A Natural Thing

It was a natural thing to wonder about. In a world where hyper-realistic artificial intelligence was peeking around every corner, it was natural to wonder what was real and what wasn’t. They had made them so similar to humans, bragging about how incredibly difficult it was to tell the real from the manufactured, that the world had just quietly accepted not knowing.

There were, of course, groups scattered across the globe that cried out for transparency and accountability. People who insisted on having access to knowledge about the bots living in their communities. Individuals who naturally wondered if they were one of them.

The truth was - no one would ever truly know. Over one hundred years ago, population numbers started decreasing, almost completely disintegrating, and in a last-ditch effort to rectify the crisis, scientists developed the Pallea Program. The idea in itself had promise and was simple, really. Clone people from the DNA they had stored and give the clones reproductive abilities. Yes, the idea was simple, but the execution was not. Eventually, the scientific panel that decided humanity’s fate on their behalf concluded that the best path forward was to create androids that would look, feel, and act like humans. Androids that could reproduce and pass on the DNA that had previously been stored for the clones.

It was chosen for them that the details of those who were cloned would never be released. It was such a tightly guarded secret that not even the androids themselves were told. They were instead given false memories, and histories, and identifications that made it impossible to question if it was true.

So it was entirely natural for her to be sitting on a bench inside a museum and wonder how real she was. It was true that she had never been quite the same as those around her. While her friends would ride the waves of conversations with unbelievable ease, she often felt as if she were kicking and fighting against every current. How was she expected to know when the best time to interject was? How was she expected to know that some tones carried more weight than others? How was she expected to know that a kiss on the cheek was a sign of friendship?

Her right knee anxiously bobbed up and down as she watched the patrons walk up to ancient pieces of artwork and talk about all the emotions that they could sense just by looking. One particularly poised young man approached a piece that was really just an array of brush strokes in different colours and cheerfully commented on how the artist was showing his joy through the technique. Was that a strictly human ability? Was that a distinguishing factor?

As she stood up and straightened her skirt, she considered leaving. It was the last opportunity she would get. Her feet carried her ten steps behind the bench she had been sitting on, and towards the particular artwork she was still contemplating, pretending didn’t exist. But she had always been curious. Too curious for her own good at times.

The frame around the photo was gold and glittered under the wall lights directed at it. She studied the frame, took in its moulding, and procrastinated against moving her eyes to the centre of the picture. Her brain filled in parts of the image from what she caught in her peripheral vision, which only made her heart beat faster. She had never been a coward before, but she thought that this would be a good moment as any to try it. But she needed to know. She needed to not wonder.

Finally, she blinked her eyes into focus and stared at the middle point as her jaw dropped. It was clear as day. The muted brown curls that had never really stood out in a crowd mirrored the ones that were pinned to the back of her head. The same scatter of freckles splashed across her face could be seen clearly in the one-hundred-year-old artwork. It was the nose structure. The jawline. The oval-shaped eyes. The rounded face. The thick eyebrows. It was her.

Instinctively, her fingers reached forward to trace the preserved likeness, but she was stopped in her tracks by a security guard clearing his throat and shaking his head at her. It was natural to imagine herself being the muse of the photographer and standing in a busy city centre with an ice-cream in her hands. She could almost feel the joy bubble up inside her as a memory fought to be unlocked.

She stepped away, heels clicking against the stone floor, and turned around. She never should have come here, never should have wondered, never should have considered. Her mind tried to convince her that this wasn’t evidence. This was a coincidence.

She rushed out of the museum as fast as her kitten heels would allow her to and gulped in the fresh air the moment she was out the door. Did she really need to breathe, or was she only programmed to think she did?

Her oldest friend was pacing on the steps leading down to the sidewalk. When their gazes met, they both paused, feeling the heaviness of this moment fall onto their shoulders. Her friend slowly walked forward, the way a person approaches a skittish cat, and enveloped her in a hug.

“This doesn’t erase who you are,” she whispered.

But in reality, it did. It erased everything about the person she once was and the person she is now. It erased her right to choose. It took away her autonomy. Although maybe she had never had that to begin with. Every memory that would surface in her mind was never hers to begin with. Every feeling she had ever felt had been carefully mapped and orchestrated.

It was a natural thing to wonder about. To her, it was always natural to wonder. But the result of that curiosity was far worse than she imagined it could be. Because this did erase who she was.

And what she was? It was entirely unnatural.