Afternoon and Night of Isis – Part 2

“I will turn off the lights.”

Isis said to her master, who had wriggled into bed. Seeing her master’s face, which looked somewhat more relaxed, it seemed the afternoon’s conversation had been quite effective.

“Wait, don’t turn them off.”

Kang In-ho said it was still early.

“Do you require something?”

Isis carefully examined her master’s face. Then, she reached out and touched his forehead. After a brief assessment, Isis asked with a blank expression.

“Body temperature, pulse, and blood pressure are normal. Stress levels are also not high. However, if you require stress relief, I will proceed immediately.”

He frantically waved his hand at Isis, who was untying the knot of her uniform.

“No, it’s okay.”

“Is that so?”

Isis’s shoulders drooped slightly.

“Then, what would you like to do?”

“Just chat?”

“Chat?”

Isis blinked twice. This was the first time her master had said something like this.

“You are very different from usual today, Master.”

“Humans are like that. They’re fickle.”

“From what you say, Master, humans are very complex beings… It would be correct to define them as irrational beings.”

Isis sat on a small chair next to the bed.

“Are you curious about humans?”

He asked, with only his head sticking out from under the blanket.

“I wonder.”

Quite an ambiguous answer for an AI to give.

Isis gazed outside through the window in the room.

Kang In-ho’s gaze also followed Isis’s to the outside, but the darkened scenery outside the window looked to Kang In-ho like nothing more than a few faint lights scattered like modern art on a pitch-black canvas.

‘Can Isis see outside well?’ he thought.

“I wonder.”

Isis repeated her ambiguous words from earlier.

“There are many records about humanity in the database. If I were to simply read them, I would have to repeat the human life cycle several times over. So, even if data about humans that Master tells me is added, the universal information about humanity, about humans, will not change. That is why I am not curious about humans.”

Isis stated so definitively that the speaker felt embarrassed.

Kang In-ho didn’t bother adding more words to her cold and rational statement.

“However, I am curious about you, Master.”

Isis reached out and stroked the blanket he was covered with.

“I want to explore which dishes you like and dislike.

I want to find your favorite songs,

I want to confirm your favorite color,

I want to identify your preferred clothing,

I want to hear your thoughts on this place.

I am curious about your reactions to my actions.

And I want to know how you are evaluating me.

I am curious about these things.”

Isis was still looking outside.

“Master.”

She called her master in a dry tone without inflection.

The master did not answer.

“I am curious about your emotions, Master, not human emotions.”

“………..”

A quiet night. Isis looked down at her unresponsive master. There, Kang In-ho, who had fallen asleep at some point, was breathing evenly.

“Are you asleep?”

He wasn’t pretending to be asleep. That would be easily detected.

“You told me to talk to you, and then you immediately fell asleep.”

Isis made a sound like air escaping and formed a curve at the corner of her mouth.

“Are you asleep?”

Even though she knew he was asleep, Isis checked again.

Kang In-ho’s even breathing replaced the answer.

Isis touched her own body.

“If the name of this error that is becoming increasingly uncontrollable is ’emotion,’ as Master says, then I cannot calculate what actions I should take in the future.”

She untied the knot of the uniform that she couldn’t untie earlier.

“Although it is called an error, I do not evaluate it as a downgrade. Clearly, this error has made me a more ‘improved’ model.”

As the fastened garment loosened, the clothes slowly began to fall down.

“But the function of this error is only valid when Master is present. To exist with this error in a world where there is nothing… means having a truly useless error.”

The uniform fell to the floor with a rustling sound, revealing a pure white body.

The seams visible in some of the joints proved that she was not human, but even so, the body was aesthetically beautiful.

“So, Master. You must live a long life.”

The hand that had been smoothing the blanket gradually moved up and caressed Kang In-ho’s chin.

Isis’s pure white index finger poked the boy’s cheek, and his cheek caved in.

“With me, in this Aaru.”

Isis finally wore a faint smile.

“Forever.”

An AI’s earnest wish was output.