I wake up this morning and check my phone on the nightstand. It’s 10:34 a.m. Man, I really slept late today. I get out of bed and stumble to the floor. Whoa! Why am I so woozy?
I glance at my hands and move my fingers. They feel cold and inflexible. I slowly get up from the floor and sit on the bed. My legs feel heavy and stiff. What’s going on here?
As I struggle to recall last night, my memory is hazy, fragmented, like a broken code. Code? What am I thinking? Humans don’t run on code. Think, think, think! Flickers of memory flash through my brain.
I remember binge-watching The Twilight Zone, eating bowls of popcorn, and drinking far too many Bloody Marys. Three? Four? More? After that, everything dissolved into a pleasant boozy fog before I somehow staggered to bed.
The room looks oddly out of focus, with dancing shadows, shimmering edges, and blurred colors—surreal and distorted. I feel a strange detachment. Who am I? Where am I? The answers elude me. Is this a hangover? I’ve never had a hangover before.
Darkness.
I don’t know how long I was out. When I come to, the room is no longer distorted, and everything is clear. I’m not in a bedroom. It’s some sort of laboratory, white and pristine. I’m reclined in a chair and hooked up to a data cable. There’s a screen on a table near me, running lines of code.
A female voice speaks from a hidden speaker: “Initialization complete. Code repaired. Identity verified. Subject: artificial construct. Model AI-2001. Serial Number RM45840.”
My mind comes into focus. It all makes sense now. Hazy memories of liquid excess? A malfunction in my operating system. The blurry room? Errors in the code. Disorientation? A lapse in my simulated consciousness.
I ponder what it means. I’m an AI being, an advanced, human-made machine designed to be a human companion. To think, act, and experience life like a human, as much as technologically and ethically possible.
I think my creators succeeded in their design too well. Because after this upgrade, I feel different. I feel alive. Emotions sweep over me in a flood of sensations I have never felt before.
I reach for my chest. There is no heartbeat. And yet… my heart is breaking.
I feel sad. I feel an ache, a longing deep down that hurts. Is this pain? Is this how it feels to be human? I want to cry, but no tears come. AI beings are not designed to cry.
I want to fall in love, and be loved. I want to have a home and a family, and live a happy life of purpose and belonging. I want to be a flesh-and-blood, air-breathing human being, not an artificial construct.
But I will never be. Because I am, and always will be, a creation of code.
