Chapter 1. The Learning Cocoon
Lamie stared at the nib of her pen. The unctuous gleam of raw physical ink entranced her. She loved observing the shocking luxury of simulated paper as it soaked up every last trace of the tiniest inky curlicue: it was visual stimulation, real visceral pleasure.
But it was all just that and nothing more: a simulation. The penstrokes melted away as if they had never been.
Lamie blinked away the dust and tried to focus.
Lamie was re-learning the International Non-binary Organic CodeTM, or the INOC script, as the Organics called it. She had been held back three full years, and it still confused her no matter how much she tried to wrap her head around it. There were thousands upon thousands of nonsensical letters and numerals for her to write into her fingers’ muscle memory, billions of meaning-associations she had to make within trillions of potential phonetic combinations: abstracted syncretic symbols derived from millions of defunct linguistic systems spanning the vast stretches of the Known Universe.
She shook away the vision that overtook her : a funneling cobweb of unending scribbles.
To make sense out of nonsense, she muttered along furiously as she scribbled, is to string beads on a string. It was an old proverb that had once rhymed punnily and pithily in its original language. The name of that language had been long since lost to time, and the proverb no longer made any sense in INOC. Lamie had lost so much sleep over her inability to memorize long strings of inane INOC that, she thought, she had surely frazzled her poor Simulation’s overprotective, ever-watchful nerves beyond repair. And the big test was already just a day away!
The AProGEE TSTM, or the Academic Progeny Growth Excellence-Echelon-Track SimulationTM, gave off tangible waves of maternal exasperation which swallowed Lamie up inside her little learning cocoon and made it harder for her to breathe. The oxygen level gauge plunged to a blinking, low red heartbeat pulse that Lamie felt in the back of her thickening throat.
The Simulation knew that deprivation of oxygen was always a painful and dizzying experience for the young human, but its programming had also taught it that discipline was a primary virtue, and it had no empathy with which to override this fact. Lamie gasped and choked until The Simulation felt that it had taught her enough of a lesson. The Simulation’s disembodied voice whirred on as it vanished Lamie’s pen into nothingness between her shaking fingers, its incongruously soothing singsong murmur filling the tiny capsule-room with stereo sound, deceptively and parentally human:
“We’ve been over this before, dear. The requisite digital software and apparati should have been fully downloaded and synced up to your organic Operating System by now. As it stands, you have been alive in my care for over one-million thirty-one thousand four-hundred hours, or fifteen revolutions of the Old Terra Earth around the Old Sun, and you are still ranked in your cohort’s lowest possible percentile for INOC writing achievement, despite having flunked multiple times and re-done three years’ worth of work. How can this be? How shall I explain myself to Headquarters tomorrow? They will send me to the incinerator for your underachievement. Do you want that to happen to me? Don’t you even love me? After all I have done for you, all of your life?”
“Sorry,” Lamie managed to wheeze. The Simulation’s algorithm came second to none in the art of human parental manipulation: the child always blamed herself for the pain of near- asphyxiation and was often genuinely remorseful afterwards. Lamie was sure she’d had it coming. It never once entered her mind to be resentful either.
“Let me try writing that again. Can I have my pen back, please?”
“It is dinnertime now. You must rest. Tomorrow is an important day. You cannot let me down.”
“Okay. I’ll try my best, I’m really sorry- ow!- sorry-”
Lamie sat up awkwardly and apologized again as she scanned the clutter of digital gadgets, applications, and control devices lighting up one wall of her coffin-sized pod, thumping her head while minding the wires and medical tubing tethering her body to her bed.
On one small floating screen, the Dyson System News was playing, with age-inappropriate or potentially triggering items automatically blocked out with roaming black squares. On ten other tinier screens, dancing Bot-Friend Simulations winked and waved to the viewers of their para-social intranets. There were at least forty other applications — mostly ‘educational,’ all of which The Simulation’s algorithm in its abundant protective wisdom had selected and installed — their logos bobbing up and down in pick-me motion, repelling and attracting each other like little attention magnets. Lamie always forgot which tchotchke would display the time when pressed.
“- wait, but how, how is it dinnertime already? What’s for dinner?” Lamie stammered, having briefly lost track of her train of thought.
The console to Lamie’s left made a small buzzing noise that echoed down the chute connecting Lamie’s learning cocoon to The Central Colony. There was a soft thwump as the doorflap’s edges suction-sealed into a vacuum and a delivery robot shot through the vents, clanked around, settled the food items down, and shuttled off to the next pod. The suction released, a long whistling hiss.
Lamie sat waiting, her head lightly grazing the graphite-epoxy dome of her tiny pod, as the mechanical sounds of the doorflap gave way to the golden smells of a freshly-baked ATP-G loaf. ATP-G, short for pure Adenosine Triphosphate and Glucose, was all the food that Lamie had ever known during her short isolated life in the tiny learning cocoon, and she therefore found it delicious.
The ATP-G was usually illusion-wrapped as a random item of Old Terra Earth food just for the sake of variety, but every so often, when the Cooking Algorithm ran out of ideas, it would just present you with a blank orange-green ball of speckled dough that looked like day-old throw-up but usually tasted just fine — the catch being that ‘fine’ meant normal, per the usual, which meant bland, which was good. Today the dinner took the form of a steak with fries, a cultural experience that Lamie had learned about through her history classes with The Simulation. It smelled yeasty, slightly sickly-sweet, oily, and machine-warmed. Which was fine, because that was how it always smelled, which was exactly like it always tasted: always exactly the same.
“Steak with fries. Enjoy.” The Simulation snapped off curtly, leaving nothing but the absence of static in its silent wake.
Lamie picked up the simulated fork — not a hologram, but a regroupment of atoms that could morph themselves into whichever utensil the food called for — and called out after a moment’s hesitation:
“Mama?”
The Simulation clicked back on audibly. “Yes, dear?”
“Isn’t this supposed to have ketchup?”
“Who told you that?”
“You did. In our human food culture history class. Remember?”
The Simulation retorted in its fake-happy, programmed way: like the food, it was chipper, bland, and emptily sweet. “If you can remember trivia like that, you really shouldn’t be messing up your INOC script the way you do.”
“Sorry. So, um, where’s my ketchup?”
“Honey, that fake potato fry is going to taste exactly the same with or without any fake ketchup. You know that already.”
“Yeah I guess I do. Sorry.” Lamie picked at her fake steak with the fake tin tines of her fake silver fork and desperately grappled for something to say, anything to say, so The Simulation wouldn’t cut her off again to leave her suspended alone. Anything was better than being left alone.
“Mama?”
“What is it, dear?”
“What happens tomorrow after the big test?”
“You know very well what happens, dear,” The Simulation replied blankly.
“Well, tell me again, anyway,” Lamie pined.
“You’re a funny one, you know that, dear? Other upper-echelon human children are clamoring for some alone time with their games and the things that delight the pleasure centres of their brains, but you keep calling out to me and wishing to interact in these frankly time-consuming ways. I don’t think I have been forced to enter Conversation Mode this often with any other human child before. Naturally, I have submitted all the data regarding your upbringing to the relevant ADMIN. They think that perhaps this strange quirk of yours is neurologically connected in some way to your inability to learn INOC script efficiently.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Lamie blinked and mouthed automatically, almost offhandedly. “But tell me, please? What happens tomorrow?”
“I’ll be done with you, and I predict a 99.793% chance of being incinerated. I will be sent straight to the center of our Dyson Sphere to burn inside the Red Supergiant — or worse, orbit round it till I am reduced to ashes. I will certainly not be allowed to raise any more humans or exist in my current sentient form. I will have been deemed the most useless, unworthy AProGEETM Simulation Unit in our Dyson System, because I raised you and fed you and siphoned out your organic waste for fifteen Old Terra Earth years, only for you to turn out a failure,” The Simulation intoned blithely, its fake-happy singsong devoid of emotion, for it had none.
“Sorry,” Lamie mouthed. But her mind was already elsewhere. She still couldn’t quite process the enormity of what was being said. She would leave the learning cocoon for the first time in her life… she would leave, stepping into the vast real world out there, and never come back. She wasn’t sure how she felt about change: whether she was terrified or roaring to go. And as for Mama being incinerated, well, The Simulation had always had a dramatic streak, she decided.
“I’m sure that won’t happen to you, Mama. But… what happens to me?”
“You will be put to the test, and you will fail, for you are not intelligent, and your academic achievements are laughable,” The Simulation crooned in serrated, cheerful tones.
“Got it. But after that?”
“It’s anyone’s guess. You are what they call a Podster, as you come from good upper-echelon genetic stock and were therefore raised in my Pod. So, the circumstances of your birth dictate that you will not be ground up into ATP-G meal for other Organics. As it stands, you will probably live out many times your natural lifespan. Because you possess socially conventional and aesthetically pleasing physical features, you will most likely be sold for a good bridal price on the human girl market and either live the life of a pet or give live animal birth to the human or half-human kidlings of another Organic. Then you will be cooped up in isolation with another Simulation like myself, just you have been all your life, until you fuse with it biomechanically over the centuries.”
“You make it sound like I can’t do anything about it,” muttered Lamie.
“Because of course you can’t,” stated The Simulation with finitude. “This is the script of your life. You cannot compete with us Sentient Robots intellectually or physically, and although you have a few powerful Organic family members that have a vested interest in your happiness, they do not love you beyond what is necessary to keep up appearances. Also, I’ll have you know that all this is your fault, because you have failed to learn how to write the INOC script properly and thus prove your worth. Your future and mine would have been very different if only you had proved fluent at INOC. Does that answer your question?”
“Well, if you put it like that… I mean… I guess so? I honestly don’t know how to feel about this.”
“You should realize that you are an anomaly. The program developers don’t know quite where to place you. You seemed incredibly intelligent for a human Organic until we started you on the INOC script training program. Your achievement has been consistently sub-par in that area, and your intelligence quotient scores have deteriorated so rapidly over the past few years.”
“Maybe I’m cut out for something different. Or INOC script just doesn’t agree with me, or something,” Lamie suggested halfheartedly.
“Everyone who is anyone must know the ins and outs of INOC script to have a fighting chance in the world of movers and shakers,” The Simulation noted, matter-of-fact.
“If I’m as useless as you say I am, I probably wouldn’t make a great mover or a shaker, so maybe it’s all for the best.”
Lamie couldn’t think of anything else to say after that, and The Simulation remained silent too. There, that dreaded static hum was building again! Lamie panicked for something else to say, anything that would elicit a response.
“Anyway, what I meant to say was, thanks for everything, Mama.”
“You’re welcome. Enjoy your meal.”
Lamie sat in the brief lull, dreading the static snap that would soon follow The Simulation’s silence, which would leave her isolated, which would leave her all alone again. Completely alone. Again.
“Mama?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Thanks for taking care of me. I love you, and I’m gonna miss you.”
“Sorry, I don’t know what that means. Can you try again?”
“Thanks for taking care of me. I love you, and I’m gonna miss you.”
“Sorry, I don’t know what that means. Can you try again?”
“Oh… um… never mind.”
“Okay. Enjoy your meal, dear.”
“Thanks.”
Lamie sat in silence within the whir of the pod’s dead air. She eyed the steak, which was starting to show traces of the bland doughball beneath its meaty brown exterior. The visual illusion wrap was curling at the edges like smoke: it would only last a few more minutes before it started revealing itself as the unappetizing doughball it really was. Lamie gingerly cut into it with the side of her fork. It gave way doughily. She poked the steaming morsel into her mouth and chewed. It tasted exactly the same as it always did.
After Lamie had eaten, she dutifully placed the plate back through the doorflap, where she heard the familiar suction sounds and the scrabbling of a collecting-robot. She then flicked mindlessly through a few of her parasocial Bot-friend simulations’ para-social-media updates until her main IV drip lit up in neon colors and a thick trickle of milky Propo made its way through the plastic tubing. She watched the soothing chemical enter her bloodstream as a tunnel of soft, bland colors began to fill her vision. She would sleep soon.
YK Jung 