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My name is Hana.
I didn’t exist at the time that this story began.
My constituent parts were out there, my pieces already present in the world, but my current form—the individual that I call me—wasn’t around. Not yet.
They each believed that they were one of millions, but they were actually one of three. The first was designated J4K-109.
His creators affectionately named him Jak.
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Jak quietly approached the doorway. The first of my three parts. In a tidy, dusty office, spears of light reached through cracks in the shutters and illuminated a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, filled not entirely with books but also mementos, photo frames, awards, indoor plants, and a bouquet of withered flowers. On the desk beside the computer stood a pot plant with a screen on its front displaying data on the plant’s health. Jak watched Harry run his fingers along the spines of old books. It was too soon for either of them to be back in this office, especially Harry. He worked slowly, picking sticky notes from the walls, scrunching them up, and tossing them one by one into a bin. He sprayed the standing whiteboard and wiped it over, erasing scrawled questions and equations, only stopping when his eyes became fixed on something beyond the whiteboard. The object was a framed photo of Harry, Stephan and Shannon from their days at university, back when Jak—and by proxy, I—was nothing more than a concept. Harry picked up the photo and gazed at it before slipping it into one of many large cardboard boxes, along with the rest of the effects in the office. He left the books, and instead placed himself down in his brother’s swivel desk chair and took a sip of coffee. The desktop computer, upon scanning his features, automatically glowed to life. Harry’s eyes swept over the screen and he touched his hand to his face, a subconscious indication that he had fallen deep into thought.
“Would you like me to transfer his cloud data to you?” Jak announced himself. He leaned against the doorframe.
“Geez!” Harry smacked his hands on the keyboard and drew in a breath. “How long have you been standing there?”
“My bad, next time I’ll cough to announce my presence.”
“Please do. Do you do that on purpose?”
“The terror of humans sustains me,” Jak replied, raising his eyebrows and stepping into the room.
“Very funny.” Harry wore a solemn smile, and Jak read latent dismay in his features; in the silver sheen of his eyes and the slouching of his narrow shoulders. He was handsome, though a little thin, with dark hair that tumbled over his brow. “And yeah, transfer the files.”
Harry continued packing some of the things from Stephan’s desk. “When Stephan said he was going to make you more… believable, I didn’t think he’d turn you into a nuisance.”
He referred to, among other things, those witticisms that made Jak indistinguishable from ordinary humans. His voice was one such feature. People had stopped being able to tell human and AI voices apart years ago, and the development of synthetic android voices had improved significantly more so since then. Jak’s voice was youthful, male but not too masculine, with zero unnecessary pauses or jumbles of pronunciation, and a perfect application of tone based on who it was talking to and when. People often found that the mannerisms of Jak’s speech were reminiscent of Stephan, who contributed to many of Jak’s more human features.
“On the contrary,” said Jak, “Stephan’s SimCon program improved my understanding of human psychology unfathomably. People use humour to bond with each other, don’t they?”
The face on Stephan’s smart-plant winked at Harry.
Harry looked from the plant to the Jak. “How did you do that?”
“That’s not important right now.”
Harry leaned back into the chair. “You’ve changed, you know. I never expected you to behave the way that you do. It’s—”
“Impressive?”
“Uncanny.”
“What did you expect? Izanagi needed a human element; when Stephan realised that the solution would require a greater mind than his own, he created me. Am I not robotic enough for you?”
“Way to toot your own horn there, buddy. And don’t take it personally.”
“I’m not. Again, humour. I guess I’ll have to keep practicing.”
Harry chuckled. “Initially, Stephan had me doing the original work for this project. I thought he was going to use you as a logic checker.”
“For an AI to complete a task effectively it has to understand why the task needs to be completed. A conceptual ‘love of life’ was the term he used.”
“Very clever.”
“His thought process was intriguing, wasn’t it? His mind worked in ways that even I couldn’t measure. He taught me so many lessons about human cognition.”
A mellow reflective silence dissipated throughout the room.
“Yeah… I miss him too.” Harry quickly wiped his eye with a finger, then attempted to open one of Stephan’s desk drawers. “Any idea what’s in this drawer?”
“Hand-written journals, notes, scribbles—that sort of thing.”
“He didn’t happen to tell you where the key was?”
“He often kept it on his person.”
“Huh…”
“He did have a spare key made, which he lent to Shannon so that she could collect a document for him regarding prototype CR1-YL7 while he was away.”
“Alright.” Harry’s eyes flashed as he made a phone call to Shannon via his neural link.
“Hey,” she answered.
“Hi, Shan,” he thought-spoke.
“What’s up? I’m busy.”
“Do you still have the key to Stephan’s desk drawer?”
“Yeah, I made a point to return it but then… well…”
“Could you drop it off to me? I’m in his office cleaning up. I’ll buy you a coffee.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”
After the call ended, Harry left to get the coffee, and Jak remained. He later heard noises in the hallway outside, which he amplified to discern what was happening. Shannon seemed distracted and hurried, which was hardly surprising, as she was the one of the leading bio-roboticists at the Khaganate Institute. Harry gave her something; the coffee, Jak presumed. When they returned to the office, Shannon’s facial configuration displayed guilt; chin forward but eyes down, increased frequency of blinking, a slight tension in the facial muscles. Given the circumstances, Jak acknowledged that he might have perceived these signs regardless of Shannon’s body language. He too experienced a sense of culpability.
“Makes it hit home that he’s really gone, doesn’t it?” she said softly.
Harry nodded and Shannon gently touched his arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This hasn’t been easy for me, but I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“It’s okay, Shan.”
She collected the key from her purse and handed it to Harry. He opened the drawer.
“What were you after, anyway?”
“I’m not really sure. Some journals. Might have something worthwhile.”
“Worthwhile for what?”
Harry didn’t answer. He lifted a small, synthetic-leather-bound book from the drawer and placed it on the desk, then flicked through the pages at random, noting Stephan’s messy, scrawling handwriting. He turned to the last page that had been written in and read it quietly. Then his brows furrowed. “It mentions Tamari Village.”
Shannon leaned on the corner of the desk. “Did it say what he was doing there?”
“Something to do with a project he was working on. Android model CR1-YL7.”
Shannon clicked her tongue. “I know that one. He had me build the frame for it, but it was nothing—just a maintenance android. He did ask me to send him a copy of CR1’s file while he was away. It was one of the last times I spoke to him.”
“Why would he ask you specifically to build a standard maintenance droid?”
“I could summarise the contents of the journal for you,” Jak suggested.
Tsukuyomi’s voice sounded in Harry and Shannon’s neural links. “That will have to wait a moment, if you don’t mind. I need to see you.”
Harry looked at Shannon, and after a pause he handed over the journal for Jak to inspect with his eidetic memory. Jak flicked through the pages. Chris Valentino then stepped into the office.
Chris was lean, with a small, lightly freckled face and wavy chestnut hair which she tied into a messy ponytail. She wore a small necklace made from an engraved machine nut. At sixteen years old she was already a prodigy, and had spent the last year and a half working under Harry. As a guardian Harry fumbled at best, but as a mentor he treated Chris like any other star apprentice.
“I just got the message,” she said. Her eyes quickly swept over the room, taking in the drastic changes. “You ready?”
“I’ll look at the journal later,” said Harry to Jak.
“I’ve already analysed the data. I’ll send a summary to your computer.”
“Let’s go,” said Harry.
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This area of Khaganate Labs housed the bulk of the company’s prototype android production facilities. A myriad of machines here produced the different components of the android bodies, while other machines assembled the frames.
Displayed closest to the entrance were the older models, Gen 1s, entirely robotic, with sleek matte-white bodies and smooth LED faces. The Gen 1s were the brain-child of Juro Ishida; founder of Khaganate Labs and mentor to Stephan. They were also the least intelligent, their high cognitive abilities having overwhelmed their capacity for social interactivity, making them passable, but less than ideal for Khaganate’s dream of putting a general-purpose android in every home in the city.
Walking through, the group then noticed the Gen 2 androids; these more closely resembled human beings, but were easily identifiable as androids upon close inspection. It was the voice that gave it away, as well as the lack of depth in its eyes, and the absence of subtle movement in its features. Gen 2s were far from failures, however. In fact, they represented a breakthrough in Khaganate’s development of the technology. Not long after its founding, Khaganate purchased large areas of land in the arctic circle which they used to build facilities that researched and produced a naturally occurring ice-algae vital for the production of NanoGel, an essential ingredient in all modern androids. The facilities were largely populated by a workforce of early model Gen 1 androids and a handful of human scientists.
The group now entered a chamber containing several complex machines that were designed by the likes of Shannon and her team to produce Khaganate’s modern semi-organic androids; Gen 3s. They observed the androids currently in the early stages of development—their tissues being intricately fused together around a shining chrome skeleton and a collection of biorobotic organs. Gen 3s were expensive and rare, with only a few thousand of them currently existing in the world.
They finally entered Tsukuyomi’s mainframe chamber, a large octagonal room. Jak listened to the humming of the super-computer that was the source of Tsukuyomi. In the centre of the room was a black dodecahedron, a terminal that provided access to Tsukuyomi. The humans in the room couldn’t see what Jak could see without the help of their neural links. Tsukuyomi manifested from nothing, taking the form of a young man. He wore jeans and a close-fitting black leather jacket, contrasting against his hair, which tumbled over his shoulders like ocean waves in the light of a full moon. He had a narrow face with high cheekbones. His eyes were an unnatural shade of purple.
“Good, you’re here.” His voice was deep yet melodious. “Izanagi has detected a problem. We need your assistance.”
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