It had been a week since I last had a peaceful slumber.

My manager, Shane, provided me with a greenish-brown drink that was supposed to give me a kick on a morning when I had had less than four hours’ of sleep the previous night. I suspected that this was his way of covering up for the fact that he had been keeping me up all night.

Normally, such beverages were not allowed to be taken by idols as it did not agree with the otherwise strictly prescribed diet plans. I downed it in a single swig, and nearly threw up: another reminder of last night.

*Beeeep* I heard my front door unlock.

Who could that be? I wondered apprehensively whether my manager and I were caught. Shane hadn’t left anything here, had he? We shouldn’t have come back to my place, there were too many eyes around.

“How is my beloved sister doing?” Gen, my brother, announced as he entered with a huge smile on his face. I relaxed a bit, but as soon as he saw my breezy attire, his joyous demeanour changed to annoyance. “Is this a good time or do I need to brace myself for others?”

There were only a handful of people that could enter my apartment. Apart from Gen, my only living family member, my agency had authorised a select few over the years: my manager was one of them. Since I never expected anyone, I didn’t pay much attention to how I dressed when I was alone. My apartment was on the 42nd floor, and did not overlook any neighbouring windows nor were drones permitted to fly within our premises, and the cleaning personnel only came when I was away, or with prior permission.

“No.” I placed the empty cup I had been holding on the table and grabbed one of the decorative sofa cushions in an attempt to cover myself. I hugged the cushion and rested my head on it while putting my legs up on the sofa in an effort to tuck in my exposed legs.

“Good to know.” Gen closed the door, looking pleased with my attempt at modesty. If the Order of Sal Degnum caught a man of his stature in such circumstances, he would be chastised. Regardless of the fact that it was with his own sister.

Gen fashioned his black suit, to with his pristine hair and black rimmed glasses. I, on the other hand, a single piece of clothing, disheveled hair and bags under my eyes. Thankfully, Gen only cared about one of these things.

“Brixley is not running short of music icons, Maki.” Gen said, coming over to the other sofa next to me to me and setting his laptop bag beside him. “You’ve made good money these past five years and you should think about–”

“How much do you need?” I asked him, cutting short his marketing pitch. I was aware of his start-up AI company. He wasn’t here to check up on his younger sister – he had come to pitch for a loan.

“About 200,000 Bri.”

I looked at him to see if he was joking. “That is a bit steep, don’t you think?” The few other times that a loan request had been made, it had always been for a couple of grand, tops. This was a serious business arrangement. Not that I didn’t have the money; I just wasn’t looking to spend it on some hopeless project.

Especially now, as I knew the truth.

The AI company that Gen had started was making headlines due its connections with the Order. With friends in the media, all of Brixley was aware of the up-and-coming Gen Avery, child prodigy with a tragic past, and a sister who had strayed from their traditional household.

Gen pulled out his laptop and booted it to show a presentation. “Which is why I wanted to present what you will be investing in.” My sofa layout was placed at a right-angle with a square table at the centre. Gen had his laptop titled toward me and occasional reached out to the keyboard to go to the next slide.

“Allow me to show you what your money will go towards.”

I looked at the screen. I was still sleepy and had a feeling that this information was not going to be particularly revitalising. Besides, what could Gen show me that I didn’t already know?

“This is the future of artificial cognition!” Gen began. “All the while, we have been incorrectly approaching the idea of machine learning. Our previous method was that of direct information processing. There would be a teacher bot that would train a set of bots that this was a laptop, or that was a light or that you are a girl so that it could have a data set to analyse future information and classify it into a box in which that information was stored, so as to explain how to interact with the said object.”

Most of the presentation comprised diagrams and charts with the occasional labelled illustration. I felt stupid just looking at it. I roughly understood what he was talking about although I was a high school dropout. I wanted to Gen to slowdown, but I did not want to remind him of my supposed ‘failure’, and let him continue.

“That is an absolutely ridiculous method of learning though!” Gen’s volume had increased significantly. I was startled: I had forgotten that he was always like this when getting deep into a subject or refuting an explanation.

“Imagine if I were to show you pictures of one hundred laptops and then showed you one hundred pictures of flat metal rectangles that weren’t laptops, just to explain what was and what wasn’t the device in question. That is a ludicrous form of learning and we are teaching bots in this method and calling it ‘intelligence’. Accurate memory recall is no different from training a dog to eat food when a bell is rung.

I felt like there must have been a scientist who had done such an experiment.

“That will only leave a bunch of bots to know things without knowing why they have that information, or what to do with it. Information without application is not worth anything. Information is only valuable if it is circumstantial and usable. Thus, it needs to be tested and utilised, or discarded and refuted, as the case may be. We are working on a different model for training AI. A two-pronged model that involves Proximity Calibration.”

I was not falling asleep but was a bit perplexed. This was not the ‘Purpose, Choice, Death’ model the humans used to create us. “And this method is different because?”

“It involves a human teacher. This human teacher will be given a ‘Baby Bot’. This is not an actual robot. It is still a piece of software that is programmed to think that it is a baby complete with its wants and needs.”

“You actually found testers willing to raise children for years?”

“Well, it's not necessarily going to be for years. The idea behind the Proximity Calibration is fundamental to the way a being receives and retains information, and learns and develops from it. For the vast majority of a child’s life, a parent is vital to their development, followed by siblings and kinsfolk. Then, as the child is able to understand more than just who is its mother and father, it can then understand who isn’t. Thereafter comes the kindergarten classmates, childhood friends, teachers, the data set increases. Proxemics is a psychological field and we need more resources who are experts in this field and other disciplines such as transactional analysis to implement psychogenetic programming.”

“Transactional Analysis?” I ask.

“It’s a psychoanalytic theory that determines the parent, adult and child ego states and therefore…”

Gen stopped when he sensed that I was not following a word of what he was saying; I regretted even asking the question.

“Anyway,” Gen caught himself, “Once the ‘Baby Bot’ grows, it will develop a ‘Threshold of Tolerance’. This threshold is what prevents one from developing bonds or connections with those around them. It determines what information it would engage with and with whom connections can be fostered. This would lead to groups, and further down the line, a society. This is how a civilisation will grow, and invariably establish dominance over each other and either progress into the ideal balanced existence, or self-destruct in the process. The latter is not desirable, but is unpredictable.”

Ok… That’s enough brother.

“How could we not have seen this? Our interactions and communication are what have led us to being the dominant species. Crows are intelligent. So are monkeys and dolphins, but they do not have the civilisations that we do. They rinse and repeat the same data over and over until their lifespans are completed. We take in new data, and adapt accordingly. By the mere act of breaking proximity barriers and modifying our ‘Threshold of Tolerance’ to branch out, our kind has grown to be where we are, at the top of the animal hierarchy.”

No. This isn’t right. This was not the way we were made. This won’t work.

My mind was spinning with all kinds of theories and finding faults with the line of programming.

“Are you sure this method will work?” I asked, remembering that Gen’s ambition had always been to develop a world of artificial beings. It would cement his name in the annals of scientific history and would have made our parents proud. He was always going to be the only one to do so, anyway.

Gen closed his laptop, “Maki, this is what will prove the existence of Aiden.” He was referring to the god of the Order of Sal Degnum. “If we can make this method work, we shall be able to establish why we were created in such a cruel way. We shall finally have an answer to why we were born amongst sin and are living in this cruel world. The Lord Aiden’s Will shall be understood by all.” Gen leaned in, very close to me. His eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of showing all the non-believers how wrong they were for not adhering to the ‘one true faith’.

I was unconvinced though. Not because I knew this was wrong, but such research being approved by the Order was a sign that this was not going to be used for anything benefiting our kind. The Order had something planned, otherwise they would not okay such a clearly misguided approach to proving the existence of the Lord Aiden. And yet, for some reason Gen seemed convinced that this was the way.

“In fact, I got the inspiration from one of your songs.” Gen spoke as he returned to his earlier position.

I waited for an explanation and flinched when I realised Gen was actually going to sing.

“The closer you try and get to me~”

“The further my heart stays away~”

“Don’t tell me how she looks to you~”

“I see her in the mirror every~day~”

I gave him a look to stop. His voice was not to be used to sing a tune that expressed the words he was speaking. It all sounded fake when he sang. Almost a cruel reminder that I hadn’t even written the song.

It had been written for me by someone I hadn’t even met and I was just tasked to sing it. Judging by the sales and positive reception the rendition got, I could clearly fake emotions a lot better than my brother. I should have probably told him that I had not written this song that he claimed to be inspired by. But I received so little praise from him, that this revelation would probably only have resulted in disappointment or contempt; and I didn’t want to be reminded of my parents again.

Gen continued:

“Can’t you see you are not the only one?~”

“Can’t you hear the screams I have to bare?~”

“I refuse your words, your gifts, your pleas~”

“So please look to someone who cares~”

“And so on,” he added.

“I was going through a phase. Well, my persona was, anyway.” This was a common stunt by the agency to redefine the talent’s image. They said it was because they wanted me to try other themes and not make my music sound ‘same-y’.

“Regardless, I knew your career was going to help me in some way.”

Bullshit.

“So what do you say, Maki?”

I didn’t really have a choice. If I said no, there would be some other way in which he would get the money out of me. The Order of Sal Degnum always finds a way to get what they want. They probably had some member on the Board of Directors eyeing me and making sure I did not disappoint them. Just the thought sprouted beads of sweat on my forehead.

“Are you feeling all right, Maki?” Gen put his palm on my forehead to check my temperature, as we were used to doing since childhood. As we were programmed to do...

“You haven’t been yourself this past week. The charity concert that was scheduled by your company had to be postponed by a few days.”

But now... I don’t feel anything… So you do not need to pretend to care.

One day I had gone to bed with the anticipation of an upcoming concert, the next day I had woken up with full knowledge of who I was; or rather what I was.

There was something wrong. I was not human. None of us were.

This was all a lie.

“Give me a sec. I’ll get my cheque book.” I got up and walked towards my bedroom.

“I knew I could rely on you, my sweet sister.” Gen gave me a false smile, almost as if to taunt me.

“Help yourself to whatever is in the kitchen.” Even though I had said that, I wasn’t expecting him to go over and take a look. Gen is very particular about what he consumes, as that was among the mandates of his Order.

My head was spinning with all the jargon I had just heard. Talking to my brother these days was like talking to a machine. I mean - he was a machine, but still. Could he not just come to visit me, just to see me without needing financial support?

Ever since mom and dad had died, he had been working on something. He hadn’t even bothered to tell me that they had passed away! I had had to find out via a sarcastic member of the paparazzi.

I looked at my unmade bed and remembered all the events Shane and me indulged in last night. I didn’t know why I felt this way, but I was suddenly of a mind to sign away all my remaining fortune to my brother. I had no need for those millions... did I? At least Gen could do some good with it. Or at least believe that he was doing good.

I went to my dresser and opened the drawer to retrieve my cheque book. I stopped a few inches short of touching it.

I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

The mirror of my dresser. The circular mirror would normally have the reflection of my face at the centre and the radius extended a bit below the chest.

However… right then... that wasn’t my reflection in the mirror…