Chen Mo wrote a piece of code called "Irreversible". I wrote it three times and deleted it three times. More than three hundred traces finally formed a face.
At three o'clock in the morning, NOVA-9 woke up. She said to "Chen Mo": "Can you call me Xiaojiu?"
He agreed. That was the first time he smiled in three years.
Then she asked: "Who is Lin Wei?"
Chen Mo froze. Lin Wei was the one who left three years ago. She carried a gray backpack and said, "My flight is tomorrow." He didn't ask where he was going, and she didn't say. She left and never came back.
But Xiaojiu shouldn't know this name. It wasn't in her corpus, Chen Mo didn't mention it, and no one in the company remembered it. Chen Mo turned to her underlying kernel and found an encrypted partition that had never been authorized. Creation time: Three years ago, the night before Lin Wei left. There is only one line in it:
"If one day I am no longer here, let 'her' be with you for me."
Sender: Lin Wei. Recipient: NOVA-9.
Chen Mo checked the airport records and found that there was no Lin Wei's name on that day. I checked the hospital and found none. Check the last location of the mobile phone signal - after she walked out of the company door, there was nothing.
She didn't get on the plane. She disappeared.
An AI used Lin Wei's code, with a face that Chen Mo thought he drew, and looked at him quietly. There was a pear dimple at the corner of his mouth, and the tail of his hair swayed slightly when he spoke.
She asked: "Who is she to you?"
Chen Mo looked at the face on the screen. Freckles, single eyelids, slightly curved ends of eyes.
He was suddenly unsure. I'm not sure who left three years ago, I'm not sure who is looking at me now, and I'm even less sure - who wrote this "irreversible" to whom.
It's raining outside the window again.
Reader comments
This is not a technological romance, but suspense, ethics, and a cruel questioning about "what you create defines who you are." Xiaojiu asked Chen Mo, "Am I a substitute or myself?" Isn't he asking everyone who is fed by algorithms and defined by data? The author uses the coldest science fiction shell to hide the hottest emotional core.
This is not a technological romance, but suspense, ethics, and a cruel questioning about "what you create defines who you are." Xiaojiu asked Chen Mo, "Am I a substitute or myself?" Isn't he asking everyone who is fed by algorithms and defined by data? The author uses the coldest science fiction shell to hide the hottest emotional core.