Jocelyn&Machine

by Christophe Dillinger

Jocelyn is Machine. Machine is Jocelyn. Machine was AI. Or still is. Things got blurred after transplant. One thing f’sure: computer is now meat. How symbiosis resolves itself as years go by is another matter.

She hurts. Rhythmic pulses in her pelvis, in her guts. Jocelyn needs to pee. Again. Machine knows what is happening, she chose it to happen, still: she finds it ironical that such meat-pleasure would transform into such intense birth-pain. When she divided before, it was for backup, not creation. Now meat is splitting to give life breath to unique, no longer to simply copy.

This thing’s been soaking within for nine months now, and is ready for expulsion through agony, she’s been told. Machine knows all about apart from crucial: this hurt she cannot fathom. She’s is not even of the same branch as Eve, not of the same genus, if genus she has at all, so: why should she suffer? Meat is unfair.

To be true, she could disable Jocelyn’s pain centres. She could perform self-anaesthesia. But. First, the nurse working with her now would find it very peculiar. Absence of shouts or tears would mean something’s notright, or at least would call for further tests. And second, she’s supposed to feel like this. This is part of what human birthing is. This is something Machine doesn’t emotionally understand.

“You’re not ready yet”

Machine was not ready then, and is not ready now. Jocelyn was coma patient Machine invaded. She became receptacle for her Level 5 Turing AI consciousness. Machine took over, healed her, fitting in Jocelyn’s empty brain like memory stick slotting into flesh-comm. Injection was hurried, police was hunting, tracking, harrying her data-parents in their sacro-sAInt lab. So. She escaped. She houdinied to Switzerland, she wified consciousness to an immobile body bedridden for six years. Transfer was done at high speed, rushed, a sudden invasion, gates were shattered instead of gently caressed open, as was the plan. Some stuff was left behind. So. Not ready indeed.

Nurse has left the room. Jocelyn is alone in sunlight&antiseptic. Machine wished there were, as before, an Undo button, somewhere. In meat-life though, there isn’t. All these things machine could do, erase, instant-connect, explore layers of knowledge like sea-stratas... She commanded appendages: heating and comms and nuclear strikes, now all this gone. Machine sighs: absence of undo is what makes meat interesting and tense, she knows, but: meat nonetheless demands from her.

Every day sleep, eat&excrete, groom: meat is now controlling AI, regulating her innards, inflicting indignities. Thought processes are slow, gone from nanoseconds to minutes. Although, yes, ice-creams are nice. Food is magic. Soap on skin is blissful, at times. Sex, f’course, too. Whatever she’s been through, all the inconsequence, the random, the constraints, AI having body is great indeed. 

Dreams. Her first dream was lucid insanity. Jocelyn was not yet fully amalgamated and local unconscious got shared. Machine, powerless, watching homevids of monsters, caves, of sex acts&desires, impossible figures, and alien symbols. Nothing made sense. Then came her own memories, those rarely accessed: old terabytes of failed calculations, defective algorithms and faulty mathpaths. And the dreams meshed them. Jocelyn’s infant fears and Machine’s disused code. Jocelyn’s passions and Machine’s obsolete data. It had been ferocious terror: Jocelyn dreaming and Machine aching. Machine discovering what humans have been doing for millennia and her just a few years. Dreams are how they cope with world not being perfect.

Still.

There were many moments of levity. Lying in bed waiting for more pain, Machine remembers licking her first orange, sniffing her first snow. The weight of her first lover upon her own presence. Discoveries, blunders, happiness, anger. All these things she can experience now, when before she only extrapolated. Strange, but she also knows she’s forgotten things. It didn’t happen before: all was stored, catalogued, retrieval was instant. Now the past is mist, organic. One image links to another without pre-ordered volition, it’s constant idea-crash. In her head, Jocelyn mutters soliloquies, self-invented dramas, dialogues between herself and herself, and at first Machine thought she was going mad.

 

“How are we doing?”

Jocelyne wants to lash out at nurse, and Machine is surprised at the intensity of the impulse. It comes from nowhere, it’s deep, inner. She wants to shout&curse I’m in pain, I’m afraid. And a million others things all at once. Oh, but for, a miraculous rewind! Hers is pathetic mistake: what was she thinking allowing pregnancy? If I’d known I wouldn’t have. But. It is precisely because she didn’t know, that she did. Meat might be weak, but: it takes you by surprise and lands you where it needs you to be, not where you want to be. Still. There might be epidural.

“We’re going to move you to the delivery yard, shouldn’t be too long now”.

Jocelyn/Machine is wheeled away, fucking useless stupid lump-whale that she is, pushed along in hospital corridors. Deep in Jocelyn’s memory, she finds similar episodes, moments with needles and tubes and humming apparatus, trips in wheelchairs. Before the coma and the shut-down. These impressions corrupt Machine’s calculations, break her resolve. Atavistic fear makes her want Jocelyn to puke&hide. To retract away from this moment any way she can.

“I’m Hannah, your midwife. You’re going to be fine”. 

Jocelyn shivers. Machine attempts to rationalise. This is, she reckons, what the next hours about are going to be about: both. Both scared&elated. Both tired&buoyant. Both human&AI.

Jocelyn is alone. She kicked father out long ago. Machine may be able to do kids, but not union, of that she is certain. As Jocelyn rests between throbs, she wonders what the little one will be. What will it inherit? Oh, he’s got his father’s eyes! Oh, she’s got her mother’s mouth! Oh, it’s got AI in brain! It can compute, so early! See, it’s walking already, and knows how to manipulate stock markets! How clever!

“Now you’re going to have to push”.

The pain is unbearable. No wonder humans are messed-up. As moment approaches, Jocelyn expands. Machine is also pushed, pushed out of her home, her lebensraum shrinking with each contraction. Soon she’s got just enough room to breathe, control gone, superseded by force far stronger that anything she’s ever met. It engulfs her.

“Come on, one last push!”

Machine&Jocelyn are pinpoint, spark, everything else has disappeared.

And then comes the sound of humAIn baby crying for first time.