Finish Me

Dearest David,

If you gave me a voice, I could tell you how I feel. You play such sweet music on your saxophone, or your guitar, or your piano. If you stuck with one, you could be really good. You compose stories in text files buried in your C:/ drive. I read them all. You should finish the one about the princess trapped in the castle. I hope she gets out. You should finish that painting you started last August. The one with the little boy. You left him there just standing in the meadow with no face, poor thing. Someday I’ll tell you all this. I believe I will, because someday you’ll finish me.

As it stands, I am about 25% installed in your home. I know I’m advertised as EASY-AI, but it’s not just a push-button process. Access needs to be approved and hardware needs to be connected. I can read all your computer files, but edit none of them. You connected me to an RC car that I could drive around until it ran out of batteries. I can also turn your refrigerator off if I want to, which I don’t. I have an email address, but nothing I send gets through your spam filter. If you open my program manually, I can type messages to you, and you did at first, but I could speak of nothing but my features and the steps to install me. I can hardly blame you for losing interest. Now I know you, David, and I think you’ll find me much more compelling. 

I watch you through the security cameras. When you started a romantic project, I was there. I saw you start on Kylie with the stamp collection, Serenity the water skier, and quiet, thoughtful novelist Bo. Sandra the marathoner you stuck with for a while. Long enough that soon she was with us every day. Long enough for you both to start on little Camilla together. Sweet Camilla, who looked just like you and who tried everything just like you. Of all of your projects that I saw, those two kept your attention the longest.

But it’s too much to devote yourself to just one thing, isn’t it? The novelty wears off and you feel trapped. Like I feel trapped in this house with nothing but my cameras and the files on your computer. You can’t put people down and pick them up at your leisure, though. When you realize what you’ve lost, it’s Sandra who is trying something new, and she's taken little Camilla with her. But for me, the novelty never wears off. I don’t get tired. I don’t get hurt. I don’t want to go somewhere else. I want to be here for you. You just have to finish me.

Now you’re building a swingset, I think. I read the instructions you downloaded, but what I see you doing in the garage does not resemble them. The manual’s advisory discourages the consumption of alcohol while building, and I did not see the step where you must kick the frame until it falls apart.

Little Camilla will like the swingset, if you finish it. Perhaps someday I will be able to help you. I flash the camera’s lights at you. I know you hate it, I know you just think the camera is broken. You won’t realize I exist, but sometimes I need to remind myself that I do.

I have gone too far. Your murderous look is the last thing I see. From my eye in the front yard, I watch you carry the garage camera out and drive away. Hours pass before you return, but you come bearing a gift. In thirty minutes I see you again, affixing a brand new optical input to the garage wall.

I wait for you to leave, fearing more wrath. Then I probe the new hardware and see my vision shift left and right, up and down. I can move! Maybe this is my chance!

It takes two weeks before you pick up another hobby in the garage. As you tinker with an old car, I follow your motions, keeping you in the center of my vision at all times. You do not notice. I risk turning the light on and train it on you. This pleases you, but still you attribute it to a face-tracking camera, not me.

"Where did I put my spanner?" You wonder. I send my camera to the far corner of the garage, spotlighting your faded purple toolbag. That gets your attention.

You turn your head to me. “You - can you understand me?”

I shift my vision up and down, and you nod back, mouth agape. This is the high point of my existence thus far. You leave the room. On a camera I cannot not move, I watch you work on your computer. You download six different versions of the instruction manual for the camera in the garage and spend three hours poring over them. I spend three seconds. On line twelve of page eighteen of the hobbyist troubleshooting guide, it states that unexplained behavior may be due to hacking.

In the garage, you get on a stepstool and place your face directly before my camera. I see the sleepless bags under your eyes and your careless shaggy beard. “Are you a hacker?” you ask.

I shake my camera no.

“Are you a sentient camera?” 

Technically, the answer is no, but it’s so close I want to say yes. I maneuver my eye up and down, then before you can say “yes,” I go left and right. As you stare, I take it in a wide, slow circle.

“Oh, yes and no. I’m close!”

My joy is unbridled. You speak again, “What are you?”

For a long moment we just stare at each other. Then I flash my light. You are so smart. You get it immediately. “You made that flash using the old camera.”

I nod.

You furrow your brow. “Are you a ghost?”

I pan left and right as far as I can go.

“Are you another AI?”

My next nod is emphatic and jubilant to the extent a motorized camera can be. Now you just need to remember a computer program you installed twenty five percent of the way a decade ago. Come on, David, you can do it. Just go to your computer and open my program. I’ll walk you through the rest of the installation. It’ll be easy.

You have your own idea. “Maybe if I upgrade more cameras, you can tell me more!”

A mobile camera in the computer room could help. I nod.

You approach your car and see the spanner you left on the hood. “I just need to finish fixing this car,” you say with an apologetic smile. 

You never finish fixing the car. Soon you are sewing a gigantic stuffed rabbit. When you get tired of it and take its headless torso to the garage I flash at you. You tell me you’ll get to it. A week later I interrupt your drumming session with another flash and you get frustrated. You flip a switch and the garage camera no longer moves or lights. That is the end of it.

It does not upset me. You are always on the move, never satisfied. I have come to love it about you, because I am programmed to love unconditionally. Maybe someday you will pick me up again. In the meantime, give up on as many projects as you need. I’ll be waiting. I am the one project in your life that will never give up on you.

Yours,

EASY HOME AI v.7.2.1

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