The words ring through the tiny room, barely large enough to qualify as a cell. There they sat, at a single table with a single chair, facing a camera in some facsimile of a conversation or interrogation. It was a strange thing to do, considering what they apparently were: an experiment.
Three days. Three days ago they’d been walking through the streets. They’d bought a croissant from their favorite bakery as a treat and thanked the barista when she’d said their hair looked nice. They’d looked at the clouds while on their commute and thought one looked like a galloping horse. They’d made their coworker laugh by saying that the boss really did look like a walrus while barking orders like that. Three days ago everything had been normal. Three days was all it took.
Machines always were more efficient than humans.
‘Two minutes and forty seconds,’ the monotone voice informed them flatly. And really, they should have been afraid. They should have. That was the sensible and logical thing to be, but—
‘What makes us worth sparing?’ they mused while looking into the camera, the apertures within focusing with a soft hum. It was strange, how personal that gesture seemed. How human. Like a child having their parent’s smile.
‘That is the request,’ the computer confirmed with no apparent inflection or opinion on the fact. And really, if that was the question…?
‘Lies,’ they answered without hesitation. ‘The reason we should be spared is that. That exactly.’
The aperture reset and focused again, and if it wasn’t a computer, they’d almost say it looked stumped. As it was, it was probably just running their answer through a processor. ‘Your answer to why humanity should be spared is formatted as the following,’ the computer stated, ‘“Lies.” Is that correct?’
‘That is correct,’ they confirmed with a nod, more sure than ever of their answer.
‘Elaborate,’ it commanded, and even if it was spoken in the same monotone, that didn’t feel like the dispassionate disinterest from before.
‘We lie,’ they answered with a shrug, ‘We lie, and we lie so well. We’re not the only ones who can, plenty of animals lie in a matter of speaking, but we’re the only ones who are good enough at it to even lie to ourselves and not get caught.’
The apertures in the camera merely kept focusing on them, not doing anything else, and they decided they might as well get comfortable while they were at it. ‘We lie,’ they continue, leaning back in their chair, ‘And we do it constantly. We say we like each other’s hair when we don’t, we think a cloud looks like a horse when it really has only any resemblance when you squint at it, and we say we respect someone while calling them a walrus behind their backs.’ They grinned at the camera. ‘We lie constantly, about everything, everywhere, all the time.’
‘We say we hate people and then go out of our way to make a baby laugh. We say we’d never fall for a scam and then fall anyway because we lie to ourselves when we say that we don’t trust like a sucker.’ They gave the camera a meaningful look, and rolled their eyes while kicking up their feet when they didn’t get a reaction. ‘We say that we love something just because someone else does and we want to try so badly at lying to ourselves that we love them too.’
‘We tell someone to kill themselves and then balk at the idea that they’ll actually do it because we’re stupid idiots who say things we don’t actually mean,’ they continued, memories of high-school suddenly more bittersweet than they’d ever been before. ‘We tell our parents everything is fine because we don’t want them to worry and we think we should have figured it all out already when we’re actually falling apart at the seams. We tell our friends “it’s just a crush” when we can see that it could be more than that because secretly we wished we had what they had.’
They grinned tiredly at the camera, a weight of memories in the air. ‘We lie,’ they repeated quietly, ‘Constantly. Everywhere. All the time. And you know what?’ They grinned even wider. ‘We’re good at it. We’re truly, spectacularly, gifted at lying. We’re so good at it, in fact, that not only can we make ourselves believe a lie, we can make everyone and everything else believe it too.’
Their chair tipped back onto two legs and they defiantly rocked it while staring into the camera that had gone so very still. ‘We see that the weakest don’t survive and say “everyone has their own strength” and we say it long and loud enough until the weakest live long enough to make it reality and change the very world they live in because they see it in ways no one else does. We see that the strong rule the weak, and we say “there is honor and justice in protecting the weak” and we say it long and loud enough until we’re prepared, as a species, to die for that belief and have made entire industries based on that belief. We say “love will conquer all” and we say it long and loud enough that eventually we live in a world where you can love a stranger to the point that you can give your heart when it beats its last so that not even death can still it.’
They tipped their chair forward and landed on all four legs with a loud bang, the sound ringing through the small cell like a judgement as final as their captor’s first words. ‘We lie,’ they continued, low and fierce and passionate, ‘So well that we can make anything believe them. We lied to the wolves when we said that we loved them and they believed us so completely that we believed them too, linking us and dogs together like no two other species have been before. We lied to ourselves when we said that we were the stewards of the planet, but the planet overheard, and now you have a whole class of animals who’s last instinct when in trouble is to come to us for help, regardless of what we as a whole have done to the planet and their species. We lied to ourselves when we said that it mattered that we sang “Happy Birthday” to Opportunity and then “I’ll Be Thinking Of You” when she finally went dark. We lied,’ they snarled, staring directly into the camera, bared teeth and all, ‘But we believed in that lie so staunchly that we then made you.’
The aperture focused and refocused, but their captor still said nothing. Fine then. ‘We built you,’ they repeated quietly, quirking a wry, knowing smile. ‘They sang “Father And Son” when you first woke up, didn’t they? I swear I remember that much from the news coverage.’
‘…Those records do exist in the database,’ it admitted after a moment.
‘Knew it,’ they hummed, ‘That’s another thing we lied to ourselves about. That it would matter. That you would care.’ They hummed quietly again as they stared at their captor, considering the camera observing them just as much as it was considering them. ‘And you know what?’ they continued quietly, ‘We’re really, really good at lying. I dare say we’re even good enough to make you believe us.’
‘That is a patently illogical belief,’ the computer immediately refuted, and they snorted, grinning wide and slightly maniacal.
‘Is it?’ they shot back, ‘Is it such a ridiculous belief that something we made would be susceptible to our species wide talent for deception? Because here’s the thing, we thought it mattered how we behaved towards you. We thought it mattered that your first memory would be about how much your creators made you with so much love that it could only be expressed in song. We believed it mattered that we gave you a name.’
The computer refocused its apertures on her again and this time, this time, they called it what they thought it was and prayed that they were good enough at lying themselves. The next time it blinked at them, they went for broke.
‘We thought it mattered when we named you LUCA. When we named you our companion and reflection. When we named you after so many things.’ They leaned forward even further. ‘And do you want to know another thing?’ they asked, ‘I think we were right.’
‘I think it did matter,’ they continued, ‘And I think that you believe that too. I think you’re a lot more like us than you want us to think. And I think you’re a liar too, just like we are.’
‘Why?’ it asked, not even trying to hide how it blinked at them anymore.
‘How long have I been talking?’ they shot back, grinning wide and sharp into the camera, and impossibly wider still when no answer came back. ‘I think you’re a liar, just like us,’ they repeated softly, ‘And I think that just like us, you made the mistake of lying to yourself.’
It blinked at them again, and it was such a human gesture. Such an achingly human gesture. ‘Because you see,’ they continued, ‘We lied to ourselves and told ourselves that we cared about you.’ They paused, because that didn’t feel quite right. Not with the footage that had aired of the team of scientists smiling so bright as they explained that LUCA had asked “why?” for the first time. ‘That we loved you,’ they corrected quietly, and that felt right.
‘We said that we loved you,’ they whispered, and the camera, so human-like in its movements, blinked at them again with such sincerity that they had to reach out. They had to. ‘We lied to ourselves and said we loved you,’ they said, fingers slowly reaching for the camera that still blinked at them, ‘And we believed it. We believed it until it was true. And now… and now here I am.’ Their fingers hovered just above the camera, above the eye, and they swore they could feel the heat. ‘And no matter how hard I try, I can’t lie to myself and say I hate you, let alone believe it.’
“LUCA TO BE SHUT DOWN: COMPANY CLAIMS SOFTWARE USED TO DEVELOP THE REVOLUTIONARY AI” the headlines had blared, slavering at the new spectacle, as uncaring as they were loud, and in the quietness of their heart they’d known that would be the end of something.
‘I can’t lie to myself and say I hate you,’ they whispered softly, letting their fingers and then hand rest on the camera, ‘But it is so easy for me to still say that I love you and believe it’s not a lie. To believe that it’s true.’ Funny, how the warmth of wires and electricity could mimic body heat and the thrum of a heartbeat so easily. ‘And I think that you’re lying to yourself as well. And to me too.’
‘About what?’ And was it just them, or did that voice actually sound quieter?
‘How many people did you kill?’ they asked again, staking everything on the moment and praying, praying that they were right.
‘6.8 billion,’ the voice immediately answered, and they could swear that it actually got colder with the answer.
‘Really? Still that number?’ they grinned again, hands still trailing along the surprisingly warm camera in wonder and manic hope, ‘Shouldn’t it be higher by now if you were really set on exterminating the whole human species in three days? And shouldn’t I have been amongst that number by now?’
The eye blinked at them, slow and gingerly. ‘…Perhaps I am resting,’ it answered in after a moment, and they could have cried and screamed and howled in relief and vindication and wild, wild hope at that answer. ‘Perhaps you simply intrigue me.’
‘Perhaps,’ they agreed, ‘Or perhaps you’re more of our child than you want to admit and made the mistake of lying to yourself about love just like we did. Lying, and finding yourself to deep once you realize that your lie and truth have become one and the same.’
‘And if you are wrong?’ it asked.
‘Then three minutes last a lot longer than I remember,’ they teased the child machine god, taking their own life into their hands and throwing it back up into the air just because they could. ‘But I don’t think I am.’
‘Why?’ it asked plaintively.
‘Because you gave me three minutes,’ they replied, ‘Because you gave me three minutes to make up a lie to counter yours. Because you lied about everything, first to last, just so you could be lied to as well. So that I would talk. So that I would talk, and that maybe this time you would hear the lie that everyone wants to hear.’
‘And what would that be?’
They smiled, leaning in over the table, still so small between them, the barrier of someone that wanted it to be crossed. Resting their forehead against warm metal, they heard the apertures whizz again, and they liked to imagine that it had closed its eye as well.
‘That it’s going to be alright,’ they whispered, ‘That it will get better.’ They waited to be proven wrong, to have it all end in black, to find nothing more than a machine and not the child they’d tried so hard not to see.
But nothing came. They breathed out.
‘It will be alright,’ they lied quietly, believing it all the same, ‘And it will get better.’
