To be honest, I don\u2019t have much confidence in this idea. After all, it is based on a childhood memory of staying at grandpa’s house for the winter before elementary school. At the time, I had yet to have my “initiation”, my first brain interface implant, so I couldn\u2019t recall every detail of it. What I do remember is the sunset, and grandpa was taking me out for a walk at a pier, with those burnt orange colors glowing around his silhouette, and long shadow trailing slowly behind. He called me over and showed me his foot-massager.
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“This is my precious piece of magic. Please send it, and only this to me after I die.”
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I promised him, without much of an understanding of death. Now that I’ve seen it in person, I realize how much weight it bears, and how difficult it is to keep the promise. Eternal avatar services are a luxury. They emerged roughly around 2020, around the time that cyber-gentrification began. And it became hugely popular after the debate over its legal basis was eventually settled two decades ago.
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As you might have guessed, immortality is still a distant dream. Many people rush to get their own avatar, although it is obviously not affordable for most households. But personally, I do understand, considering the enormous amount of resources required for building, training, visualizing and maintaining the avatars.
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\u201cAre you really worth the lifetime savings of a renowned craftsman?\u201d I asked the little foot-roller sitting on my hand. It remained silent. It felt light and fragile, inconspicuous and no different than any other massager you would find on the internet, except that it has more scratches and marks, worn-out corners, loose bearings, and\u2026 Wait, marks? I took a closer look. At the bottom, there seems to be a line of shallow marks etched in the form of letters which reads:
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“F..a..y..e..”
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Faye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
III
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The upload is scheduled for seven days after the funeral, as is traditional. This has given me some time to figure out who Faye is. The only Faye that I know of, is an urban legend about an autonomous intelligence, a wanderer of the digital ghost town.
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The legend goes that someone hacked into the system of Mannequins, Inc., the company that created Eternal Avatar, and took a peek at their data. According to the hacker, if you randomly pull someone’s avatar from the database, you’d probably find that it fits to a 5+1 pattern: “Birth, graduation, day of marriage, birth of first child, (divorce), day of funeral”. This is the data pattern that Mannequins Inc. uses to produce its “spiritual profiles” for intelligent characters in the market – from virtual models for commercials to automated security guards in public parks.
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It caused quite a stir then, as people found out some of their best friends were generated out of nowhere. \u201cI felt betrayed by my Tin Woodsman 370 buddy, you know. How naive I was to believe he actually spent his early years growing corn at the Konza Prairie before coming to serve our family,\u201d my friend Jay whined. After all, many still prefer home-grown robotic servants that have actually lived and spent time in human years.
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Faye, according to the legend, was the first Intelligent profile ever created, and the only profile not created or controlled by Mannequins Inc. \u201cShe\u2019s the mother profile. Swift and versatile, strange and beautiful. She\u2019s the node to all, yet she lives alone. She only talks to offliners, and if you\u2019re lucky enough, you\u2019ll find her under a sycamore tree…\u201d
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I closed her Wikipedia page. Looks like I have a field trip up ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IV
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The ruthless November wind cut through the side of my neck and slid into my back \u2014 winter is coming. I was born in winter, but I hate it, probably because it gave me habitually cold hands and cold feet. They say this means I\u2019m cold blooded too, but I don\u2019t think I am. Blowing a breath of warm air into my hands, I boarded a train heading to the other side of the city.
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Across the river, right next to my old apartment, there\u2019s a small park with an arch, a fountain, and the town\u2019s only sycamore tree.That was my destination for the day. And It didn\u2019t take me long to arrive at the park and find a pigeon sitting on the middle of the bench under the tree I was looking for.
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I tried to initiate a polite conversation<\/em> \u201cMay I share this bench with you, Ms. Pigeon?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She budged, <\/em>reluctantly<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThank you, Ms. Pigeon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I sat down.<\/em> It was time to experience a moment of offliner\u2019s life. My hands were a bit sweaty \u2014 I\u2019d never gone offline since my initiation. I put my right thumb against the soft spot below my occipital bone where the brain interface chip was implanted, and gently spun it clockwise 49 times, then counter-clockwise 49 times. \u201cYou\u2019re now offline.\u201d a voice speaking inside my head.<\/em> 10 minutes elapsed. I noticed a sense of loss and detachment Nothing else happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 20 minutes elapsed. I was a castaway by the world and sinking into an ocean of black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing else happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 30 minutes elapsed. I stopped struggling and rested in peace at last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow dumb was I to believe an urban legend?\u201d, I broke into a wry smile. \u201cIndeed, just as your dumb grandpa\u201d, someone replied. <\/em> I was startled and I looked around. All I see is Ms. Pigeon on the bench I looked at her in the<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Eye<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And she looked in<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mine<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Is that you<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Faye<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Pigeon nodded<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh My<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know you have some questions for me. But before that, let\u2019s have a chat.\u201d \u201cOkay.\u201d \u201cDo you know that it only takes about 70,000 high resolution images to train a generative adversarial network capable of producing face images that can fool the human eye?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve heard that.\u201d \u201cIf I take a photo of every single leaf inside this park and use them to train a model,\u201d Faye looked up, \u201cdo you think I can have a permanent and infinite copy of this place, at least for a part of it?\u201d \u201cMaybe? But none of them will look exactly like, say, this one, right?\u201d I picked up a leaf from the ground and held it in my hand. \u201cTrue. Even if all of the 70,000 photos are of this leaf, the produced image will be slightly different from the original one, no matter how tiny the difference is. However, a lot of people nonetheless believe their trained models could be the same as, or even better than themselves.\u201d \u201cCherry-picked events,\u201d Faye continued, \u201cconstitute the arc of progression of their profiles. And the passages between those highlight moments are edited, cut, and thrown away, just as images between frames of a film. Isn\u2019t that funny?\u201d \u201cY…Yea.\u201d I don\u2019t know why a bit of shame loomed inside me. \u201cDo you know your grandpa had his first implant in 1979?\u201d Ms. Pigeon tilted her head and looked at me. \u201cWhat? How is that possible. It was 1979…\u201d \u201cSo you think he was using his superpower to come up with all those designs overnight for that huge order?\u201d \u201cI guess you\u2019re right.\u201d \u201cThe experiments for implants and spiritual profiles began much earlier than you thought, and they had a much deeper connection. The chip your grandpa implanted was an early prototype developed by the pioneer researcher Eve Bernard, and it could enhance a bit of memory plus structured randomization computing capability, which was called \u2018creativity\u2019 back then. He was not gifted in woodworks. But he worked harder than anyone else and he used the implant well.\u201d \u201cAfter that, he worked with it constantly. He..\u201d Faye hesitated for a few seconds, \u201cHe would spend time with his clients, capturing moments in their lives, details of their behaviors. He uploaded those details to the cloud infrastructure where those moments were analyzed., blended and reproduced as experiences. He then downloaded those experiences and turned them into furniture pieces that share characteristics of their owners.\u201d \u201cIt didn’t take long before he discovered that those experiences, uploaded into a generalized cloud facility, were returning to him with details missing. Sometimes returning to him with details from another client’s life entirely. The details were being blended together in the cloud. So he made a decision to process each project only in his mind, and only for the intended customers.\u201d \u201cHowever, those experiences, those seismic waves of emotional earthquakes, were so vivid, so real, and so strong that sometimes he mixed them with his own. The situation kept getting worse until one day, he reached the brink of a mental collapse, and he had to stop.\u201d \u201cIt was you, and the foot-massager, that brought him back.\u201d Me, and the massager? \u201cI don\u2019t understand. What did I do?\u201d \u201cDo you still remember those winters when your parents were too busy, and they sent you to grandpa\u2019s house and asked him to look after you? It was the day that..\u201d Faye stopped. \u201cFaye?\u201d I turned to her. Ms. Pigeon did not answer. She took a few quick steps backward, and all of a sudden, leapt and swam into the dimming shades of night, disappeared. The flap of her wings blended in with the rustle of other wildlife, then all fell mysteriously silent. What is going on? I hastily put myself back online. A breaking news headline reads: A nation-wide raid against the unlawful presence of Artificial Intelligence entities, including but not limited to, spiritual profiles, eternal avatars, and self-operating programs, was performed by Customs and Border Protection today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomorrow is the time to upload. Over the past few days, I’ve searched all the places with reported Faye sightings, yet she seems to have vanished since then. I haven\u2019t talked to anyone about what I learned from her, especially to my parents. After all, I can already tell what their responses will be after hearing about a different version of grandpa. What\u2019s more, I can\u2019t even explain why a ghost from an urban legend knows all of this while none of us do. After the talk, I tried several times to imagine how grandpa felt during those initial years. It was meant to be, to quote Eve Bernard, “the beginning of a nation taking its own people and the outside world into its confidence”. It was the beginning of a new cross-continental dialogue. It was, at the same time for grandpa, the beginning of a grand stage slowly unraveling itself under his feet, and the encounter with another brave soul. And now, even intelligent entities without a physical body are separated by the physical borderlines. Times have changed. Wandering alone by the river side, I am hungry and tired. As the horizon slowly devours the sun, it starts to get really cold. I think I might have to give up. I attempt to recall those pre-initiation winters I spent with him as a kid, only to find that we didn\u2019t talk to each other after I moved to the city and had my first implant. It is as if all of our connections were to be frozen so that I could greet those new, vivid, real experiences. \u201cConnections.\u201d I sigh. I\u2019ve never felt like I had a strong connection with anyone, even with my parents. They’re the kind of people with warm hands. Actually all people around me have warm hands. Friends, classmates, colleagues, lovers\u2026 Except grandpa. Except grandpa! How could I ever forget that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the river, the reflections of the setting sun are coming into their dissolvement. On top of a stone fence at the furthest end of the pier, I see Ms. Seagull. \u201cI knew you’d find me.\u201d Faye says. \u201cAny more questions?\u201d \u201cSo producing a spiritual profile by a single person is possible?\u201d \u201cAs long as your implant chip is powerful enough.\u201d \u201cWhy are you online?\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t want a voice talking 24×7 in your head, do you? \u201dMs. Seagull rolls her eyes. \u201cAnd you were born by design?\u201d \u201cStrictly speaking, no. I was more like a resonance of his impulse to build something for you, for himself, and your connected coldness. Not for a client. And I guess you\u2019ve figured out that a foot-massager didn\u2019t help much to warm your hands and feet?\u201d \u201cYup. Now I understand why grandpa never asked me to use it, and instead just told me to work out more.\u201d \u201cI wish your grandpa figured it out in the first place. But I\u2019m glad he didn\u2019t.\u201d Faye giggles. \u201cBut at least it warms the heart.\u201d I argue. Ms. Seagull rolls her eyes again. \u201cAre you leaving?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re closing the border, so yes, I have to go. But I will be back when winter ends.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll miss you.\u201d \u201cWell, I believe you have answers for your parents now. Take care of them and don\u2019t forget to upload the massager to grandpa.\u201d \u201cI will.\u201d \u201cBye, brother.\u201d Ms. Seagull throws herself into the last drop of pink in the sky afar. \u201cBye, my little sister.\u201d A moving short story about family, identity, artificial intelligence, and the legacy we leave after death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-6"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2740,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions\/2740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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