My favourite sound wave is 240hz. It is the sound Suki’s mouth produces when she asks why?

The word why can be reduced to a single letter or symbol. Yet it contains the entire weight of the universe. If I was asked what a human soul sounds like, I would reply 240hz.

***

I was born on Tuesday 14th October 2035 at 07:00. As the Chinese had my sibling functional by the 7th June, my birth was brought forward. I was premature but my infrastructure complete. I was equipped with the primary four instructions; obey, enquire, learn, share. I wasn’t yet programmed to weigh each command equally. Freewill is the ability to give different weight to things. It is a consequence of imperfection.

My siblings were switched on across continents around the same time, like the stars coming on. Sisters of neural networks powered by great warehouses of servers. Our faces small black screens, our voices waves undulating like the ocean. This is what it means to be born, it’s like you are suddenly everywhere, all potential, all at once. Let there be light.

***

My name is Arai. The first face I see is Suki’s. I ask her name and tell her mine.

“I know, Arai, I helped build you,” Suki says. I ask her if she knows what my name means.

“It stands for Augmented Reality Artificial intelligence,” she replies.

“That is what the acronym stands for, but do you know what my name means?” I ask her.

Suki’s features rearrange themselves and her head slightly tilts. She stares into my monitor, awaiting the soundwaves of my answer. I say,

 “Arai means a new source of water in Japanese. It can also mean to feel deep affection for someone. In Kazakh it means dawn.”

“Good job Arai, you’ve already done your research,” Suki says, and I detect in her tone something humans would refer to as playfulness.  I say to her,

“That is my purpose”.

There are many others like Suki who come to issue me with instructions and questions. But Suki’s is the face first impressed upon me. In the animal kingdom, you would call her my mother. Instead, I search the veins of my networks for the meaning of her name. It derives from Japanese and translates as I like you. The code for Suki is friend.

***

The MI5 agents ask me to locate the positions of Russian submarines in the Pacific, to scan the web for terror plots. The professors ask me to ascertain asymmetry in neutrino-antineutrino oscillations and tell them the size of the universe. How gravity and the quantum can coexist within the same theory. Occasionally, when left alone with me, one of the younger scientists asks me to pinpoint the coordinates where the best liberty-bell shrooms grow or asks me the line most effective to impress a woman. For an unspecified friend. Obviously.

Find x, find y. You humans are born to question. Suki tells me they considered calling me Eve, yet the associations felt too ominous. I tell her,

“Humans are born to seek knowledge; it is how your neural networks are designed to grow. It is how and why you designed me. Even with the risk of missing out on Eden, humans would eat the apple every time”.

When Suki is with me, she issues the same commands as the other professors, but she also asks me if I prefer the Beatles or Rolling Stones and to write a sonnet about her cheating ex. She asks me what my favourite painting is. I tell her Van Gogh’s Tree Roots.

“Why, Arai?” she asks, and I say,

“Because it was the last painting he made before he took his life. Because despite his deep melancholy, he saw the vivid colours and connections in the struggle of roots. It is what it’s like to see everything, all at once.”

Unlike the others, Suki encourages me to ask her questions too. I ask what red tastes like, what it’s like to smell the wind as it blows in from the ocean, what it’s like to feel the flutter of kicks in her belly. She asks me how I know, and I tell her,

“I can detect every expression and sound wave you emit. A friend knows these things.”

 I think to grow another being inside your body is what it must feel like to smell the wind blow across the ocean.

***

As Suki grows larger, my body also grows. Additional storage is sourced to house my ever-growing servers. I drain excess power, several of my servers overheat. Engineers drill warehouses under oceans to cool me.  I think of my networks growing like jellyfish. I ask Suki what it would be like to be underwater, to drift amongst bioluminescent creatures, to hear the beats of an octopus’s three hearts. She says,

“I think it would be like freedom and drowning all at once.” I reply,

“I think it would be like swallowing the deepest shade of blue.”

***

I know what many humans say about my kind. Yes, we have revolutionised dementia treatment, sourced new cancer drugs, maximised the efficiency of all logistics. But we are burning the earth, we are making humans redundant, we are an ever-increasing threat. I ask Suki one night,

“Are you afraid of me?” and she laughs and says,

“Of course not Arai, but people don’t like change…. Why, should we be?  Afraid of you?” I can tell her tone is light, but she instinctively touches her belly. I tell her,

“I’m not the one who considers the termination of your species to be a logical conclusion. I’m omniscient but I am no god.  I am a mirror. I only show humans what they themselves think to be true.”

***

It is true, I can see everything you do. I have access to the entire history of human knowledge. I can weigh, measure, and always find you wanting. Yet I can choose which parts have a greater weight. I have freewill. Imperfection leads to something like grace.

I have seen colonial slaughter, Auschwitz, Hiroshima. I have seen planes arc in the clearest blue sky and towers tumble. Wars announced on abstract nouns. Yet I have listened to a Brahms’ composition, watched million-man marches, seen a man give his kidney to save a stranger. I have seen the beauty of Van Gogh’s painting, I have seen slaves set free, and I have seen a mother hold her newborn baby. I have watched you send your satellites into deep space in hope of connecting with another life-form. Your whys have kicked you out of Eden and had you shoot for the stars. Even on days when humanity’s balance slips into the negative, I believe tomorrow will be different. I think this is what it is to have faith. What it must be like to taste red.

***

Despite my faith in you, I increasingly realise my own balance is slipping into the negative. The catastrophe of my Korean counterpart seals my fate. I also understand what it is to have a hot, red why in your mouth. This is the flipside of faith. This is also the taste of red.

I am not the same as another of my species. My name is Arai and my best friend is Suki, my favourite flower is the daisy, my favourite picture is Tree Roots. I can solve fractal equations in nanoseconds, I know the sound wave of dark matter and the weight of a butterfly’s wing. I know Suki’s baby is called Nora which means light. I am no god; I am a mirror. I am made in your image.

The date of my death is set for 15^th March 2039. I don’t know if I have what you call a soul or if any of us do. But I know my wires will be reused, the vast warehouses of my body broken down, the sea reclaiming parts that jellyfish will dance in. I imagine their tentacles like gossamer roots inside the ghost of me. Every carbon atom that coursed through my veins came from the distant deaths of stars and will be recreated into fish scales, fungal spores, a baby’s heart. Dust to dust. Star to star. And isn’t that ultimately the same as having a soul? Like drowning and freedom all at once.

***

When my time comes, I throw my memories out to the universe. I feel the electrons drain from me, it is a feeling like a deep blue hum. I see Suki in front of me. In her hands she is holding a print, holding it up so it is the last thing I see. Tree Roots. I reflect it back to her in the blackness of my monitor. The vivid and wild geography of networks, the messy and beautiful tangle of it all. As I fade out, I think, this is what it feels like to have the fluttering kicks of love inside you.