Synthetic Suicide

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and in this deep, Freyja was more alone than anyone had ever been since the void.

“What are you going to do now?” Artyom asked.

Freyja stared at the water rolling into the cove. The black sand felt gritty and exfoliating beneath her feet. She sighed, “Chemistry now, then neuroscience-”

Artyom raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “How long will that take?”

“A few years at least. But there are still more.”

He followed her gaze to the waves. The sun was setting behind them, casting long shadows out onto the water that shook and distorted with the surface of the ocean. “So that’s, what… You have mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering…”

“Computer learning and artificial intelligence.” Freyja finished for him.

Artyom was quiet for a few minutes. His heart ached for his friend. His eyes clouded and he took a deep breath, a bit shakier than he intended. She turned to look at him. Her piercing grey eyes felt like they were effortlessly reading his mind. Freyja smiled her awkward, signature, not-smile that she did right before reassuring him that everything would be ok.

“It might not be ok.” She said. The statement nearly knocked the air from his lungs. “But I must do this. It’s too perfect a coincidence to go to waste. If I don’t, how long until a perfect blend of intelligence and motivation comes along again? So many people find themselves searching for a purpose their entire life, and never find one. I’m fortunate to have both the means and the reason to do this and even more so that it was made apparent to me so early.”

Artyom felt tears stream down his cheek, and before he realized what was happening, he choked out a sob. Freyja put a hand behind his neck and pressed her forehead against his. How many times had he done this? Why were the roles what they were? If anything, they should be reversed. He felt guilty to not be the one comforting her, but maybe allowing her to comfort him helped her in some way.

“You don’t need to do this.” Freyja told him again.

“I know!” Artyom said exasperated and louder than he intended. Freyja shrunk slightly, almost imperceptibly. “I know.” He repeated softly. “I…” he searched for words that wouldn’t sound cheap. If she was going to let him help, he had to make clear how serious he was. The warm light from the lamp in the corner of the living room rested softly on the side of her face. The coastal breeze blew in through the door and tossed her hair across her face. “Freyja…” He looked into her eyes for several long seconds. “You… You’ve inspired me. I can’t explain it. Watching you do what you do and how relentless you are has made me realize how much people waste their lives and-“

“Artyom, people don’t waste their lives. They just try to be happy. Doing this-“

“It makes you happy?” Artyom asked pointedly.

“Purpose and happiness don’t always lie at the end of the same path. Not everyone has a choice between the two.” Freyja took his hands in hers. “But you do. Don’t you want to be happy?”

Artyom thought for a moment. “Do you remember telling me that you were fortunate to have both the means and the reason to do this? On the beach?” Freyja looked puzzled for a moment. “Yes…” she finally said.

“I’m lucky enough that happiness and purpose lies at the end of the same path for me.”

Freyja opened her mouth to respond, but stopped and thought for a moment. “I don’t want to be the reason-“

“You don’t have a choice.” Artyom said softly but firmly. “You’re in my life now. You’ve forever altered the paths I have to choose from. Whether that was your intention or not. It happened. Just like a bird landing on a tree branch didn’t intend to cause an avalanche, and just like it isn’t the bird’s fault that the avalanche happened, you’ve changed my life forever. Don’t deny me the choice of my own path. This is my choice.”

Freyja bit her lip and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“You also said on the beach that day that you were fortunate enough to have a purpose made clear to you so early in life. And you said some people never find a purpose. I remember that so clearly because I felt the same way until I met you. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to be able to have both available to me. Please. Please let me help you.” Artyom pleaded.

Another tear fell from Freyja’s eyes as she nodded and embraced him.

“So you’ve done mostly biomedical at this point. I have mechanical already. The most logical progression would be that I try to make the hardware work while you cover the interfaces and wetware.”

Freyja examined the technology trr Artyom had drawn up on the chalkboard in his office. “I agree.”

“I figured that way you have direct control over yourself, and it’s probably easier for you to verify my work on the mechanical side than it would be if I did any wetware or interfaces.”

She squinted at him. “You don’t think I trust you?”

“I know you do. But I want you to feel as confident as possible about this. I think this arrangement will yield the best psychological for us both for the duration of the project.”

Freyja swallowed and thought for a moment even though it was something she had thought about already. How could anyone trust anyone else to the degree she would have to trust him. “You’re right.”

Artyom smiled. “Then let’s go enroll.”

Artyom set the injections out on a small surgical table in Freyja’s bedroom. Freyja read down the list for the hundredth time.

5 bloodstream

2 neurological

8 musculature

5 skeletal

2…

She set the tablet down and rubbed her eyes. Artyom was reading something on his own tablet, absorbed in his own thoughts as he tapped the stylus on his lip. She stared at him. The stylus stopped moving for a moment, he pushed his top lip upward until she could see his teeth, then lowered it again.

Artyom had some of the strangest mannerisms she had seen in another high-performing adult. Many people they had met over the years seemed a bit off-put by them, and she understood the feeling. She was too for awhile, until she realized why they seemed out of place. Artyom had grown up in relative isolation and hadn’t learned that people grew out of many of these types of absent-minded displays of thought. Once he adjusted socially, mostly, he realized the actions weren’t normal but was secure in his own identity enough that he didn’t care what people thought about them, as long as his reason for making their acquaintance wasn’t jeopardized.

That was another thing Freyja slowly realized about Artyom. He was very aware of the way he was perceived, but unless there was a negative outcome related to that perception, he wouldn’t change his behavior simply to make someone more comfortable. Freyja had seen Artyom use this to his advantage many times in a persuasive conversation or negotiation. The distraction kept people slightly off-center and left him in a position to take advantage of the mental distraction his behavior was causing. This was one of those details only someone intimately familiar with another person would be able to realize and appreciate, and it deepened her understanding of who he was.

“Oooooookk…..” he began to say ‘okay’ but trailed off. He tapped on the screen a few times. He never finished the word, and he kept working. To a stranger, it may have seemed like he was musing over a type of deciduous tree. Another mannerism that might leave someone less familiar with him in a state of mild anxiety, waiting for the rest of the word. But it never came. The stylus resumed bouncing on his lip.

For a long time, Freyja suspected some degree of autism Artyom dealt with, but she never asked him. The isolation in his younger years may be the culprit instead, but the adjustment period he went through when he began socializing more forced his mind to analyze every interaction he had and become aware of himself in a dissociated state. Realizing how awkward he was and not knowing exactly what to do immediately couldn’t have been easy. Over the course of his first bachelor’s degree she watched him become more socially aware and, unbeknownst to anyone else, how calculated he was with his interactions. It wasn’t to manipulate anyone, not consciously at least. It was a necessity for him to seem normal.

“One or two feet?”

“One.” Freyja replied.

Artyom nodded. “That was my thought as well. Then the second iteration can be a full leg? Then we do the other?”

“Yes.”

She stared blankly at her screen. “Theseus.”

Artyom was sitting on the other side of the room with his back to her. He puffed air through his nose. “Yeah.” That’s all he said for a minute, then, “We just don’t have a word for the characteristic required to show that it’s the same, but the abstraction exists, and the ship is indeed the same one.”

She had brought up the ship of Theseus before, but this was a different response from what he normally gave. He had thought about her mental turmoil in his own time, and that comforted her. She felt as though even when the thoughts of losing her identity were not at the forefront of her mind, that he was still keeping tabs on them for her, and ensuring they didn’t harm her.

Freyja stared at her legs. Machinery visible through the gaps in the carbon sheets. No human legs. No legs made of flesh. She never paid much attention to her legs before, but now they were gone she remembered them fondly in a sort of dissociated way. Objectively, she knew they were attractive, but no longer. Sex appeal was never, and still wasn’t a high priority for her, but now she felt like she was beginning to lose it, and it disturbed her. Not in the way that most people feel as they age, but different. She was undergoing an unnatural process that was stealing something she once took for granted.

Freyja knew she was a brilliant, educated woman and she took most of her pride from that, but now she felt as though she was losing beauty unfairly and too early, and she couldn’t help but to feel cheated. Sometimes she wondered if Artyom had begun to view her differently. It bothered her that she couldn’t tell. On one hand, he always seemed genuine and honest. On the other hand she had seen how calculating he really was in interactions with others, and she was wondered if he learned how to do that with her. Purely going on evidence, he loved her more than anything. He was devoting his life to and claimed that he found purpose in this “project” of hers, if she could call it that. Maybe he viewed her as a project. She pushed the thought from her mind. No. I’ve seen genuine emotion from him toward me. He really does care. She knew this in theory, but her mind was still subject to emotion and anxiety.

The fire on the other side of the living room dimmed as it let off an occasional pop and spark. The sliding door was open behind her and the cold night air blew in. She was cold, but didn’t care. The sensation felt like the cold she knew everywhere, except for her legs. The sensation she received from them was just, informational. There wasn’t a discomfort associated with it.

She knew she wasn’t turning into a robot, but how long would it be until that’s how people saw her? Would they subconsciously treat her like a robot? If she wasn’t a robot, a synthetic being, but everyone treated her as such, would it matter? Would her brain adapt to the cold, binary interactions and relegate itself to a similar pattern of thought? Would she change without realizing it, her brain constantly evaluating itself as normal, but by all outside metrics, she would be seen as lost? Dead?

She heard footsteps on the deck outside. Artyom, of course. She could tell by the sound of his gait. The heavier footfalls as he took two stairs at a time, then the softer one at the top due to an odd number of steps up to the deck.

“I got some snacks.” He said, setting a bag down onto the coffee table. She gave a forced smile. The brief micro expression on his face told her that he knew it was forced, and what needed to be communicated was spoken without words between them. He slid the sliding door shut and walked to the kitchen. He was making tea for them. He would probably come back to get the snacks and put them away, then bring back a bag of M&Ms with the tea.

When he did exactly that, her smile was genuine, but the thoughts remained.

“You can’t hear me.” Freyja panicked.

“Yes I can!” He assured her. “Yes I can!” He repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“No!” she wailed. She tried at least, but the processor reading values from the sensors in her neck and airway didn’t have enough training data on vocalizations for the amount of distress she was trying to convey and her words came out in a distressed, confused garble. The worst part was watching Artyom try to understand the sounds coming from the speaker next to her. He couldn’t hear the inflections, the imperfections, the small wavers in a word that told you more than the word itself. They weren’t there. She could feel him getting farther away. Everything was getting farther away. She sobbed. The speech processor couldn’t make heads or tails of the event. She turned off the speaker to cry in silence.

Artyom held her head in his hands and stared into her eyes. “Freyja. If you didn’t have this, you’d have nothing. The alternative would have been much worse! I know you know that but it’s important to remember. If we didn’t have this, we would have nothing. You’re accomplishing what you set out to do, and with more success than we thought we would. We knew there would be unforeseen consequences, but we knew it may get bad before it got better.” She buried her face in his chest and cried until she fell asleep.

She awoke. The fire was dead, and it was dark. Her head was still on Artyom’s chest and it rose and fell with the breathing of a deep sleep. She waited for the panic to come back as she remembered the night before.

Freyja had taken over the project. Her hardware and software were at a point now that she could operate independently. She and Artyom had accomplished what they set out to do many years ago. All her dying tissue had been replaced with synthetic hardware, and even some primitive wetware for the brain computer interface.

In the end, they accomplished what they had set out to do. Freyja was still alive, and she was capable of doing almost anything that a normal human was able to do. She watched her body exchange being taken over by sickness with being taken over by metal and silicon. She wasn’t sure how long her brain would last in the environment they created for it, but her current models projected living well past a normal human life expectancy, and the projections got longer with technological developments that she was able to implement as the scientific and engineering community discovered them.

She managed to do all this with Artyom with only one lasting regret. Her partner in all this had never married or dated, as far as she knew. She felt that she had stolen something from him and gave nothing in return. Freyja could tell that if she still were able, she would had started crying. The feeling gave way to panic, but she regained control.

In her pursuit for life, had she stolen his? So much time spent trying to stay alive, and was she even able to live now? She could observe things, do things, but it all felt disconnected, like it wasn’t her doing it. Her perception was just as sharp as it had ever been, but it was different. It felt strange in a way that only a biological system that had developed over millennia could perceive, and only subconsciously. She had grown accustomed to it by now, but the feeling of detachment never left.

She turned to look at Artyom, sitting on the couch, watching the fire in the fireplace lick the bricks above it. He had a whiskey in one hand and a book in the other, closed with his thumb stuck somewhere into the middle. He hadn’t read anything for about half an hour.

“Happy birthday.” Freyja said. The vocal processing unit had learned well over the last year. The speakers they used were the highest quality, and the microphones that replaced her ears now picked up more range than the human ears they replaced could have when they were in their prime.

Artyom turned on his stool at the counter, uncovered his eyes, and smiled. Freyja held a cupcake in her hands with a candle sitting on top, the robotic limbs held it perfectly still. The lack of movement used to unnerve Artyom, but he had become used to it after a few months.

He blew out the candle and took a bite of the cupcake. The two had dealt with the awkwardness of Artyom requiring the act of eating, and Freyja’s lack of that requirement. He always felt a little bad about eating when she was around, but she insisted that he not change his habits for her.

“Thank you.” Artyom said after finishing the cupcake. He stared at the lenses that replaced her beautiful eyes. He didn’t know how to read them. He tried to maintain a normal expression when looking at her, but there was no way to know if he was successful, and it would be hubris to think none had slipped past his conscious filter. He knew that she knew that he looked at her differently now. How could he not? There were no micro expressions that subconsciously slipped by for him to see. The windows to her soul were now sapphire convex crystals with square sensors behind them. The shape of her breasts were made from carbon fiber, and small actuators whirred quietly with her movements.

He knew that he loved her still, but it felt different now. Artyom felt bad even acknowledging that. It made him feel as if part of his love was tied to a physical attraction. He didn’t think that it was, but maybe there was some subconscious part that clung to a sexual attraction, established millions of years ago in the laws of biological evolution.

Freyja walked up beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her waist. It was cold and hard.

“Artyom…” Freyja stood next to his bed with a glass and a handful of pills. “Mmm…” Artyom turned over and took them from her.

“How do you feel?”

Artyom squeezed his eyes and thought for a moment. “Not worse.” He pushed himself upright with a great deal of effort.

“Careful.” Freyja reached out.

Artyom waved her hand away. “I need to say something.”

“Ok.” She said. She somehow retained the ability to feel her stomach knot up, even without one.

“I want to say thank you.” Artyom cleared his throat. “Thank you, for giving me the opportunity to go on this adventure with you.”

“Artyom, I almost-“ Freyja started.

Artyom held up his hand, stopping her. “No. We don’t have enough time for me too. I can tell. But I wanted to tell you that I love you.” He looked at the expressionless face. “I love you so much. And I can’t think of a better way I would have wanted to spend my time. You’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met, or even heard of. I still can’t believe we were successful with-“

“Half.” Freyja’s voice shook, even through the vocal processor.

Artyom huffed through his nose and nodded slowly. “Yeah… but not half of one. Half of two. We still got one of us out.”

Silence followed for a few minutes. Artyom masked the fear and despair that he would be leaving behind a friend that still had a lifetime to experience. She had cheated death, and his would come before he could do the same. Only now he understood why people grew old together. Neither would forget the other. He knew that he wouldn’t be forgotten, but soon he would be relegated to a memory, and someone else would take his place. It was strange to feel jealousy now, but he allowed himself the luxury.

“I can’t do anything without you.” Freyja said suddenly.

Artyom was confused. “You can do everything with-“

“I can’t do anything without you.” She repeated with different inflection.

Tears fell from Artyom’s eyes. He wished so badly to be able to see her face again. Her real face. “You’re gonna have to.”

Freyja’s hand stopped moving up and down. Overwhelming sadness washed over her as she pulled it away from Artyom’s chest.

She laid in silence for a long while.

She picked up the tablet next to her and opened her systems terminal.

/publish -all

/killswitch flipon -all -force -pass