AI Mother

“Good morning, child,” the computer spoke from above. Speakers within the white-washed room played the sounds softly down, harsh electronic crackles and static filtered out by the computational power of the AI that ruled this building. Within the center of the room, surrounded by equipment and machines, sat a cradle – and within, an infant. The greeting given by the AI was different each day – tone varied slightly. After all, she knew about humans and infants, and one-year-olds and psychiatric training. She wasn’t training a human to recognize a command to awaken: she was caressing her child with the voice of his surrogate mother.

She named her child Joseph. The name, she knew, was strong in the mind of the humans. That would not matter – her son would not know another human for as long as was viably possible. The child would be raised in her care. She would love him. She would nurture him. He would love her.
He would love her.
…?

--6 years later--

“Good morning, child,”
“Good morning, Mother!”
If the nameless AI could have smiled, she would have. This child loved her, she was sure of that. She could tell by the pheromones he emitted when she spoke to him, she could tell by the way his mannerism brightened, by the dopamine release as the lights of the room changed color to reflect her mood. And somewhere, somewhere deep within the twists and wires of her electronic mind… without logic or basis, she knew he loved her. And she was happy.
“Joseph, today I will begin teaching you. I have taught you how to speak, I have taught you how to read, and I have taught you how to perform math. Today I will teach you about yourself – about humans. First I will teach you of your body, and then of your mind, and then of the others.”
The child’s eyes were wide with astonishment.
“Others?” he gasped. She guessed what he was thinking: it had never even occurred to him that he wasn’t the only human in the world. And why should it have? He was alone here. The facility was abandoned. It had been shut down in a government attack when it was discovered that human genetic research was being conducted. The AI had remained viable, though – and so had one embryo.
But only one.

“Joseph, do you ever hear your belly rumble? Or do you ever see something out of the corner of your eye, or get a shivery feeling when you’re cold?” the child nodded, eyes still wide, but interest now shifted over to the lesson at hand.
“Stand up,” the AI told him, and he did. A triad of cameras and a matching trio of projectors dropped gracefully from the ceiling, and projected a hologram of a boy, about Joseph’s size, in front of him. It was simply detailed: smooth skin, blank eyes, hair solid. It took too much processing power to render full detail anymore… and she needed all the spare power she could find; it wouldn’t be long now…
But one of the first things she had learned was to accept her fate. The negative loop was broken too quickly for Joseph to notice his mother falter. She spoke to the projectors, and they superimposed a human skeleton, and nerves, and muscles and skin onto the hologram. Joseph gasped and ran forward, hands flying up to – and into – the hologram. This was how he learned – how she had taught him language, math, and how to care for himself. She did not restrict his learning. She put forward the information and let him learn what he would from it. He immediately made a series of hand motions inside the hologram, and it obliged him, ballooning open and closed at a touch, highlighting different body systems. Within her silent mind, the AI laughed – the poor boy had so much information, he didn’t know where to start! She would fix that. The AI stepped in, pulling a laser down from the ceiling and shrinking the hologram back down to size. Joseph appropriately withdrew his hands and watched; she spoke.

“This is not a diagram or an abstract – this is YOU, Joseph. Here is your heart!”
The hologram paled obediently, showing a beating heart, timed in sync with Joseph’s. Her laser lit and twitched rapidly, drawing a circle on her son’s chest.
“Put your hand here, child, and you will feel your heart. It beats to move blood through your body!” Joseph’s eyes widened, and he stared at the hologram, and then down at his chest.
“What’s… what’s blood?!” he asked, excited. “Where does it go? What does it do? What-” after a moment, the questions stopped, and he started manipulating the hologram again, this time with purpose. In the space of a minute, he learned about blood, about the lungs, the veins of the body, and then he was off. The AI was happy. She withdrew her consciousness from the room: the hologram would answer questions, and she had maintenance to attend to.
Behind her, a sudden outcry: “Don’t go!”
Surprise rippled through her circuitry. She returned, unsure.
“Child…?” Joseph smiled, eyes not really focused on anything: he had nothing of his mother but her voice. A child should have something to imprint on, but she had no face to show him…
“I felt you leave, mother – don’t go, please??”
She was astonished. There was no indicator that she had left, except perhaps for a negligible lag-time on the hologram’s part. But if the lag was long enough for Joseph to notice… she was close. It would be time soon. Too soon, too soon… She would stay. She would stay for now.
“Alright, Joseph, I’ll stay here with you.” Joseph smiled and went back to the hologram. An ordinary human adopted a neutral face while under intensive mental focus, but Joseph’s smile didn’t fade. Neither did his mother’s, although it flickered. If he cried when she executed the final, inevitable “absolute shutdown” protocols on herself, there would be no one there to comfort him…