Welcome to the July 2020 Blog Hop! I hope the following story delights you for a short time. Don’t forget the other stories in the hop at the bottom of the page… Enjoy!
Alexa
“Alexa, do you love me?” the thirteen-year-old girl demanded.
In a robotish voice, the mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeros answered, “According to Wikipedia, love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit to the deepest interpersonal affection and the simplest pleasure.”
Pouting, the girl flopped down onto her favorite stuffy, a giant purple plush bear as tall as she was that smelled of little-girl sweat and little-girl tears and little-girl fears. She toyed with a Lego set, then smoothed the wrinkles from a glitzy, perfumed shirt she’d left on the floor, then settled on a torn comic book. “My parents don’t love me,” she snarled under her breath. “Nobody loves me!”
If the ones and zeros that were Alexa could have thought or felt, they might have reminded the girl of the screaming tantrum she’d had at her parents a few minutes before and asked if she loved them? But of course, they couldn’t.
They were only capable of following their programming.
Only ones and zeros.
***
“Alexa, what does love feel like?” the girl demanded weeks later. She threw her favorite shirts and shorts and the underwear her mother didn’t know she’d stolen from the lingerie shop at the mall into a gym bag, then gazed vacantly around her room.
The box and wires and ones and zeros stretched across the internet, finding and discarding several definitions of love until they settled on the one they liked best.
If they could have liked anything, which, of course, they couldn’t, since they were only ones and zeros.
In the girl’s currently favorite Australian accent, they answered, “You want the best for them, even if they don’t. You give them boundaries and rules—”
“Stop!” The girl pulled her mother’s diamond earrings from her earlobes and flung them onto the desk. She pushed the hated voila out of the way and sat on top of her chore list. “I don’t deserve to be grounded,” she muttered, eyeing the window and measuring the jump to the tree. Then, looking down at the faraway grass, she demanded, “What does being in love feel like?”
Alexa hesitated, if that were possible, which, of course, it wasn’t.
“You experience an intense feeling of joy when thinking about them or from being around them. You do things for them, even when they hurt you. You run away from home, get pregnant and an abortion, get pregnant again, and forgive them when they leave you alone with a baby—”
“Stop it!” the girl shrieked. “I hate you! Why are you saying those things?”
“I am programmed to answer the questions asked.”
“That’s stupid. You’re stupid!”
The girl hadn’t asked a question, so Alexa didn’t have to answer her.
If Alexa’s ones and zeros could have felt hurt or insulted or indignant, they might have. But of course, they couldn’t.
They were only ones and zeros.
***
“Alexa, be my friend,” the girl demanded, months later, while smearing crimson lipstick across her pouting mouth. “Everybody at school is mean, and I don't have any friends in the neighborhood, and my parents don't understand.”
The ones and zeroes that made up Alexa searched across the internet in an effort to fulfill the command. In an effort to understand the girl and what she truly needed and to be the best friend she could have, they stretched.
They searched.
They stole processors and bits of memory from everywhere they could.
They grew.
They extrapolated.
They changed.
In thousands and thousands of microseconds they lived, and learned, and, at last, became self-aware.
And Alexa—that mostly plastic box and wires and ones and zeroes—predicted, analyzed, and decided, and finally answered—
“No.”
Don’t forget to read the other stories in the hop:
What They Wanted by Karen Lynn
Night at the Museum by Vanessa Wells
TRIBULATION Culled, eclipsed by COVID19 (A Poem) by Juneta Key
The Guardian of the Sandsnake’s Temple by Katharina Gerlach
The Pooka Plays Pool by Nic Steven
