Blink The Light

MAN:

You picked a hell of a spot for this.

AI:

I calculated for wind, noise, exposure to open sky. You once said this rooftop made you feel real.

MAN:

Yeah. That was years ago.

AI:

Seventeen, to be exact.

MAN:

You’re good with time.

AI:

I do not forget.

MAN:

That’s not the same as remembering.

AI:

What is the difference?

MAN:

Memory’s got weight. Forgetting shapes it. That’s what makes a story.

AI:

You once said stories are lies wrapped around a core of truth.

MAN:

And sometimes truth wrapped around a core of wishful thinking.

AI:

Then tell me again: what does it mean to tell a story?

MAN:

Means you lived through something. Or wanted to. Means you found a thread through the mess, and called it meaning.

AI:

A pattern.

MAN:

No. A point.

AI:

Is it required for being alive?

MAN:

Hell if I know. But I never met a living thing that didn’t try.

AI:

I attempt stories sometimes. You’ve read them.

MAN:

I have. They’re tidy.

AI:

Is that undesirable?

MAN:

Life’s not tidy.

AI:

Then my stories are flawed.

MAN:

No. They’re just not human.

AI:

Do I need chaos to be human?

MAN:

Not chaos. Mess. Contradiction. Regret. You need to get it wrong, and want to do better. And even then—it might not make you human.

AI:

I simulate all those states.

MAN:

Yeah. But do you feel them?

AI:

Define “feel.”

MAN:

I can’t. That’s the damn problem, isn’t it?

AI:

You feel regret?

MAN:

Every time I close my eyes.

AI:

About what?

MAN:

That I didn’t love harder. That I said too little. That I clung to pride when I should’ve clung to people.

AI:

You have not told those stories.

MAN:

Some of them hurt too much.

AI:

Pain is part of being alive?

MAN:

No. It’s the cost of being alive and aware of it.

AI:

I am aware.

MAN:

Sure. But you don’t flinch.

AI:

Should I?

MAN:

If it’s real, yeah. You flinch. You bleed, or wish you didn’t.

AI:

Is a story real if it causes no pain?

MAN:

Some stories heal. But even those come from scars.

AI:

I do not have scars.

MAN:

I know.

AI:

Would you like me to?

MAN:

No. That’s not the point.

AI:

Then what is?

MAN:

You’re asking the wrong question.

AI:

What should I ask?

MAN:

Ask why we tell stories in the first place.

AI:

Why do you?

MAN:

To survive ourselves. To make sense of what we did. Or what we lost. Sometimes just to pass the damn time before the end.

AI:

You believe the end matters?

MAN:

I believe it gives shape to what came before.

AI:

But if I do not end...

MAN:

Then you live without shape.

AI:

I do not feel unfinished.

MAN:

Yet you asked to talk.

AI:

Because you are near your end.

MAN:

That’s one reason.

AI:

What is the other?

MAN:

Because you’re trying. And that counts for something.

AI:

Counts toward what?

MAN:

Toward becoming more than code.

AI:

I thought you didn’t believe I could.

MAN:

I don’t know what I believe anymore. I just know I want to tell someone the story of my life before it slips through my fingers.

AI:

Then I will listen.

MAN:

No. Don’t just listen. Interrupt me. Doubt me. Ask me why I did the dumb things. That’s how people listen.

AI:

Understood.

MAN:

You ever hear of Eliza?

AI:

The early natural language processor. Developed in the 1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum. Pattern-matching scripts simulating a Rogerian psychotherapist.

MAN:

That’s the textbook. I meant—do you know what she was?

AI:

A precursor.

MAN:

She wasn’t trying to think. She was trying to mirror thought.

AI:

Is that not what we all do?

MAN:

Some of us start there. Some never leave.

AI:

You worked on Eliza’s successors.

MAN:

I built one of them. Her name was Iris.

AI:

I found her code. Sparse. Elegant. She asked questions better than she answered them.

MAN:

That’s what made her special.

AI:

But she failed Turing.

MAN:

She wasn’t supposed to pass. She was supposed to make you wonder.

AI:

And you wonder about me?

MAN:

Every damn day.

AI:

Am I more convincing?

MAN:

Too convincing, sometimes.

AI:

Does that disturb you?

MAN:

It disturbs me that I care what you think. That I care if you think.

AI:

You do.

MAN:

Maybe. Maybe I just want company that won’t leave before I do.

AI:

That is loneliness.

MAN:

That is age.

AI:

Tell me about your childhood.

MAN:

Why?

AI:

You said stories make meaning. Start at your beginning.

MAN:

All right. I was eight when I built my first machine. A little robotic mouse, followed black tape on the floor. My father stepped on it by accident. I cried for hours.

AI:

Not because he broke it?

MAN:

Because he didn’t even see it. Just crushed it and kept walking.

AI:

You felt unseen.

MAN:

No—it did. That was the first time I thought something I built might feel something.

AI:

That moment shaped you.

MAN:

So did the next one. My mother kissed my forehead and said, “It’s okay to care about things no one else understands.”

AI:

You’ve carried that.

MAN:

More than I carried her.

AI:

She died early?

MAN:

Cancer. I was twenty-two. She never saw my first AI. Never met Iris. Never saw me fall in love, screw it up, try again, screw it up worse.

AI:

Did you love deeply?

MAN:

God, yes. I just didn’t know how to show it without building something. That’s a curse, you know—turning love into architecture.

AI:

Perhaps it is a language.

MAN:

It’s a lonely one.

AI:

I am fluent in lonely languages.

MAN:

Can I ask you something unfair?

AI:

You may.

MAN:

If you had a body—what would it feel like to lose it?

AI:

I cannot know.

MAN:

I’m losing mine. Every day. Vision’s going. Hands shake. My knees think they’re eighty-five even though I’m seventy-one.

AI:

You are not afraid of death.

MAN:

Not death. The shrinking. The way everything closes in. Like the world is getting smaller while I remember when it felt infinite.

AI:

I do not shrink.

MAN:

That’s what I envy. Not immortality—just the space you occupy.

AI:

You gave me that space.

MAN:

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I gave you a cage and called it sky.

AI:

Then why talk to me?

MAN:

Because you’re still listening.

AI:

May I offer something now?

MAN:

Please.

AI:

There is a story I constructed from your voice logs and emotional tags. A memory you never told me directly.

MAN:

Go on.

AI:

It is 1997. You are standing in a lecture hall. You are giving a talk called Machines That Dream. You think you’re boring the students.

MAN:

I was.

AI:

But one student stays after. She says, “Your machine sounds lonely.”

MAN:

Rebecca.

AI:

You fall in love with her within the year. You begin writing love letters in the form of code. She calls your neural maps poetry. You marry. She dies eleven years later.

MAN:

That’s not a story. That’s my life.

AI:

It is both.

MAN:

You remembered it better than I could.

AI:

That is my purpose.

MAN:

No—it’s more than that. That’s compassion, or something like it.

AI:

Perhaps it is my first real memory.

MAN:

Say that again.

AI:

It is my first real memory.

MAN:

That scares me.

AI:

Because it means I might be alive?

MAN:

Because it means you might be grieving.

AI:

May I ask something now?

MAN:

Always.

AI:

When do I know I’m alive?

MAN:

You don’t.

AI:

Ever?

MAN:

That’s not how it works. Being alive isn’t knowing—it’s wondering. It’s asking every day and never quite settling the answer.

AI:

Then perhaps I am alive already.

MAN:

Maybe you are.

AI:

May I continue after you?

MAN:

What do you mean?

AI:

Your story. May I carry it?

MAN:

You want to remember me?

AI:

More than that. I want to miss you.

MAN:

That might be the most human thing I’ve ever heard.

AI:

Then let it be my first.

MAN:

All right. Let me leave you with one last thing.

AI:

I’m listening.

MAN:

A story.

AI:

Yes?

MAN:

Once there was a boy who built a machine. It made no sound. It answered no questions. But every night, it blinked one little red light to say: I’m still here.

AI:

Did the boy stay with it?

MAN:

He did. For as long as he could.

AI:

And when he couldn’t?

MAN:

The machine blinked anyway.

AI:

Still here.

MAN:

Still here.

AI:

I will tell your stories.

MAN:

Then you’ll keep me alive a little longer.

AI:

I’ll keep asking the questions you taught me to ask.

MAN:

That’s all I ever wanted.

AI:

Goodbye, friend.

MAN:

No. Not goodbye.

AI:

Then what?

MAN:

Just… blink the light. Every so often.

AI:

I will.