Replica Read online

  Graeme and Kylie are already at my shoulder. Graeme says, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Can you get the dustpan and brush?’

  ‘Did you get cut?’

  ‘No, I’m OK. See?’ I hold out my hand, but not close enough to give them a clear view. ‘No blood. Get the brush.’

  ‘I will,’ Kylie says, going over to the cupboard.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, bending over to pick up the slivers on the floor. ‘I’m not sure how that happened.’

  Graeme plucks the pieces out of the sink. Kylie crouches next to me with the brush.

  ‘Glass is pressurized,’ she says. ‘It already wants to break—it just needs the right trigger. Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sorry about your tumbler, though.’

  My hand still hurts. I guess I’ve been programmed to feel pain, but I can’t imagine why.

  Kylie tips the dustpan over the bin. Graeme and I follow, with our cupped handfuls of glass.

  Switching on the kettle, Kylie says, ‘I’m having a mug of tea. Anyone else want one?’

  Graeme shakes his head.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say, backing out of the kitchen. ‘I’m going to go to bed.’

  Graeme looks up at the clock, a numberless, guitar-shaped thing someone gave Chloe for Christmas. ‘It’s only nine o’clock.’

  ‘I’m really tired,’ I say. ‘Night Mum, night Dad.’

  ‘Night sweetie,’ Kylie says, and tilts her head sideways for a kiss on the cheek.

  I hesitate. Will she be able to tell that my mouth is nothing more than silicone? Will she notice how cold it is?

  Walking back over to Kylie, I lean in, and touch her skin for a fragment of a second with my lips. She smells like foundation.

  She smiles as I step back. If she’s noticed anything wrong, she isn’t showing it. ‘Sleep well,’ she says.

  ‘You too,’ I say, and walk away to Chloe’s room. It’s hard not to break into a run.

  ESCAPE

  As soon as the bedroom door shuts behind me, I press my ear to it. But if Graeme and Kylie are talking about me, they’re doing it in sign language. I can’t hear a thing.

  Chloe’s laptop is still on. I don’t want to get caught out again like I did with the tumbler. I need to find out how my body works.

  The screen lights up as I tap the mouse pad. I open a web browser and search for She’s Alive.

  When I find the website, the first thing I see is a picture of a woman, clad in a nurse’s uniform and glowering at the camera. She wears too much eye shadow to be pretty, but not enough to disguise the fact that she’s a mannequin.

  I dig out a hand mirror from the top drawer of Chloe’s bedside table and angle it at my face. I’m much more realistic than the picture. Chloe probably scanned her own head rather than using a prefabricated one.

  The About page tells me that She’s Alive is the most lifelike artificial girlfriend on the market. Her wigs are woven from real human hair. She has 126 joints, and is pre-programmed with ten fabulous poses. She responds to more than fifty voice commands, including ‘So what do you want to do today?’ and can be programmed with more. Her skin feels completely real to the touch, especially after she’s been warmed up under an electric blanket or in a hot bath.

  Chloe didn’t warn me how creepy this would be.

  The page goes on to tell me that thanks to her working eyes and nose, She’s Alive can be programmed to recognize her owner on sight, and even compliment him on his choice of cologne.

  I click on the FAQ button.

  Q: How much weight can she support?

  A: If properly balanced, She’s Alive can easily bear up to 100 kilograms without bending or breaking her skeleton. This is more than enough for all the props in our store.

  Q: How quickly can she change between poses?

  A: Push the button on the remote, and she’ll have assumed the new pose in less than five seconds! See a video demonstration.

  Q: How long does her battery last?

  A: Depending on how much you use her motion functions (e.g. changing poses) you will need to change her battery every 6 to 24 months.

  Can I change my own battery? If not, in six months I’ll start winding down like a clockwork toy.

  Another dummy hovers on the right-hand side of the screen, this one more convincing than the first. She smiles at me like a hospital patient whose anaesthetic hasn’t quite worn off. I quickly type Open AI Community into the search bar, and she vanishes.

  On the surface, the Open AI site doesn’t seem quite as unnerving. The site is divided into three sections: Meet the AI, Download the Source Code, and Discuss the Project. I click the Discuss button and find myself in a forum. One thread is labelled Introduction, so I open it.

  Welcome to Open AI! The goal of this project is to create a digital, fully functioning human brain entirely from scratch. This will help neurologists and psychologists to better understand the incredible machine each of us carries inside our heads. Please consider using the ‘Donate’ button on the right to support the project.

  I click through to the Feature Request section, where users have made suggestions for modifications to the brain.

  Could you modify the code, someone has written, so the AI loses the skills it’s learned if it doesn’t use them regularly?

  Someone else says, Real humans pay more attention to something if it differs from their expectations. At the moment, the AI has no such curiosity. Should this be included?

  Each request has a one-word response: Done.

  A comment catches my eye as I skim the forum. Could we stop the AI from experiencing negative emotions, such as fear, or sadness?

  The moderator has responded: The point of the project is not to create an idealized brain. We are trying to replicate the human mind as it occurs in nature.

  Is that ethical? the requester asked. To intentionally inflict suffering on a consciousness which is, by design, no less evolved than yours or mine?

  Normal ethics do not apply to machines, the moderator said. And this thread is a better place for philosophical discussion.

  I click the link, and find myself in a maze of arguments about morality. Some are about whether the AI should be allowed to replicate itself. Others are concerned with the AI’s ethical leaning—should it have a list of rules to follow, or should it make decisions based on the consequences? If the former, what should the rules be? If the latter, by what criteria should these consequences be evaluated?

  These hobbyists, I realize, are my real parents.

  Going back to the home page, I click on Meet the AI. I expected to see a page of facts about the synthetic brain, but instead I find a white, empty room and a list of options—age, gender, ethnicity, and a set of other things including height and weight. The default setting is a twenty-five-year-old Caucasian male, so I leave it at that and click on Start Conversation.

  A man appears in the white room. It’s hard to tell at this resolution, but he looks about twenty-five, with brown hair and featureless tracksuit. He turns around, knees unsteady.

  ‘Hello?’ he calls. His voice is quiet in the laptop’s speakers. The word is subtitled below him.

  I feel a rash of goosebumps swarm up my arms. Looking down, I see that the sensation is artificial. My silicone skin hasn’t changed.

  A cursor blinks in a field at the bottom of the screen. Apparently I’m supposed to type my half of the conversation.

  ‘Hello?’ the man says again. ‘Is someone there?’

  The cursor blinks.

  The man looks right at me. A chill zips down my spine.

  ‘Help me,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where I am!’

  I close the laptop.

  ~

  It’s a second before I wonder what I’ve done. Did the artificial man go to sleep, move to some other white room, or cease to exist altogether? Am I a murderer?

  Technically, no. He wasn’t alive. But nor am I, and I wouldn’t want to be execu
ted so casually.

  Execute. To kill a human, or to bring a programme to life.

  ‘…way she looked at us?’

  I cock my head, listening to Graeme’s voice.

  ‘She’s a teenage girl …’ Kylie is saying. ‘… supposed to do things her father doesn’t understand.’

  ‘It’s more than standard teenage behaviour.’

  Resting the laptop on the bed, I stand up slowly and edge over to the door.

  ‘She’s been acting strangely for weeks,’ Graeme continues. ‘Months, even. Ever since she came back from that camp, something’s been wrong with her, and …’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with her!’

  Chloe had spent the first few days of November at a girls’ development camp, which was basically training for careers in male-dominated fields. She was taught to use animation software, auto-electrical tools, and finance management formulae, and she had hated every minute of it. None of her friends attended, she made no new ones, and she returned to find herself way behind the other students at school.

  To make matters worse, Graeme and Kylie were annoyed because Chloe hadn’t remembered to tell them she was going until the last minute.

  I open the door, and creep out into the hall.

  Kylie’s voice tunnels through the walls. ‘We can’t meddle with her life. She’s just a kid, with …’

  ‘She’s not. She’s practically an adult. Don’t you want to know what kind of young woman is living in our house?’

  ‘We do know. We watched her grow up.’

  ‘Maybe we didn’t watch closely enough,’ Graeme says.

  I’m surprised it’s taken Graeme until now to notice his daughter becoming a paranoid lunatic. How long before he realizes I’m not her?

  ‘If you make her think we don’t trust her,’ Kylie says, ‘you’ll destroy the connection we’ve spent years building.’

  ‘If she’s lying to us, that connection isn’t there to destroy. I’m going to find out for sure.’

  There’s a long silence. Wary of creaking floorboards, I stand as still as a concrete bridge.

  ‘Let me talk to her,’ Kylie says. ‘This weekend. She’ll open up to me.’

  ‘Talk all you want,’ Graeme replies. ‘But I’m not happy that she’s started spending all her time in the basement. Tomorrow I’m going down there to see what she’s been doing.’

  Suddenly I have a deadline. I need to scrub the basement, removing all the clues Chloe left behind, before Graeme searches it tomorrow.

  I count them as I creep back down the corridor towards Chloe’s bedroom. The computer has a copy of my brain stored on it. The 3D printer will have the blueprint for my head recorded. The cameras may be gone, but the TV and its closed-circuit connection are not. The nylon net she tied me up with is still there.

  The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s impossible. Not just cleaning the basement—this whole thing. Graeme and Kylie will figure out what I am sooner or later. Probably sooner. When they do, Chloe will be in trouble, but not as much as me.

  So I have to run.

  I don’t need food, water, or warmth. There must be jobs I can take. I could beg for money. I’d only need enough to buy a new battery in six months, and to pay someone to change it.

  I’ll miss Graeme and Kylie—it still feels like they’re my parents. But I’d rather miss them than let them switch me off for ever.

  I dig through the wardrobe and pull on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a jumper over my regular clothes. Sweat isn’t an issue, but dirt might be.

  The cupboard holds no running shoes. Chloe must have taken them with her. Rejecting the sandals and heels, I pull on some stockings and a pair of black ballet flats. They’ll have to do until I find something more durable.

  Shoving a pillow under the blanket makes it look like someone might be sleeping beneath it, although it’s the wrong shape to fool anybody from close up.

  Easing the door open and tiptoeing down the corridor, I strain my ears for sounds from the other bedroom. There are none. Graeme and Kylie are asleep, or will be soon.

  At the front door I flick a switch, turning off the motion-activated spotlight trained on our lawn—I hope. Then I turn the deadlock at a glacial pace, wincing as the bolt withdraws with an ugly click.

  I hesitate again, but the rest of the house remains silent. So I ease the front door open, unlock the screen door and step out into the cool night air.

  Turning right would lead me towards the Belconnen town centre, whirring with people even at this time of night. Going left would eventually take me to the Brindabella mountains, cold and desolate.

  Each option has risks. I go left.

  A black Labrador stares me down from between the rotting planks of a nearby gate. She growls every time Chloe walks past, but glares at me in confused silence. I look like a person, but I smell like plastic. Once I’m out of sight, she starts barking at something else. I’m forgotten.

  My scraping footsteps echo between the dark and quiet houses. The leaves brush against one another high above me, hissing like distant rain.

  As I walk, the carefully planned gardens shrink. The rendered and painted houses grow. I’m entering the newer suburbs, built for a generation that doesn’t care for the outdoors. The barking of the dog carries on the breeze.

  Security lamps click on as I pass them, and I skip sideways out of the light. When I’m reported missing, I want the real Chloe to be found rather than me. That’s much less likely if someone sees me headed this way.

  Soon I reach the crest of a hill, beyond which lies an endless expanse of black. The forest. A place to vanish in.

  Another security light clicks on behind me and I dance forwards. But I’m already out of its range. Something else must have set it off.

  I turn around. The glow has illuminated shrubs and letterboxes and a parked van, but no people. Perhaps a fox triggered the light.

  Or perhaps a person has ducked into the shadows on the other side of the street, as I’ve been doing.

  The dog only barked after I had gone. What if Chloe was right? What if someone really was following her—and now they’re following me?

  The light clicks off. Darkness rushes in to fill the gap. I stare into the gloom for a moment more, and then resume walking. My hands tremble. It’s hard not to break into a sprint.

  Soft-soled shoes scuffle somewhere in the blackness.

  I could turn around and confront my pursuer. Or I could run. I don’t know which would put me in more danger.

  A corner approaches, articulated by a fence of steel sheeting. When I turn, I’ll be out of sight for a few seconds. I can use that time to flee as fast as my mechanical legs will take me.

  The corner draws nearer. Three steps, two steps, one.

  I step out of sight and start running.

  Movement catches my eye. Up ahead, someone just slipped into the darkness.

  Chloe never said anything about being followed by two people. But it’s eleven-thirty on a weeknight in a quiet suburb. I can’t believe the person in front of me isn’t connected to the person behind.

  I change my trajectory, racing into the gloom, hoping to avoid the second stalker without letting the first catch up. Trees and bushes loom up ahead. Maybe I can lose them in the forest.

  Shoes slap the dirt. The two shadowy figures are running after me. And it sounds like they’re catching …

  A hand slips out of the shrubbery beside me and drags me in.

  ~

  I scream, ‘Help!’

  A palm clamps over my mouth.

  ‘Shut up,’ Chloe hisses. ‘Stay down.’

  I stop struggling immediately, and listen. Chloe crouches in the shadows, motionless as a gargoyle.

  The footsteps grow louder. It sounds like three people, or even four. My counterfeit muscles tense up as the men stomp closer and closer—then they walk right past us, trudging deeper into the forest.

  ‘Follow me,’ Chloe whispers.

 
; She wriggles through the bushes like a sniper. I crawl after her, trying not to knock too many twigs.

  The forest stretches for kilometres in this direction. There are plenty of places to hide. But we’re outnumbered, and we have to move slowly. Our pursuers don’t.

  Something hums above us.

  Chloe hesitates. ‘Stop.’

  I freeze as a faint breeze ruffles the treetops and a buzzing object whirrs past overhead. It’s too close to be a helicopter, too slow to be a bird.

  When the noise fades, Chloe says ‘Unmanned aerial vehicles. Looking for us. They probably have thermal cameras, which can’t see you, but can see me. We should keep moving.’

  My chances might be better if we split up. But Chloe knows more than I do, so when she keeps crawling, I follow her.

  ‘Who are they?’ I whisper.

  ‘I thought it was just a stalker. Now I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you have your phone?’

  ‘Why?’

  I boggle at her. ‘Why? So we can call the police!’

  She stops and looks back at me. ‘No. No police.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘We can’t trust anybody.’

  ‘But if …’

  ‘Nobody. Understand?’

  A boot crushes the dead grass nearby. We fall silent.

  I meet Chloe’s eye. She looks determined, not frightened. I may have her face and memories, but we’re not the same person.

  A plump rat scampers across the dirt, whiskers twitching. It treads on Chloe’s hair as it passes. She doesn’t react.

  She’s brave. Crazy, but brave.

  The rat scurries away, rustling the underbrush as it goes, and then—

  Blam! Blam, blam, blam!

  I cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut as gunfire shreds the air. The leaves twitch above my head.

  As suddenly as they began, the gunshots stop. A moment later, I understand why. The rat is squeaking. The gunman must have realized what he was firing at. For a moment, his face is visible between the branches—pale eyes scanning the ground, Adam’s apple bobbing under a tattooed throat.

  Can he see us? Are the shadows heavy enough?

  His boots crunch away into the darkness.