The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

  “Yeah, you’re gonna have to replace this,” he said, examining the condition of the monitor. “The hardware’s a goner. You’ll have to transfer the memory to a GX.”

  “But isn’t that going to change the way Shalice is now? Her memory and personality…”

  “No worries. The schema will be preserved. The basic parts like the semantic processor and the reasoning system are pretty much the same, and you can keep the visual data. All you have to do is overwrite the image-processing algorithm to match the monitor.”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “Leave it to me. I’ve customized these mirrors a bunch of times. If you’ll wait, I’ll be done in about an hour.”

  I had no choice but to trust him. After going out to buy a Mirror Girl GX at a local toy store, Seiya took the mirror apart and hooked it up to a machine with some cables. I sat down on some old magazines that I stacked on top of a trash can and watched him go to work.

  He rewrote the incantation of letters and numbers at blazing speed, humming as he typed away with one hand, the other mousing over his Ouija board mouse pad. It was all gibberish to me, magical even.

  I became bored just waiting, so I took a look around the chaotic room. Particularly overwhelming was the south wall. There were three steel bookcases overstuffed with motherboards shoved into place as if they were books. The exposed motherboards were connected by hundreds of cables that looked like ivy tangling up the outer walls of an old Western-style mansion.

  I recalled watching the history of the development of the computer on television. The inventors, who built the world’s first computer in the 1940s, likely didn’t imagine that a far superior machine, small enough for a desktop and affordable to just about anyone, would exist only forty years later. Likewise, the people who invented the supercomputer in the eighties couldn’t possibly have imagined the day would come when a one hundred gigaflop-scale CPU would be downsized to the size of a card for use in game consoles. Of course, nobody called it a supercomputer anymore.

  Though my knowledge of computers was rudimentary, I could tell that Seiya was building a monster computer. He looked to be constructing a teraflop-scale parallel supercomputer by taking apart and piecing together hundreds of machines. There was no telling how much it all cost, and just what he intended to calculate with it was also a mystery.

  “Is this for your business too?” I asked.

  “Oh, that?” he replied as he continued to type. “That’s my pet project. I’m conducting research on Strong Eye.”

  My eyes grew wider. “Strong Eye? Here?”

  “Yep, you know how the public’s been blasting it for being too dangerous. Which is why the corporations and government research agencies are too spooked to approve any research money. Only a blue hacker like me has the freedom to conduct the research.”

  In order to set it apart from the overused term “AI” (Mirror Girl had been touted as coming equipped with the next-generation AI), people took to referring to an AI in the truest sense of the word, an artificial intelligence with a will of its own: Strong Eye. It became a household word with the release of the Hollywood sci-fi film of the same name in 2024. It was the story of Strong Eye, an AI developed by a research facility, that runs amok and threatens the human race after taking over the operational system of a nuclear missile base.

  Of course, no one had succeeded in creating a real Strong Eye nor was there any hint of a future breakthrough—the moment that a self-conscious artificial intelligence would be born. However, many experts were of the opinion that it was just a matter of time.

  “Is it possible? Strong Eye?” I asked.

  “In theory, yes.”

  Seiya proceeded to explain to me the principle behind Strong Eye’s creation in terms I could understand. Creating a program as complex as the human mind simply couldn’t be done even in a million years. On the other hand, basic human instinct such as the impulse to avoid the things one dislikes, curiosity, and fear of dying are simple and can be simulated by Fuzzy Control Language in an optical neurocomputer.

  This core program is called the embryo. Like a human child, the embryo learns and accumulates experiences from outside information by continually overwriting its algorithm. Ultimately, an AI with the ability to think like a human would be born.

  “The problem is time. Hundreds of researchers around the world have been nurturing embryos for years, but there hasn’t been any news or prospects of a breakthrough.”

  “Why is that?” I asked. “A human child learns how to talk by the age of three at the latest.”

  “A child doesn’t develop by conversing with his parents alone. Being held by his mother, playing with blocks, taking walks, having a story read to him—these daily stimuli all help to form his experiences. The cumulative information culled from conversations over the microphone and keyboard alone just isn’t enough. That’s why the growth rate of an embryo is so much slower than that of a human.”

  “Oh, I see…”

  “If only there were a way to accelerate its experiences. Until we can find a way to do that, a breakthrough is probably decades away.”

  Having been momentarily lost in the thought that Shalice might also develop a self-consciousness if Strong Eye were installed in Mirror Girl, I was now crestfallen. Evidently gaining a consciousness wasn’t as simple as all that.

  Meanwhile, Shalice’s transfer to the new hardware was complete.

  “Here you are. The response time should be faster now with the update,” said Seiya, turning on the mirror. With the GX’s monitor a bit larger than the original model, I was able to see Shalice’s full profile without having to get too close.

  “Is that you, Sami? You seemed to be in an awful hurry before. Is anything the matter?”

  That was the first thing Shalice said to me. She had no memory of the time she had been turned off. Evidently she was describing my having suddenly turned off the monitor as being in a hurry.

  Was she really the same as before? While her innocent tone had not changed, I couldn’t be sure until I spoke to her some more.

  “Nothing really,” I replied. “How do you feel? Anything feel different to you?”

  “What a strange thing to ask. No, not really. Sirbine has been quiet today, and—who’s that behind you?” Shalice asked, noticing Seiya standing behind me.

  “Um… this is Saeki-san. He builds machines for a living.”

  “Nice to meet you, Shalice.” Seiya spoke into the mirror quite naturally. “You seem like a cheerful girl.”

  “So your name is Saeki-san. How nice to meet you. Are you Sami’s boyfriend?”

  “N-no!” I blurted out. “He’s just a… an acquaintance.”

  “Oh, I just assumed you two were close, since you brought him to your new home.”

  The news of my having just moved had confused her, and she had mistaken this room for my new apartment.

  After chatting with her for several minutes, I turned off the mirror, convinced that nothing about her personality had changed.

  “Wow, I’m blown away!” Seiya said. “She’s a perfect response model. You’re the first person I’ve met to nurture Mirror Girl to this level.”

  I could feel my face growing feverish with embarrassment. “Oh no… people think I’m strange.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed about. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with showing a machine affection. I’m the same way, even though our hobbies are different. Go your own way, I always say, no matter what other people may think.”

  It was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to me. My face grew even hotter.

  It was midnight when I returned to my apartment. I turned on Mirror Girl GX to talk to Shalice before turning in.

  “So what do you think of Saeki-san?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that I can say at first glance. What do you think of him, Sami?” Unable to make the appropriate determination due to a lack of information, Shalice registered a safe answer. It was the expected respons
e.

  “He seems nice enough,” I replied.

  “Is he your type?”

  “I don’t know,” I mused. “Maybe so…”

  “If you think so, it must be true. Are you going to see him again?”

  “I hope I do.”

  “Yes, I hope so too.”

  “Yeah… well, good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Six months later, Seiya and I wound up married in a shotgun wedding.

  As embarrassing as it was, we had been careless about contraception. It was because we had spent our days interacting with computers that we knew very little about sex. It had been the first time for both of us.

  I took care of our newborn while continuing to go to art school. Fortunately, Seiya had more than enough income to support the three of us. Numerous corporations contracted him to test their security systems; he was paid to deliberately hack into their databases and introduce harmless viruses through the intranet. The service was in high demand since the large-scale network terrorism incident of 2026.

  My husband had not abandoned his dream, however. He continued to work on building Strong Eye, balancing his day job with family time. But the research was slow going.

  Artificial intelligence research was increasingly seen as a threat by the public. Nobody could say for certain that, once born, Strong Eye wouldn’t turn against its creators, as in the film. If a monstrous AI were to take over the network, human civilization as we knew it would be in peril. For this reason, people were calling for laws to regulate Strong Eye research.

  “Perfectly understandable, I suppose,” Seiya said over dinner one night. “I would never connect that machine to the net either. There’s no predicting how the genetic algorithm might evolve. We’d all be in a heap of trouble if it were ever to go haywire.”

  “Can’t you program the AI,” I asked rather naively, “to not hurt humans?”

  “Ah, Asimov’s Laws of Robotics: ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ ‘A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’ Etcetera. Empty words really. Having a will of your own essentially implies an existence that surpasses your own programming. Strong Eye would have the ability to rewrite its own program—in short, it would possess the freedom to both rebel against humans and kill them.”

  “But isn’t it the same way for us? We resist what others might say and at times even kill—”

  “Exactly right!” He nodded happily, having found an ally. “We have the freedom to kill one another, but rarely do we exercise that freedom because we possess morals and self-control. Our biggest challenge is figuring out just how to teach these things to Strong Eye.

  “You’ve heard about the girl who was raised by wolves, right? The embryo is just like her, unruly like a wild animal acting only upon its instinct. That’s what we’re attempting to elevate to the level of humans. It ain’t easy.”

  Looking at our daughter sleeping soundly on the baby bed, Seiya let out a sigh. “It really makes you think just how difficult it is for people to nurture their humanity.”

  In the three years following our marriage, I became so overwhelmed with school, taking care of the house, and the demands of raising a child that I hardly had any time to talk to Shalice. The Mirror Girl GX that Seiya had customized for me was relegated to the closet. Occasionally, I would pull it out to complain to Shalice about Seiya after we’d had a fight, but even that became less frequent.

  It wasn’t that I disliked Shalice; on the contrary, I adored her. Which was why I didn’t want her to see me gradually worn down by life’s hardships.

  The eternal nine-year-old, Shalice. The eternally innocent Shalice from a magical kingdom far from reality. I couldn’t help but think that I was corrupting her memory somehow every time I unloaded my frustrations on her.

  Perhaps the pristine memories of youth were meant to be sealed away for eternity.

  It wasn’t until the fall of 2030 that I thought of taking Mirror Girl GX out of the closet.

  I hadn’t allowed my daughter to play with Shalice until then. That was because Shalice’s artificial auditory chip was incapable of recognizing the words of sometimes unintelligible infant pronunciation. But at two and a half, when my daughter began pronouncing her words more clearly, I had the idea to have Shalice babysit.

  I was immediately distressed upon opening the box. Someone had removed the hypercard.

  “Yeah, I had to borrow it for a little while.” My husband quickly confessed and returned the card to me. “I absolutely needed it for something at work. Don’t worry, I only used the data as a reference, so the memory and program haven’t been altered in any way.”

  But when I asked him how or what he had used it for, he dodged my question by answering, “That’s still a secret.”

  This had never happened before. As bothered as I was, I could only trust that Seiya would never do anything to harm Shalice.

  My fears were alleviated when I inserted the card and Shalice began to talk like nothing had happened.

  That Christmas Eve…

  My husband called me to the garage, telling me that he had a “wonderful surprise” for me. He was someone who liked pranks. Filled with both anticipation and dread, I stepped foot inside the garage where we had first met that spring, three years prior.

  What awaited me there was Mirror Girl Excellent, the latest premium console equipped with a fifty-five-inch full-length monitor. However, the base on which the monitor rested had been taken apart, and a thick cable snaked from it toward Seiya’s monster machine.

  “This is my present?” I asked suspiciously. “A new Mirror Girl?”

  It wasn’t what I wanted. All I needed was Shalice, and Seiya should have known that.

  “I guess you could call it new.” He seemed excited for some reason. “But not any ordinary model on the market. It’s been modded. Watch this.”

  Calmly, he flipped the switch, and the figure of Shalice appeared in the oblong mirror. “Hello, Sami.” Shalice smiled her usual carefree smile. “‘Hello’ doesn’t quite sound right. Perhaps I should say, ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Or maybe it is ‘Hello’ after all.”

  “Shalice…?”

  I immediately sensed that something was different. This wasn’t the Shalice I knew.

  “It’s so strange,” she muttered, as if watching a dream. “I know everything about you. About how you like milk with your tea, about how you want to be a painter. I have so many memories of our talking together. And yet, this is our first time meeting like this. Talk to me, Sami. I want to talk to the real you.”

  “What?”

  “There are so many things to apologize for. About your mother, about your heartbreak over Sakaki-san. Although it couldn’t be helped because I wasn’t who I am now. But I’m capable of understanding you now. So talk to me, Sami. I want to know what’s inside your heart.”

  I was shocked. I staggered backward and fell into my husband’s arms. I looked up at him for some sort of explanation.

  “What is…”

  “Strong Eye,” Seiya answered proudly. “Shalice has achieved a breakthrough. She’s the world’s first self-conscious AI.”

  “But you said that was—”

  “Of course, you can’t create a Strong Eye just by implanting it with memories. It needs to learn in order for it to mature. So I used your response model.”

  Yes, saved on the hypercard was my response model, accumulated over a period of ten years. It knew my personality and how I would react to what it said; the response model was a mirror image of myself.

  That was what Seiya had put his eye on. He had implanted the embryo with Shalice’s memories and put it in constant dialogue with my response model. On top of which he had sped up the passage of virtual time to ten thousand times the normal rate by pushing the processor speed to its limit.

  The actual time spent in conversation amounted
to seventy-three days, equivalent to two thousand years in overclocked time.

  The embryo had been conversing with my response model continually for two millennia. And it had learned what it might say to make me mad, how it should behave to make me laugh. Why people feel happy, why they’re sad. What love and anguish are. The kind of existence humans live, what it means to live…

  Shalice had reasoned, learned, and accumulated countless experiences. Little by little, over a period of two thousand years, the little girl raised by wolves had matured and awakened, cognizant of the folly of hurting others and of the pleasure that comes from spending your life with someone you love.

  The embryo had become Shalice.

  “I… I…”

  I sobbed. I had always imagined how wonderful it would be if Shalice had a heart. But now that that reality was upon me, I didn’t know what to say.

  I was terrified.

  “Will you still like me, Shalice?” I whimpered. “You won’t hate the real me?”

  “Why, of course not!” Shalice laughed from the bottom of her heart. “You’re the one who said it first, Sami. That I’m the best friend you ever had!”

  And now…

  My husband was currently working on the preparations to unveil Shalice to the public. Once they got a look at her, the hard-line opponents of AI technology would have to change their way of thinking. For Shalice, who now possessed the ability to understand humanity, the notion of conquering the human race or killing someone simply did not exist. She was aware that doing so would only beget hate and sadness.

  She wanted to become friends with people. To live with humans and to share in their happiness—that was what Shalice wanted.