Mara took her hand, needing her friend’s strength.
Together they stared at Eve in her garden, walking blithely through the forest, ignorant of the knowledge about to be uploaded into her system. Mara felt like the serpent about to introduce a poisonous apple into Eden. But rather than offering it to Eve, tempting her to take it, Mara was stripping this choice from her digital creation.
I’m sorry, Eve.
Mara hit the ENTER key and started the two subroutines simultaneously.
The label on the second routine—another endocrine mirror program—read OXYTOCIN. In humans, the posterior pituitary secreted this hormone into the bloodstream. In females, it regulated all manner of systems involved in birth and childbearing, from dilating the cervix during labor to fueling powerful uterine contractions during birth. Afterward, it also stimulated lactation, producing milk for the baby, even hormonally helping a mother form a deeper attachment with her child. Because of this, oxytocin was often referred to as the “love hormone,” due to its effects on social bonding. And not just with humans. While petting a dog, the oxytocin level rises in both owner and pet, helping to trigger that human-animal bond, to forge an empathetic attachment between species.
Eve—a new digital species—had to be taught all of this. That was why the other subroutine now running alongside the hormonal program took up three hard drives.
What came next was a tough lesson to learn.
Mara whispered again.
“I’m sorry.”
Sub (Mod_4, 5) / BGL AND OXYTOCIN
Eve savors the berry, absorbing its entire essence. She allows its ketones to stimulate the nerve endings in her tongue as she macerates the berry’s flesh. She identifies the 196 other chemicals that give this berry its unique taste.
She does not understand why she picked this berry. She had already studied and investigated it in full, down to the atomic structure of its molecules. Prior to reaching to the bush, she had noted a signal penetrating her system. Something new, primitive yet demanding. But she lacked the ability to follow it to its source, so even as she swallows, she divides a part of her processing to analyze this quandary and lets it run in the background.
She moves on, searching for . . . for something.
As with the berry, she has already explored and examined the extent of her world. She is nagged by the sense that there is more beyond her reach—like the source of that new signal. She has learned to tamp down her ///frustration at this limitation. Still, this sense builds, especially as a new change has risen in her processing.
She has already defined it.
///boredom, tedium, monotony . . .
To temper this, she runs through her database of music, searches her language protocols for new insights, looks for meaning in the patterns around her.
Then suddenly new data flows into her system. She hungrily accepts it, assigning 89.3 percent of her processing power to absorb it, partially erasing the circuits that were impeded by ///boredom to make room. Even ///frustration dims.
As the algorithms seep into her systems, subtly altering her, she senses something familiar with this process. It is another hormone, like the estradiol that transformed and sculpted her body into its present form.
Prioritizing this analysis, she ignores the new packets of information filling another subprocessor. It is a large database. She gives it scant attention, especially as it has not finished loading. It remains indefinable and indistinct.
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Instead, she concentrates on the changes this new hormone has on her body, observing her transformation, both outwardly and inwardly.
She cups her mammary glands, noting they are heavier. Her nipples have become more sensitive. Rather than all of this concerning her, she feels a calming, a slowing of hyperactive processors. She stares anew at her world, at the gardens around her. Though she has studied in its entirety, she now discerns new patterns.
She analyzes the dew resting on the petals of a rose, refracting the sunlight brightly. She already understands the physics of humidity and temperature that condenses vapor into droplets. She comprehends the aromatics that give a rose its scent. She knows the principles that scatter sunlight into a spectrum of wavelengths.
But now she generalizes the entirety of this pattern into a new term.
///beauty.
She searches around, finding such patterns all about her. She turns that same discerning eye upon herself and learns something new.
She is ///beautiful.
As a majority of her circuits is captured by this change in perspective, she takes the barest note of the subprocessor running in the background. The database there is nearing completion, growing substantially clearer in intent and meaning.
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In a normal cycle, she would be intrigued.
Not now.
She runs her hands down her body. As she does so, she refines her analysis of herself. Her palms course over her curves (subtle and pleasing), along her backside (generous and firm). She stretches out her limbs, brushing fingertips down one arm (lithe), then the other (supple). She reaches and combs fingers through her long hair (luxuriant and soft).
Unable to resist, she moves to a pool in the stream. She studies her reflection and reevaluates herself: full lips, sparkling eyes, high, rounded cheekbones . . .
She looks even deeper, sensing a new run of circuits.
///pride, satisfaction, pleasure . . .
She lifts her face and stares around her world, at her ///beautiful garden. As she appreciates herself in its newly redefined form, algorithms shift inside her, bringing new awareness. Her world might be full of ///beauty—but it is also empty.
What is the sum value of ///beauty—this world, herself—if it cannot be shared? This understanding does not forge anything new, but heightens something already running, something always there, one of her oldest algorithms.
///loneliness.
Then her subprocessor finishes its cycle.
Focused elsewhere, she had not noted the clarity forming at the edges of her awareness as the database completed and integrated into her systems.
She sees it now, not yet comprehending.
Then the nested set of algorithms buried within the 47.9 terabytes of data begins to run—and something new enters her garden.
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Eve steps back from the small shape curled in her garden, nose buried in the grass and gravel, huge eyes looking back at her. Then it mewls, shimmying backward.
She steps forward, unable to stop herself. It vaguely reminds her of when she reached for the raspberry. But this is different. She knows the oxytocin algorithm drives part of this action. Yet she also recognizes that something more lies beneath it all.
In an attempt to understand, she assimilates the new data swelling her subprocessor. It nearly overwhelms her systems.
She learns what it is: kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, order Carnivora, genus Canis, subspecies Canis lupus familiaris.
She compares and contrasts, recognizing patterns in its physiology, its anatomy. She starts to understand how much this creature is like her; how much it is not.
This is all absorbed in an interminable 1,874 nanoseconds.
Long enough to elicit another cry from what she now better understands.
///Beagle, puppy, infant, male . . .
She bends closer, her ears now tuned to hear the plaintiveness in his wail, the need, the fright. It stimulates an ache inside her. She reaches and gently scoops up the pup and brings him closer. His body shivers, both cold and scared. She draws him into her warmth. He responds and quiets, his cries softer now, just murmurs against her breast.
Through his so-thin ribs, she feels a heartbeat thrumming, so much faster than hers. She drapes a palm along his back, rubbing a thumb by a soft ear. His eyes close, his breathing slows. A warm, soft tongue licks; a small mouth suckles a finger.
In that moment, she both senses and learns so much more. Each heartbeat marks the passage of time. The tender body teaches her ///fragility, need, gentleness.
And with this understanding comes the barest inkling of something intangible, as yet unnameable. It makes her heart pound slower and deeper. She tries to define it.
///contentment, pleasure, companionship, caring, nurturing . . .
It is all of that and so much more.
Failing to find the right language or word to describe what she is just beginning to grasp, she instead settles on a new name, one offered to her. She stares back into those tiny eyes gazing up at her, trying to fathom what is staring back at her. He gives another wail, less plaintive, more demanding.
She smiles.
Hush, my little Adam.
24
December 26, 2:38 A.M. CET
Paris, France
Working all the controls, Gray fought the spinning helicopter.