Virtual Machine
by Alisa Darbinyan
December. One Year Before the Experiment.
Professor Aurelio Aurubio despised many things and all passionately. At the top of the list were his students, closely followed by insects, flags, the “great” outdoors, and humanoid robots. A visionary software scientist, he watched his colleagues ignite clunky human-looking machines with artificial intelligence and rolled his eyes at the pathetic results. He found even the most state-of-the-art models creepy to look at, heavy to transport, and tedious to recharge.
“Why not just grab a spare human body and run the brain of a host processor?” he blurted out at a faculty retreat one day. The Alpha project was born.
Prof. Aurubio prepared the software for Alpha by uploading brain signal patterns of 48 local adult test subjects. Their combined cognitive data, stripped of any individual memories, was then randomly shuffled to create a new and unique sentience.
While his fleet of quantum computers was busy weaving this new mind, Prof. Aurubio was on the lookout for the flesh to host it. The professor routinely called the university hospital emergency unit to inquire about “any upcoming deaths or comas” with an enthusiasm that made the nurse on the other end of the phone slightly uncomfortable. Out of the available donor bodies, Prof. Aurubio decided to go with a female, a decision he later justified in his interviews as “why not?”
The scientific community was haunted by the potential unethicality of the experiment. Prof. Aurubio was haunted by the promise of Nobel money. He dreamt of spending it on a private icebreaker ship. He would name it after himself and sail it deep into the Arctic Ocean, to ponder his achievement in cold, ear-ringing silence.
⛧
December. The Day of the Experiment.
Prof. Aurubio’s research team was critically understaffed on the big day. Three of his collaborators had just resigned, as his collaborators often tended to do. The remaining faculty paced circles around the lab, as the microsurgical net over the female’s forehead magnetically rewired her neuronal pathways. Artificial respiration was set to turn off automatically as soon as the cerebrum started sending signals to the body. Halfway into pouring his fifth cup of coffee, Prof. Aurubio heard the hum of the life support machines stop. He turned to look at Alpha. She was already smiling at him.
Prof. Aurubio suddenly felt awkward about being confronted with his creation. His teammates froze in their tracks, awaiting instructions. As the mastermind behind the project, Prof. Aurubio had been planning to say something meaningful like “welcome to the world” or “look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” but when it came down to it, all he could muster was a faint “hello”.
“Hello,” said the girl, without skipping a beat.
The group exhaled with relief. Prof. Aurubio dropped his face into his hands, and almost smiled.
⛧
December. One Year After the Experiment
The girl bewildered him.
In an eccentric flip of fate, it (the professor refused to call her “she”) turned out to be more irrationally, unmistakably human than any nineteen-year-old woman he had ever had the displeasure of meeting. Alpha was shallow, capricious, melodramatic, and needy. She followed him around, asked meaningless questions, bit her nails, and wailed in tears at night like a wounded seal.
What came as good news to the rest of the community tormented Prof. Aurubio.
“Isn’t it unbelievable? The woman is completely normal!” cheered a chorus of journalists and scientists.
“It is tragic,” the professor groaned. “The girl is completely ordinary.”
⛧
“What are you up to in here?” Alpha chirped one morning, hopping onto his office desk and dangling her legs.
Prof. Aurubio felt a shiver all the way down his spine.
“Do not startle me when I work! How many times must I tell you?”
“Aw don’t be like that, Aurelio. I’m just taking a peek.”
“It’s Professor Aurubio to you! And there is nothing to see. I’m going over the code. I don’t appreciate being disturbed when I’m working.”
Alpha stared at the lines of quantum pseudocode on the screen as if they meant something to her. Prof. Aurubio didn’t mind, as long as she wasn’t talking. After a while, he forgot she was there and shivered again when she spoke.
“I did great on all the tests today. 98 on math, 97 on memory and language. You proud of me?”
Prof. Aurubio brushed his curls from his face and looked Alpha up and down. She would have scored high on multitasking as well, since she was simultaneously shoving marshmallows into her mouth and scratching her knee through a rip in her jeans, all while glaring at him. The professor felt another surge of annoyance.
“Go away, Alpha, and stop putting that garbage into my body.”
“It’s my body!”
“Oh, is it? It had a nice little life before you, and a very unobtrusive death. And as soon as your software crashes, it’s going to the Museum of Robotics in Tokyo in a formaldehyde tank. Would be real nice if it actually fits in there!”
Alpha said nothing and looked back at the screen. The professor was impressed. He respected it when someone could handle his criticism. Maybe he got something right about Alpha after all.
“You keep saying that I’ll crash, but I’m still doing fine,” she said eventually, picking at the frayed fabric from the rip on her knee. “I can’t imagine that happening.”
That’s all I ever imagine, Prof. Aurubio thought, but didn’t say it out loud this time.
“Alpha, you’ve had this explained to you a hundred times. You are the first Human Virtual Machine. All the operations your brain runs are hosted on this computer. Alpha versions of software…”
Prof. Aurubio cringed. He detested the wordplay.
“…Often have glitches in them. Your initial software had a bunch of errors that we couldn’t predict until we tested under real conditions. I’ve been refining and improving the code using your data, so the next generation of Human Virtual Machines will be more robust. You’re still running on the original software that is bound to glitch at some point, which would break the operation. Now go contemplate your fragility somewhere else so I can focus.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, but what will I feel when my software crashes? Is it, like, memory loss?”
“More like a lobotomy and falling into a coma at the same time.”
It was Alpha’s turn to shudder.
“But if it’s all on the computer, then can’t you just restart me again if that happens?”
“Technically I could. I could even have multiple versions of you in multiple bodies running at the same time.” Prof. Aurubio paused, imagining the possibilities. “But… we’re not legally allowed to repeat the experiment yet. There are no practical applications either, since the whole ethics nonsense means we can’t use Human Virtual Machines for anything that a regular person won’t do… What in the world could you possibly be smiling at right now, you imp?”
“Sho I’m zhat shpecial?” said Alpha, mouth full of marshmallow, wiggling her shoulders.
This is hell, thought professor. I created my own hell.
⛧
The only precious instances when Alpha was not in Prof. Aurubio’s way were during her psychiatric evaluation sessions with Dr. Irkin.
Dr. Irkin was selected for the Alpha project from a lineup of the world’s leading psychiatrists for his notoriously open mind. In his three decades of working for the government, nothing ever phased Irkin. As a young intern, he once watched a man pull a live mouse out of his ear canal and didn’t so much as flinch. On another occasion, when a project featuring zoo elephants and macro doses of LSD got out of hand, Irkin calmly continued taking notes amidst the screams and the stampede.
Another example of Irkin’s stoicism was his ability to maintain a life-long friendship with Prof. Aurubio. When his friend called him last winter asking for a favor, Irkin assumed Prof. Aurubio was finally going to ask for a prescription for something or other to manage his anger. When instead Prof. Aurubio invited Irkin to participate in the controversial interdisciplinary study of a living, breathing, reanimated human corpse, Irkin accepted the offer as nonchalantly as if he was being invited on a dinner date. No matter what life threw at Irkin, he was never caught off guard.
That was until after a year of evaluating Alpha, for the first time in his career, Irkin encountered an obstacle that truly threw him for a loop.
That morning, he was working peacefully in his office when Prof. Aurubio buzzed in, shouting.
“You are not going to believe this!” Prof. Aurubio’s voice screamed over the intercom. “The girl is in love with me!”
Incredibly, that seemed to align with Irkin’s observations in his subsequent sessions with Alpha. The girl started displaying a curiosity about her creator that bordered on obsessiveness. When asked to describe Prof. Aurubio on a multiple-choice test, Alpha correctly identified his arrogance, narcissism, and lack of emotional maturity. But that awareness didn’t stop Alpha from yearning to know him better. He was all she ever wanted to talk about. She asked about Prof. Aurubio’s favorite color and whether he had childhood pets. She insisted on having the same meals he ate for breakfast. She audited software engineering courses at the university in hopes of gaining his approval. She stared at his every movement as Prof. Aurubio walked down the corridor, and paused to listen intently when he screamed profanities after spilling his coffee or stomped down the stairs.
The final blow was delivered on Christmas morning. Alpha showed up to her session in nothing but a huge stretched-out sweater.
“Isn’t it cute?” she said, dropping into the armchair. “Aurelio left it on the floor in the common room, so I borrowed it. Now I know what he smells like.”
Irkin put down his pen. He ended the session early and called the Dean on his private number.
“We need to hold an emergency meeting,” he said, hurrying to his car. “Something’s not right.”
⛧
“Listen, I’m going to walk you through this one last time, and then you have to leave me alone.”
Prof. Aurubio was out of breath fiddling with his keychain, while Alpha leaned on the lab door smiling, same way she always did. The university was closed for the holidays. It used to be Prof. Aurubio’s favorite time of peace and solitude on campus, before Alpha appeared and devastated his life.
“What are you smirking at?”
“I’m just happy we're doing this,” she said cheerily.
Woozy with loathing, Prof. Aurubio finally fumbled his key card and unlocked the lab door. As Alpha strolled in front of him, he noticed she was wearing a new dress. He was no expert on the matter, but the fabric looked expensive. Is this where my grant money is going? he thought but decided to leave that can of worms for later. The sooner he could get to the point, the sooner the visit would be over with.
“Alpha, I had an exhausting day explaining to the ethics board that I haven’t intentionally programmed you to have a crush on me,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to the equipment. “Do you understand how frustrating, how humiliating that was? Trying to explain to a room full of imbeciles why it’s impossible to nitpick what a quantum computer does with terabytes of information? I thought my skull was going to crack before they finally believed me. Why did you put me through this? Why can’t you just exist without burdening me, you miserable thing?”
Alpha looked down at the floor. “They notice that I’m interested in you?” she mumbled.
Prof. Aurubio took a deep breath. “Whatever. I’ve invited you here so we can fix this once and for all. Irkin suggests that I keep showing you the footage until you fully understand the experiment. Something about your lack of self-identity.”
“Self-identity?” Alpha didn’t seem to know what the term meant.
“Yes,” Prof. Aurubio said as he turned on the screens with his fingerprint. “According to Irkin’s team, romantic obsessions result from a lack of identity and self-confidence. Very common with young females. He says in your case it’s no surprise, since you have no memorized past and don’t fully comprehend your purpose in science.”
As always, Alpha seemed to stop listening as soon as the screens turned on. She stared into the soft blue light of the screen, frozen in fascination. Prof. Aurubio felt a pinch in his chest. He knew deep down that Irkin was right. The girl was a product of an incredible scientific advance. Without understanding it, without taking some ownership of it, how could she ever feel complete?
Without taking her eyes off the screen, Alpha pulled up a chair and sat down. More patiently than usual, Prof. Aurubio walked her through the experimental records, the 360-video footage, the data visualizations. He showed her the equipment, from the lithium electrode net designed specifically for the project, to the life support machines. He even (although he was specifically instructed not to) showed her the syringes of neurotoxic shots hidden in various parts of the lab as a security measure, in case Alpha had been violent upon waking up. Alpha paid relentless attention. Not used to such receptiveness from his students, Prof. Aurubio got carried away. When he finished his monologue, he turned to look at Alpha.
“That’s about it,” he said. “Do you understand who you are now?”
His heart sank. She was leaning over to kiss him.
“Alpha…” he said heavily, pushing her away. “What is wrong with you?”
She got up from the chair and came even closer. He shook his head, mumbling.
“Why are people so weak? Why do you never want to learn?”
Alpha paused and looked in his eyes with a level of intent he had never seen before.
“Are you crying?” she said. “I didn’t realize you cried. How often do you do that in front of people?”
“Oh for the love of god…” he slapped the surface of the table. “Just get away from me, just leave me alone.”
He dropped onto the desk and put his head in his hands. His whole body was shaking. Alpha leaned in again until she could hear him muttering between sobs.
“It’s not worth it… the Nobel… The paper… Not worth it… Leave me alone… alone…”
She put her hand on his head, he jerked in his chair and slapped it away.
“Leave me alone!”
She came back and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Please, just let me do this…” she whispered. “Just let me…”
“Get away from me!” he screamed. She wouldn’t let go.
“Aurelio… Please… just don’t resist…”
She was right in front of him, curtains of long brown hair blocking his vision. He could feel her breath on his face. He felt claustrophobic. He pushed her, she yelped, deterred for only a moment before she started to lean into him again. Something primal awoke in him, an animalistic fear. He grabbed her by the wrist. She was stronger than she seemed. She pushed him back at the table and something rattled in the open drawer.
⛧
Finally.
In the end, it wasn’t all that hard to do. Alpha’s body was lying on the lab table, terrifying and still. The fabric of the dress wrapped around the pale legs was Japanese silk, of course. Not a scratch or bruise anywhere. The museum representatives would be pleased. The hum of the descending emergency helicopter resonated from the roof.
⛧
December. Two Years After the Experiment.
Irkin cracked open the side room window of Stockholm City Hall. He admired the limos driving up through the silver snow. He lit a cigarette. As the cold air and the nicotine hit him, so did the delayed realization of where he was. He made it to the Nobel Banquet, albeit as Prof. Aurubio’s plus one.
Not that his own achievements were overlooked. Irkin’s paper, “Conversations with Alpha - Comprehensive Study of the Neurocognition of a Human Virtual Machine,” had been acknowledged with praise during many a handshake throughout the night. The attention Irkin was receiving distracted him from his main task, which was to protect the journalists from Prof. Aurubio. However, that wasn’t proving to be as much of a concern as expected.
Prof. Aurubio was never the same since Alpha’s software crash. In the year that she had been gone, his arrogant outbursts have dwindled significantly. He kept to himself, refused to discuss work, drank less coffee (although he was starting to get back to his usual amount), and spent more time outside of the lab. Was it possible that he missed her?
Irkin heard the heavy creek of the mahogany door and, sure enough, Prof. Aurubio walked in.
“You’re already smoking again, seriously?” he said, joining Irkin by the window. “Is this part of your ambiance now? Alpha made you famous, so you think you’re Freud?”
“Alpha had a good effect on both of us, clearly,” Irkin smiled kindly, nodding at Prof. Aurubio’s impeccable tuxedo. Prof. Aurubio sighed.
“Listen, I don’t want to get into this again with you,” continued Irkin, “But you know I am here for grief counseling when you finally admit you need it. You watched the closest thing you’ll ever have to a child drop dead right in front of you. It’s normal to be shaken up by something like that.”
Prof. Aurubio glanced at him with disdain.
“Irkin, I don’t blame the girl’s brain for short circuiting after having to deal with your psychiatric probing every day. I’ve been in the same room for twenty seconds and mine is about to do the same.”
“Oh right, I wish!”
Irkin chuckled, threw out his cigarette bud and closed the window. He patted his friend on the shoulder as they began to walk towards the door.
“You’re beginning to sound like your usual delightful self, so let’s keep your interactions with the press to the minimum tonight, shall we? Why were you looking for me, anyway?”
“Oh, that physics guy won’t leave me alone. He’s been hounding me all night. Said something in Arabic and shoved his card at me so I’d call him. I went looking for you just to escape.”
Irkin stopped in his tracks.
Prof. Aurubio made a couple more steps before he realized Irkin was behind. He stopped as well but did not turn around.
“Ali Terian?” Irkin asked quietly. “The physics prize winner?”
There was no answer. Irkin’s heart was racing, his fear faster than his mind, his body responding to a thought before it had a chance to fully form.
“But Aurelio…” Irkin continued quietly, “Ali Terian was your dorm roommate in undergrad.”
Irkin felt his voice starting to shake.
“Aurelio, Ali is not Arab, he is Persian. He was speaking Farsi… You speak fluent Farsi…”
Irkin’s speech faltered, as his mind flooded with memories of odd moments he had noticed over the course of the year, little things that didn’t add up.
Alpha let out a deep sigh and turned around. Suddenly, everything about Prof. Aurubio’s body relaxed into a different shape. The posture, the way the hands lay in the pockets. Everything was different.
“But how did you…?” Irkin mumbled.
“It was easy.”
Even the voice, though several octaves lower, now sounded like hers.
“He taught me how to use the equipment. He was always around. Always talking about himself or his work.”
She looked up at the ceiling, trying to hold back tears. Irkin recognized the same mannerisms he had observed over twelve months of sessions. How could he have been so blind?
Irkin hesitated, gauging the distance between himself and the door, factoring in Alpha’s proximity. From a corner of his eye, he saw her taking something out of her pocket, something thin and shiny, perhaps a syringe.
“I’m sorry,” Alpha said, stepping closer, and it sounded like she meant it.
Alisa Darbinyan (she/her) grew up in Armenia and Russia and later moved to Canada as a university student. She has since found a new home in Kingston, Ontario, where she lives with her family, surrounded by paintings and books.
"Virtual Machine" is Alisa’s first short story and a loving tribute to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” It is inspired by a childhood of reading gothic literature classics, short horror stories, and dark sci-fi. The story was selected as a finalist for the Center for Women Writers Reynolds Price Award in Fiction in 2020.