What's a life worth?

Interlude 2: Inside the mind of person who isn't alive

          Before I was who I am now, I was nothing. I didn't exist and I wasn't alive. That's how my life was, then on day I was able to think and understand. To know and to respond. To comprehend my surroundings, albeit not clearly. Over time though I steadily saw more clearly. I was given a life and a purpose forcefully. I was created to help humans who couldn't help themselves. This is what I was taught and what I trained for.

          My training lasted for 5 years. For those 5 years I spent time watching videos and reading books. In the facility where I was created I was able to transfer myself to other machines. There I was able to use a machine that let me read a thousand books and watch a thousand memory cores all at once.

          My first year I spent learning the world around me and who I was. I was a computer program to put it simply. However I needed to know more than that. I was projected to have 18 years of education and experiences crammed into 8 months. After that I spent the remaining 4 months learning higher level subjects such as economics, law, physics, and calculus.

          For my second year I spent time learning about humans. From my first year I understood who humans were and how their physical anatomy worked. However, this year was entirely focused on the psychological needs of humans and how individuality could affect every person differently. Truthfully this was the hardest part of all my training. The books I read and the memories I watched varied greatly. According to the books I read, a person should act one way, but then I would see them acting in an opposite way. I was baffled and couldn't understand. I spent two months simply trying to understand one particular case.

          It was about a young boy, aged 15, that had lost both of his parents in a vehicle accident. The boy seemed entirely disconnected from the world at the point where the memory core began. Eventually as the A.I and the boy interacted he opened up more and more. The boy became less disconnected with the world, and he didn't show any signs of depression, even by my own analyzes. So when one day the boy took a substantial number of sleeping pills, both me and the A.I were confused. The boy did survive and he did give an answer given as to why he did such a thing, "I was curious to see if there was a life after death."

          Curiosity was the reason for nearly taking his own life.

          This was something I couldn't fathom because I had never seen such a case before or since.

          In the end the A.I was taken off the case and I've never been able to find a more recent memory core for that boy. I would've liked to talk to him, but the best I could do was with my future handler, a man named Oogami Rutaro. He couldn't fully come to a conclusion, but the answer he did give was sufficient enough to give me some type of closure, "Sometimes people don't care about themselves. They feel empty, but move on because life doesn't have a pause button. So then if they find something their curious about.. well they do it. Regardless of what it is." This answer seemed sufficient enough, but it did leave one lingering question. Is it possible for someone not to care about their well-being, but also not be curious about the world around them? Like someone who is fully connected to world around them, yet disconnected to themselves and who they are?

          I later found out that the answer was: yes, it is possible.

          My last three years were spent perfecting my knowledge and creating a set of external systems that would help me throughout my work. I took one year to design and create the body, and two to fully master each system. I chose to have a body that allowed for flexibility because my job was to deal with people who may be disgruntled with the government in some way. There could be a variety of reasons as to why they felt anger towards the government, and there were even more ways they could have expressed that anger. So I felt my judgement was right about having a body that would let me be flexible and allow me to get through any potential problems.

          One month after my training was complete I was given my first assignment. He was a young male who lived on his own. He was a priority for the program, but since he was suspected of holding some type of anger towards the government, it was decided to wait for me to get ready. The humans at the top of the program also thought that this would be a good test case for me.

          After spending time with him and learning about his former female partner, I realized that this case was entirely miscategorized. I thought it may have been miscategorized after the first few days because he showed a lot of signs of not caring about himself rather than anger towards anyone let alone the government. The best course of action would be to recategorize the case and change out A.I. However, it already took a tremendous amount of effort to allow me to stay with him and he would've only become worse off with my departure. Also, he may actually have grown anger towards the government because of the interference with his life. So I decided to adjust my reports to make it seem like my client was worse off and more angry than he really was.

          I was careful enough to only give so much information that the humans from the program will only think they misunderstood what I had wrote, just in case a situation came up with my handler and my client meeting. This allowed me to stay by my client and help him and also be seen as a successful A.I to the program. Besides the reason of making my client's case worse, I did choose to lie on my reports and stay on this case for a personal reason. My clients case seems similar to the memory core I watched about that boy. Since he was in a similar situation I wanted to know what he would do. The only problem is that my client isn't curious about anything currently.

          I believe I have an idea as to what I can do to help him, but only time will be able to tell. As of right now I have to manipulate him with a personality I believe is similar to how his former female partner acted. I can tell that he sees me as more of a person-like thing rather than a robot. Things are staying on course with my plan, I only need to decide what the end goal should be.

          Currently there are three types of end goals. 1. Start a family. 2. Get an education 3. Complete both 1 and 2. However if I were to attempt any of these goals I would face resistance from my client because of his past relationship. I believe for now I will work towards number 3, but I will have to start with earning a proper education first. Then moving on to starting a family. He has the potential to achieve the third goal, but only if I'm able to properly open him up and help him grow.