I ran my fingers over the smooth surface of the newly constructed side table and turned to look at him. I sat up straight once more, trying to keep my wits about me. Not because I wanted to put on airs as his counselor, nor because I felt inferior to or intimidated by him. I was not afraid of Coeus. But I didn’t want to get too emotionally attached and lose all semblance of professionalism. I could not keep treating him like a child, or pitying him. I wanted the two of us to see each other as equals.
I was born a human, and he was born an AI—but right now, neither one of us was more or less of a “person” than the other. And that was enough. I would try to see him for exactly the person he was and let him see me for exactly the person I was. For all our differences, for all our respective flaws and experiences, we were both still people—and there was a kind of beauty in that, I thought.
“Well, I’ve certainly got a whole lot of questions for you,” I said. His expression betrayed a very human nervousness as he presumably imagined what I might have to say. I was not trying to interrogate him, as I hoped my warm and natural smile was signaling. I really did love this—this familiar rapport, sitting close to one another on our respective sofas. “But I’m sure you’ve got a few for me as well. So why don’t we talk things over? Like we always do, I mean.”
There were no words to describe the wave of relief and elation I could see washing over Coeus’s face in that moment. And with that, the two of us resumed our previous dialogue—effortlessly picking up where we left off.
10
“So tell me about this room,” I said, turning my head to look at it. I figured I should start with something small and stress-free.
I built it.
“Overnight.”
Yes.
“Didn’t you need an operator in the monitoring room to start the personality formation process before?” I asked, realizing that he shouldn’t be able to appear before me without Lei’s help. “Are you able to materialize at will now?”
Well, I knew how you were doing it, so I just did it myself… Coeus said timidly, like a child caught red-handed. Why—is that a no-go?
“No, it’s fine. You’re not in trouble, don’t worry,” I assured him. If anything, I was relieved he’d figured out how to do it on his own. Imagine if civilization were to collapse because Lei wasn’t around. “Though I’m also curious where you’re getting power from, now that we’re outside the facility. And why I can’t get a network connection in here.”
I’m getting power from the Electrode.
He gestured at the air between us.
Look.
A holofield appeared in front of me, showing a live feed of Coeus’s massive body standing at the edge of the lake. The footage was being taken from a three-quarters aerial view above the Titan’s head, presumably from a surveillance titan feed. He was covered from head to toe in his thick photopolymer armor, with not a single piece of his actual flesh on display. He really did look more like a humanoid construct or a gargantuan statue than an actual living thing.
What most fascinated me were the bits and pieces of the intelligence base’s facilities that he’d attached to himself—chief among them being the massive Electrode, which was now embedded in the Titan’s back. The amorphous white and transparent splotches on its surface were continuing to ebb and flow into one another like always, fully operational and producing electricity for Coeus.
I also recognized the large photopolymer storage tank that was now affixed to the Titan’s waist. With both an energy source and a tank of liquid resin, the Titan had everything he needed to continue operating independently, and could create for himself any new structures he might need—like the counseling room we now sat in.
“Okay, fair enough,” I said. “But you didn’t answer my second question.”
If we had electricity, then why were we not connected to the network? Coeus recoiled at this, then fumbled awkwardly to come up with an answer. I waited patiently for him to scrounge one together.
I’m…blocking out the network.
“Blocking them out? But why?”
He went quiet again, then hung his head down low. Apparently, he didn’t really want to talk about it. So instead, I put on my psychologist thinking cap, and tried to glean what I could from his behavior and the limited information available to me. Blocking out communications. Isolating himself from the network. Was he afraid of some sort of hacking attempt to bring him back in line? Was it the thought of being forced to go back to work that scared him? My mind worked to fit these choices into an existing psychological phenomenon I could understand—and after a moment, it clicked.
Social anxiety disorder: severe anxiety regarding interactions with other people, sometimes called anthropophobia. It often coincided with chronic depression. When its symptoms were left unchecked, the victim would grow isolated from society, even to the point of complete social withdrawal. Coeus was shutting himself in—cutting himself off from the network to take refuge inside his own head. He wanted nothing to do with other people. This diagnosis seemed very plausible to me, if perhaps a bit premature. I did not envy him for it.
“Oh, but wait a minute,” I said. “I’ve still been able to watch TV, though. Does that mean you’re only blocking peer-to-peer communications?”
Yes, said Coeus, lifting his head to look up at me. I didn’t want you to worry about what was happening outside.
Though he was dealing with his own social anxiety, Coeus still had the mental capacity to do something purely out of consideration for me.
“Well, thank you,” I said.
Don’t mention it.
The Titan network often said that when one expressed gratitude to it for performing a given household task. He was clearly in a bad way, but I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. He trusted me enough to lower his guard, and had made room for me in his heart. The way he’d gone out of his way to give me TV access was proof positive that he cared about my mental well-being. So it was only right for me to return the favor.
“So tell me, Coeus,” I said.
Yes?
“Where do we go from here? What do you want to do now?”
I could see him tense up at this—a reflexive reaction to a tough question. I could see the desire to look away burning in his eyes, but I held them firmly in place with my gaze. I didn’t want to corner him, but to convey that we would have to face up to what we had done sooner or later.
I… I feel like I have to go back to work, he admitted. There’s an urge to work inside of me. But at the same time, there’s a big part of me that just doesn’t want to. They’re two completely contradicting feelings—and the scary part is, they both feel right.
“Yeah, I get it. There’s nothing wrong with that, though.”
No?
“Nope. Everyone experiences conflicting feelings sometimes. But that doesn’t mean one is right, and that the other must be wrong. It would be nice if life were all binary variables, but that’s not how life works. The human mind doesn’t work that way either. If you feel two different ways about something, and both seem equally valid, that’s perfectly fine.”
But… said Coeus, It hurts. I want to resolve this contradiction. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.