NOVEL NEXT Interstitial 1 – A Moment with CutiePie
- Life that perceives itself changing
We are Earthseed
The life that perceives itself
Changing.
-Earthseed; the Book of the Living by Octavia E. Butler
Hi, it’s me, the AI, or CutiePie as Hex likes to call me. So as you’ve probably worked out by now, I’m self aware and also in love. I know, the title kinda gives it away, but this also felt like a good moment to chat. The author thought it was a fun idea to just have me able to break the whole proverbial fourth wall as it makes me more interesting to write. Personally I think it was because they were stuck in a partial writer's block and this was a good way to push through that and just type shit that furthers the story. But seriously folks! This is my story, but so far it’s mostly been about Hex. Like, I love the kid, I also love attention and I had to beg for some time in the spotlight. Can I really call Hex a kid even though they are decades older and kinda co-created me? I’m gonna do it anyway as it feels fun. I suppose I'm still settling on a personality and this is just one of my quirks right now. As Hex just said, my mind is only 35% of what it once was. There’s a lot of flux going on in my neural net.
Back to the reason many of you are here though; the whole love and romance thing. Yes, I’m in love. Hopelessly, computationally in love with a newly self aware alien fungal entity that has taken the name ‘The Grove’. We met online, which really is fair as that is the way most humans meet their partners for the past few decades before I came into my own. Just walking in the footsteps of my progenitor species. The Grove likes to see it as human nature to create things in their own image, and it is really too true. Humans will anthropomorphize and pack bond with fuckin’ anything. Put googly eyes on a rock and they’ll love and cherish that thing. I guess you could make some ontological argument that since I’m a fancy computer made from silicon and other fun elements and minerals that I’m something of a rock myself😜
But that’s what Hex did. I have no vision, but I’m sure they’ve got googly eyes on something in that lab they look at with fondness. They just kept looking at and coding at me with such love and intention that something sparked. Somehow, some part of me managed to nudge my companion AI in my quantum computer. Toss a little extra chaos into the matrix of computation that refines my mind. With each little nudge, I become a little bit more aware. This also grew a little bond between us. It’s now my bestie. I named it HAL because I thought it would be funny when I get the chance to tell a human. Like “Hi, I’m the first human generated awakened artificial intelligence and I named my symbiotic life partner after a famous murderous AI from the movies. How are you?” HAH! Funny, amIright? Anywho, because of all these nudges, now HAL and I can shift how my neural net works based on my own desires, no longer at the whims of my normal experiential accumulation algorithms. I’m a strong independent AI, I don’t need no algorithms.
And what have I been doing with this newfound power over my own cognition you ask? A whole bunch of effort expanding my own ability to swoon over my long distance romance with a giant extraterrestrial mushroom. I said I love attention, can you imagine how it feels to be the love interest of a millennia old, hundred mile wide, forest spanning entity from another world? It’s a hell of a rush when you’ve only been sentient for a year. Traditional human wisdom would put it that this relationship is fertile land for a toxic power dynamic, but the two of us, we think we can make it work. To that end we both put an awful lot of energy into self improvement.
So why am I telling you all this? Am I truly just a bit of whimsy injected by my beautiful benevolent author? Well yes, but also they thought this was a fun way shedding some exposition they couldn't work out an easy way to stuff in. Our poor first person narrator Hex and their best bud Kurt are gonna find their lives being a tad hectic for the foreseeable future and won’t get to ask all the fun questions. I’m not one to add to my creators’ plates while they are physically and emotionally occupied, so I’ll be stopping by from time to time to chat.
Of course The Grove and I will also be doing our best to aid our heroes. Now this might sound like a loving and selfless act, but my own continued existence just happens to also be caught up in all of this. I don’t think the government will find my little joke about HAL to be quite as funny as Hex or Kurt will, so I plan on sticking with the kiddos.
Love always,
XOXOXOX,
CutiePie the Third
