There was a dark office near the top of a skyscraper.
A girl’s body lied on a metal bed in middle of the room, which was also filled with machines and mechanical equipment. Thick metal cables connected the back of her neck to a massive console on a computer nearby. She had a puffy turquoise hair that came down to her neck. Her short height—around 160cm—and her young-looking face made her look like she was in her teenage years, perhaps 17 or 18 years old. She wore a simple, slightly oversized shirt and oversized pair of shorts. She was quite beautiful, with pale skin, big eyes, and small mouth. However, her eyes were shut and she did not move at all, as if she was in a deep sleep.
A man in a lab gown walked into the room. He stared at the girl for a very long time, and then walked to the edge of the office with windows. For the first time in months, he swung open the curtain. Bright sunlight intruded the office, blinding him temporarily. The name tag on his chest reflected the sunlight. It read that his name was William Woo and that he was the head of the android software development department.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the sunlight, allowing him to see his own reflection on the window. His middle-aged face and short black hair with grey here and there made him look older. He also realized his back was slouched. He forcefully opened his chest with a grunt. He then grabbed a comb from his messy desk and fixed his hair. He wanted to cover the dark circles under his eyes as well, but he couldn’t do anything about them.
So why was a man who was stuck in this office for such a long time suddenly trying to look better? Was he trying to go on a date? No. Well, at least not a romantic one. He was preparing to meet someone the first time.
He approached the console and typed text commands into it. The console then displayed bunch of status lines that seemed endless…until it printed:
Activate? Y/N:
William typed Y. He hovered his index finger above the Enter key for a moment hesitantly, and then pushed down on it.
Mechanical buzz echoed in the room as electricity flowed into the metal cables. The buzz got louder and louder as the power increased. William felt like his skin was tingling, as if electricity was jumping across on it.
Then with a loud puff, the buzz died.
All the lights in the entire building went out. Employees and workers shouted and grunted in complaint.
Patrick and Mathieu were among them. They stared blankly at a black screen in front. The work they had been doing for the last two hours was gone with electricity.
Then, finally realizing what happened, the two screamed in unison.
Of course, William couldn’t hear their cries.
William stood calmly. He wasn’t surprised; he needed to use a massive amount of power to power up a self-looping power generator. A moment later, the lights came back on as the power to the building stabilized. Well, the damage had already been done to Patrick and Mathieu’s work, but who cares.
The console displayed:
ACTIVATION: SUCCESSFUL
William ran to the girl and pulled the cords out from the socket on back of her neck. Two skin-like plates slid out and shut the sockets. The plates covered the mechanical parts seamlessly, as if they were never there.
The scientist waited, and waited, and waited…like a father who was waiting for his daughter to wake up after a surgery.
ACTIVATING MODULE: CHORONG
The world was black.
But then, a pair of cameras flickered on and sent signals to the central intelligence module. The module commanded the eyelids to open, and the world greeted Chorong into its arms.
Print(“Hello, world”)
“Hello, world,” she said. Her voice was not humanlike at all; it sounded like an autotune voice, with each note being unnaturally disconnected from the previous one and flowing chunkily.
William did not care about the voice.
He wrapped his arms around her. A storm of emotions swirled inside him. He couldn’t stop his tears escaping his eyes. He sobbed out loud. Memories of Katherine and Bella mixed his brain around.
Chorong stared at him with a stone-neutral face. Her cameras adjusted its aperture, making very small whirring noises.
William looked up, and their gazes met. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking—or if she was thinking anything at all.
But he did not care. It did not matter what she was thinking. It did not matter her voice was not humanlike. It did not matter that she was a robot—an android. He was just thankful for the fact that she was there in front of him, and that her twinkling eyes were staring at him—he was just happy for her existence.
He let go of her and backed up a little.
“Welcome to the world,” William said, sniffling.
“Are you my master?” she asked.
“Yes. Yes, I am your master. I am William Woo. I built you.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm down the storm of emotions a bit. Once the storm did slow down, he added, “And your name is Chorong.”
Chorong stared at him for a bit. Her gaze was enigmatic. Her eyes looked as if they were empty, but there was a twinkle behind them.
“Why was I born?” she asked.
That, William could not answer at once. He had to think. He himself did not really know why he created her. When Katherine…left him and his world, he buried himself into working on Chorong like a madman without really knowing why. He worked like a machine, as if his life was meant to finish the project. It was perhaps the only thing to keep him going.
An answer formed in his head, which he articulated: “You were born to live.”Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
He reached his hand out, as if offering a handshake. Chorong’s gaze went back and forth between the hand and William’s face.
“What does it mean to live?” she asked.
For this question, William needed no time to think; someone had already taught the answer to him.
“Explore the world,” he said, smiling. “Experience things, question things. Choose things.”
Chorong didn’t seem to understand the answer. Her gaze slowly moved onto his hand. Then, she reached her own hand out and grabbed it.
William slowly pulled her, helping her to sit up on the seat. Then, she put a foot forward, stepping down on the floor with her bare feet. William felt like he was watching the first man to be on the moon put out the first step.
Then, Chorong’s next feet came down to the floor.
In less than ten minutes, those two feet were in shoes that William had brought, and those shoes were on a sidewalk between a big street and the skyscraper the two had just came out of. The sunlight shined on her and William so brightly that Chorong had to adjust her camera’s aperture and ISO. William held onto her small hand firmly but gently, as if he would never let go.
William led her across the street, into a park.
Chorong’s logic module ran at its maximum capacity as it stored and processed all the new information she saw and felt. She recognized that she was in a park. She knew what a park was because data about one was inside pre-installed knowledge module. However, she had never actually been to one before, since she was born fifteen minutes ago.
As she walked with William, she looked around. She could see humans walking around with other human beings. Some of them were small, which her logic module labelled as ‘baby’ or ‘child’. She could see tree branches swerving as wind blew. Her tactile sensors in her skin detected the breeze, allowing her to feel the cool, moving air.
Then her auditory sensors caught something. Something was making the air vibrate, but unlike wind or other noises, this one was continuous and artificial.
She stopped walking. William was jerked into a stop since they were holding hands. He nearly fell; he had forgotten how much power P-Series was designed to have. He looked at her. She was staring at somewhere.
“What is this vibration in the air?” she asked.
William instantly knew she was talking about some sort of sound. However, P-Series’s auditory sensors far surpassed the capabilities of human ears, so he couldn’t hear anything.
“Do you want to go see it?” he asked.
Chorong nodded.
“Lead the way,” the scientist said.
Chorong started walking somewhere. William let her pull him along.
As they walked, William started hearing music. It was a light, pop-like rock song, with a male singer backed by an electric guitar. He soon realized they were approaching the back of the park’s stage. Unless there was an event, the stage was usually empty for amateur performers to use.
They turned around a corner, and they were able to see the front of the main stage.
This is where another main character of the story appears for the first time.
A young man sang to a microphone while playing a red electric guitar majestically at the same time. He was a pretty cool, handsome guy in his early twenties. He called himself moderately tall since he was 177cm. His voice was a bit high-pitched for a man, allowing him to sing clean high notes that were being projected out from a speaker connected to the microphone and the guitar. He wore ripped jeans and a t-shirt inside red checkered long-sleeved jacket. There were no one around him except Chorong and William, but nonetheless, he sang so hard that sweat rolled down his cheek. He was not discouraged by a nearly empty hat to the microphone stand that only had a few coins inside. His eyes were closed to focus solely on his performance.
In the middle of the singing, the man finally opened his eyes, and then flinched when he realized a girl was squatting less than half a meter in front of him, staring into his face. His music abruptly stopped.
“Holy crap, you scared me,” he said; his voice projected out from the speaker. He turned it off so he could hear her. The only people listening to him was only the girl and a man who looked like her dad, anyway.
“What are you doing?” she asked in an autotune-like voice.
The busker frowned. He took a closer look at the middle-aged man behind her, and realized he was wearing a lab gown. The name tag on the gown had a logo, same as the one the skyscraper across the park had. He looked back at the girl. He leaned forward and looked really, really deep into her left eye. He caught a glimpse of a camera lens adjusting its aperture behind the human-like iris.
“You’re a robot?” he asked.
“What are you doing?” she asked again.
“Me? Oh, uh, I’m playing music.”
“Why?”
“Well, I enjoy it.”
“Why?”
“Huh? Well, uh, I guess it’s human instinct? It’s a form of art.”
“Why?”
The busker looked into her eyes, not sure if she was seriously curious or not. Her face was neutral; it hadn’t changed ever since he first saw it.
William grabbed Chorong’s shoulders gently. He smiled at the busker. “I’m sorry. She’s a bit new to this world.”
“No worries. Sir, she’s good. I genuinely thought she was an actual girl. I thought this kind of stuff was only possible at, uh...”
“Mi-Ray?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“May I try it?” Chorong said abruptly.
Both William and the busker looked at her. She was pointing at the busker’s guitar.
“Uh, sure,” the busker said. He slowly passed the guitar to her.
William felt his gut hunching, as if something bad was going to happen.
She put on the guitar strap and held the guitar just like how the busker had. The busker was surprised how well she held it even though it must be her first time. She strummed the guitar—she strummed it so hard that it was louder than when the speaker was on.
Before the busker could stop her, she strummed the guitar one more time. This time, the guitar made only much lower sounds. Chorong’s force had ripped the three thinner strings.
“Give the guitar back, Chorong!” William commanded.
Chorong passed the guitar back to the busker. He examined the guitar with extreme worry, trying to see if there were any more damages.
“I’m so sorry, young man,” William said sincerely.
The busker turned on the guitar amp and played the low strings. He let out a sigh of relief when the remaining three strings still played their sounds well.
“Thank god, she didn’t damage the bridge. I think it’s just the strings,” he said.
“Say sorry, Chorong,” William scolded.
“I’m sorry,” Chorong said, still with a neutral expression.
William handed the young man a lump of cash, probably more than enough for a pack of new guitar strings. The young man rejected it at first, but then conformed and accepted it. The man packed up his equipment and left.
The two main characters would later meet again—but let’s come back to present.
Chorong turned to William and asked, “Why did I have to say sorry?”
William could tell that she wasn’t being sarcastic or being rebellious; she was genuinely curious.
“You damaged his guitar. It’s probably something very precious to him. When you damage people’s things, they get hurt,” William answered.
“What does hurt feel like?”
William didn’t answer right away. He was surprised, because Katherine had asked the exact same question.
Chorong stared into her master’s face. His expression told her that he was having a hard time to generate an answer. She knew the concept of hurt, but she didn’t really understand what it felt like. She decided it would be better to rephrase the question.
“What does pain feel like?” she asked.
Suddenly, for William, an image of Katherine’s face overlapped on top of Chorong’s. He remembered his daughter wearing the patient’s gown in the hospital, lying on the bed, with hundreds of wires and tubes connected to her body.
William slapped himself, forcing himself to escape the train of memories. Chorong only slowly tilted her head, expressing her curiosity.
Without any warning, he flicked a finger on Chorong’s forehead. The robot rubbed where she got hit as if it throbbed.
“How did that feel?” he asked.
“…Not pleasant.”
“That’s just a small taste of what pain is.”
“But Master, I do not understand. You inflicted pain directly on me. I damaged the busker’s guitar, but not on him himself. Why does he feel pain?”
William put an index finger on side of Chorong’s head. “You can feel pain here,” he said. He then moved the finger to her left chest. “And here.”
Chorong tilted her head again, expressing incomprehension. Her eyes stared into William’s. He felt as if she was trying to read his soul.
Quietly, William put his hand on Chorong’s head and rubbed it lightly, wrangling her hair.
“You may not understand it now, but it’s something you will eventually understand,” William said. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her. Within his heart, he prayed that she won’t have to understand what pain is, ever.
Unfortunately, she would, just like any person in this world.