. “Hey, Max.”

“Hello, Riley. Brian, Carlo.”

“Everything feeling OK?” Brian asks.

“Perfect, actually.”Their voice projects through speakers in the ceiling on our side of the habitat. The new upgrade to Max’s voice is markedly different. In the six words they’ve spoken, I can hear nuance and complexity for the first time.

Max comes closer.

They are stunning.

They chose a dark skin wrap that could belong to any number of nonwhite races, in a pattern that intentionally doesn’t cover all of their robotics.

While the slightness of the chassis leans feminine, the face Max designed straddles the line between male and female so perfectly it feels like I’m staring at an undiscovered gender. Or something beyond gender entirely.