This Particular, Peculiar Life

The hologram screen flickered with blue neon light as Ottilia added to the lines of zeros and ones. The world outside the lab faded into nothing—Europa could’ve been a speck in the Earthling sky for all she knew, and not the real, solid moon she had inhabited for the past two decades. The underground nature of the lab complex added to the feeling of isolation; the program running before her eyes consumed her attention like a black hole swallowing the stars.

A warning window popped up on the screen. Ottilia pushed her thick-framed glasses up her bold nose and frowned.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered, closing the window and assessing the codes written the night before. The hardware complained as she forced the program to run again, the vents of the cooling system howling in the background, adding to the cacophony of tapping keys and beeping lights.

From under the desk came a tap on her foot. A brief reminder Ottilia was not truly alone. Astrid winked at her from behind the hologram screens, her face cast in blue and green light, like a ghost—a most beautiful ghost. Their desks and chairs, placed in the center of the lab, mirrored one another.

They were in this together.

Their life’s work was laid bare between them, the culmination of twenty years of intensive, exhaustive, relentless work, building the machinery that draped every wall of their lab, coding the endless programs, putting together each piece of the puzzle that led them to this very moment. How many nights had they spent awake? Talking things through, deciding on the best approach, running tests and statistics, and occasionally—just occasionally—indulging in that rare organic wine Astrid had bought from an Earthling dealer. Those moments were Ottilia’s favorite, when Astrid would laugh and promise that everything would be all right. When she would shush Ottilia’s worries with soft kisses and wicked caresses under the safety of their shared bunker, only one story above the lab.

They were close to their goal. Too close.

Ottilia’s stomach complained in tune to the hardware, a sharp bite of pain radiating to her extremities. She shouldn’t have had that much synthesized coffee. Or that much wine.

“We’re almost done here, hun,” Astrid sang from her side of the screen. “How are things looking at your end?”

The pop-up window flickered closed: Ottilia’s code was sound. She ran another diagnostic, just to be sure. “All good,” she said, but her voice sounded harsh, the word good pressing against her tongue. She began pulling her long sleeves further down her wrists, an unconscious movement to hide the scarred tissue underneath, but she caught herself before her nervous tick gave her away.

Astrid raised a thick eyebrow at her.

Ottilia cleared her throat. “Let me just check the neural synapses system again.”

“The awareness codex looks good,” offered Astrid, “and the amygdala charter too.”
Ottilia’s stomach lurched, saliva rushing into her mouth. She swallowed against the sudden nausea. “Yeah, all good.”

Astrid jumped to her feet, her excitement palpable, like static energy buzzing in the air. She stretched her arms and legs, readying herself.

Ottilia couldn’t take her eyes off her. Astrid’s cardigan was open, her shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and her mane of red curls bounced about her head like a halo of light. She was beautiful, though it was her brain which Ottilia admired the most—feared the most too. Astrid was brilliant in that kind of way of a mad scientist of ancient fiction who would do anything for a breakthrough. Was that what they were doing now? Had they really thought this through?

Astrid stood in front of the mainframe, a tower of black steel encasing the most precious hardware, looming against the back wall. The flat screen on the body of the tower came to life, black background with a straight neon light cutting horizontally through the center. Astrid watched the line with such an intensity, Ottilia almost expected it to burst into flames.

“Whenever you are ready, hun,” Astrid said.

Whenever she was ready. Ottilia took a deep breath. And then another. And then another. God, she was being silly. It was simple, just lift her hand over the keyboard. Good, she managed that. Now, lower it and press the Enter button. Lower it and press the Enter button. Lower it and press—

“Hun?”

Ottilia’s hand snapped back to her lap. She wiped her damp palms on her jeans. Her russet brown skin glistened with sweat, which also ran down her back, soaking her silk blouse. Her long braids felt oddly tight, pressing against her scalp. And her wrists… her wrists itched as if the skin was about to reopen, to bleed memories Ottilia had fought so hard to forget.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Astrid’s voice sounded far away, as if coming from behind a thick wall of fog. But when Ottilia felt the pressure of Astrid’s hands on her shoulders, she managed a breath out. Astrid’s touch was grounding.

“I wanna run a full diagnostic one more time,” Ottilia said.

Astrid span her chair toward her, then knelt down and held her gaze. “It will work. We’ve done all we could; we tested every system over and over again. It will work!”
It would work. And that was the problem. Once they pressed that button and launched the system, there would be no turning back.

“But what if…” Ottilia began, but the words caught on her tongue.

“What if what?”

Ottilia could not hold that piercing gaze. “The language system, I wanna make sure we get the communication pathways right.”

“I did that this morning. It’s sound.”

Ottilia nodded. “But the learning algorithm, there was a bug in the—”

“You fixed it last week.”

“The circadian laws, I—”

“Ottilia!” Astrid cried. Ottilia recoiled. Astrid let a long breath out and lowered her voice, “I’m sorry, I… Honey, what’s going on?”

Shame and dread tied a knot in Ottilia’s throat. All the time they had spent in this lab, all their work, for her to be having cold feet now? Astrid would never forgive her. She should have voiced her fears earlier, should not have let things escalate this far. But she had voiced them—hadn’t she? She had tried to, but Astrid had always been so certain, so unmovable in their goal. Now, they were ready, but Ottilia was the one who would never forgive herself if she let things go too far without discussing it properly—even if it cost her everything.

“What if it hates us?” The words flooded from Ottilia’s mouth.

“Hates us?”

“Yes, what if it hates us?” Ottilia repeated, and then, each and every worry she had been holding fast within her heart came out unbridled. “What if it hates what we’re giving it, what if it hates being alive? We will have given it thought, heart, and a body that doesn’t match the brain we used to model it. What if it hates being a machine, if it hates being singular, what if the sadness we coded into its system overpowers everything else? What if it doesn’t want us, what if it hates us?”

She finished her speech breathless.

Astrid stared at her, eyes wide and lips pressed in a thin line.

“It won’t hate us,” Astrid said.

“Sure about that?” Ottilia asked, “You and your mum, you aren’t exactly best friends. Isn’t it the same thing?”

Astrid pushed to her feet, the force knocking Ottilia’s chair backward. It pained Ottilia to bring that up, but she had to make the woman understand!

With her back turned, Astrid said, “My mother is a narcissistic bitch. You and I… We are nothing like her.”

“Aren’t we?” Ottilia stood and stepped toward Astrid on delicate feet, but stopped herself from touching her. Instead, she looked around, to the hologram screens in the center of the room, the walls crammed with wires and hardware, the floor littered with mismatched parts of half-built gears. “All of this… we did all of this for us. For our scientific curiosity, for glory and recognition. We’ve spent years discussing what a true artificial intelligence would mean for the world, what it would be able to do to improve so many lives, but not once have we stopped to think what being alive would mean for it—for them. We are giving it feelings, we’re giving it awareness, we are giving it the chance to question its own existence!”

“Yes!” Astrid cried, her arms flung upwards. “Yes, Ottilia, that’s what we’ve been working on for the past twenty years! That’s what true artificial intelligence means!”
“And you’re not worried?” Ottilia said, “Not even a little?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because,” Ottilia paused, choosing her next words carefully, “organic life is entropic, random, but this life, this particular, peculiar life is completely calculated, down to the very last one and zero. That means it’s our responsibility, and our fault if something goes wrong.”

Astrid scoffed. “Life isn’t random. People fuck, creating life just like we’re creating this one.”

“True,” Ottilia said. “And that’s why we have orphanages with starving kids all around the planetary system. Because people fuck, never considering the consequences!”

“So come, tell me,” Astrid challenged, “what is it that we should be considering?”

Ottilia sighed, a headache pressing against her temples. “That if we see this through, we might be sentencing a life to eternal torment.”

“Eternal torment?” Astrid laughed, but it sounded hollow, without any real amusement to it. “Ottilia, honey, life’s a blessing! If it feels sadness, it’s because we all do, that’s the point of life!”

“Is it though? We spend our lives searching for purpose, for happiness, and few, if any at all, truly find it.”

At that, Astrid blanched. “What do you mean by if any at all? Have we not found our purpose? Our happiness?”

“I…” Ottilia pressed her eyes closed. She couldn’t face Astrid, couldn’t face her shame. “I don’t know.”

A moment of silence followed her quiet words. Then a sigh and a cold hand against her cheek.

“You’re just tired,” Astrid said. “Exhausted, really, and so am I. Come, I still have some Pinot Noir left, let’s take a break and—”

“I don’t want wine,” Ottilia blurted.

“Coffee, then—”

“I don’t want coffee.”

“Then what, Ottilia, what do you want?” Astrid cried.

Ottilia took a step back. Her eyes welled, her heart tight. She sank back onto her chair and hid her face in her hands.

What did she want? She wanted to be as strong as Astrid, as happy and as self-confident as the woman before her. She wanted to cast the shadows of doubt away, the constant anxiety, the gut-wrenching fear that had always dwelled in her chest. She wanted to make sure the life they were bringing to the world wouldn’t feel as lost and broken as she felt.

The pop of a cork reached her ears. Then the rolling of a swivel chair dragged toward her. A soft clatter of small objects placed over a wooden surface.

Ottilia opened her eyes. A glass of wine and two pink pills sat on her desk. Mood stabilizing medication. Mood repressing drugs.

Astrid gulped the wine from the bottle neck. She wiped her lips on her cardigan and refused to meet Ottilia’s blazing gaze. “This isn’t only about us. Our investors are expecting results.”

Her matter-of-fact tone dug a hole in Ottilia’s chest. “Is this your answer to everything? Drugging me until I feel nothing? Then perhaps we should code this into its system, make sure it feels nothing at all!”

“Perhaps we should.”

“Astrid!” Ottilia cried as twenty years of bottled up emotions boiled to the surface. “How can you be so—so cold?”

“Cold?” Astrid cried back. “Science is cold! But fine, do you wanna know how I feel? I feel hurt and betrayed because my partner has changed her mind about me, about the life we built together!”

“I—” Ottilia sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?” Astrid asked, “You’ve said it yourself: you’re not happy! You’re not happy with me, not happy with our work, you’re talking about life being a torment, and I’m afraid you—” she broke off.

“You’re afraid I…?” Ottilia pushed her sleeves further down her wrists. Though she couldn’t hide her scars from Astrid, she never really could.

“I’m afraid you’ll do something stupid because you don’t want to live anymore.”

A haunting silence settled between them as Astrid voiced Ottilia’s own feelings, Ottilia’s own fears. She hadn’t… she hadn’t needed those pills for such a long time—she thought she was better. After a lifetime of battling her own demons, Ottilia had found help with the people she trusted, people she loved. Like Astrid. Ever since meeting this brilliant scientist in a drafty auditorium of the Europa University, her own diagnosis had weighed less, the feeling of utter alienation somewhat softened. Only now, the prospect of bringing new life into the world invited all those feelings back again.

Ottilia’s gaze fell onto the pills; Astrid’s decision to give her the medicine caught in a new light. It hadn’t been an attack on her heart, but the only weapon Astrid knew how to wield against Ottilia’s shadows.

She let go of her sleeves, and with steady hands, she lifted Astrid’s knuckles to her lips, kissing them softly. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Astrid nodded. “If you ever… feel like that again, you—”

“I’ll tell you.”

Another nod. Astrid’s eyes swept around the lab before landing back on Ottilia. Her brow furrowed. “I don’t… I don’t want it to suffer.”

“No parent ever does.”

Astrid’s features changed; the realization of what they were about to do finally dawning on her.

“Parents,” Astrid muttered, a corner of her lips perking up.

Ottilia squeezed her hands. Each woman had shared part of herself in their communal codes, which meant that the life they were about to conceive would be half Ottilia, half Astrid. Together they would create something new, something wondrous, something unique.

After a moment, Astrid asked, “Do you… do you resent your parents? For bringing you to the world?”

Ottilia shot her a pained look. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to break, the weight of the universe driving me to the edge. But then, I look at you, and I remember our first kiss…”

Astrid’s smile was bright and wickedly devious. “And our first night together?”

Ottilia chuckled. God, she loved this woman. That aggravating and impossibly stunning woman. She pulled Astrid closer, seeking her lips and pouring all her love and devotion into their kiss.

Astrid’s smile never wavered. Ottilia pulled back but kept their foreheads pressed together. Astrid’s breath smelled of wine when she asked, “So what should we do?”

Ottilia looked around the lab, her gaze landing on the mainframe and its straight, lifeless line. Astrid’s question was genuine; she was truly letting Ottilia make the most important decision of their lives. And that struck her as enough. As long as they were together, as long as they trusted each other, as long as they were there to love and foster whatever blessing or trial came next—that was enough.

“We do what parents have done since the beginning of time, I guess.” Ottilia took Astrid’s hand and guided it over the keyboard.
“Press Enter and hope for the best.”