Phantasm 1: For the Light of the Stars (three)

"Maybe," said Laura.

"Definitely," said Willow.

The sound of movement behind her drew Laura’s attention as Diana stepped forwards, slipping between them. "No, Laura, this is enough. I thought that eventually you’d realise there’s nothing you can do to help her. But I’ve watched you for too long reach for the unattainable, I’m not going to let it end like this, with you wishing there was something more you could have done when I know full well there’s absolutely nothing. I’m not going to let you be haunted forever by thoughts of what might have been. Watch, Laura. Watch, and learn, and for God’s sake, stop."

Diana reached down to the floor, squatting on her haunches, paying Willow no attention. She lifted a panel, revealing a small touchscreen terminal that shed a faint luminescence. Her fingers entered a sequence.

And Willow seemed to suddenly, inexplicably, freeze. Her body went rigid and she made no sound. Diana entered another sequence, the terminal clicking shrill beeps, and Willow folded in on herself. It was a gradual process that took ten seconds or more, and Willow faded and fell apart until there was nothing left, not a molecule of her presence.

She simply disappeared.

Laura blinked, not understanding. It must be some kind of trick or illusion… she couldn’t have just vanished, she could not just be… gone…

Diana was still hunched over the terminal and she entered a final command. Whatever system was slaved to the terminal complied to her input and lights flickered on overhead. Laura was overcome by this sudden wash of dazzling white, disorientated; it took her a while to adjust back from the darkness to the light. When she did she discovered a series of cameras and sensors situated in the ceiling, covering all directions. Laura squatted beside Diana. Several ports were filled inside the terminal.

"She’s not real, Laura. She never was," Diana said softly.

Laura looked from her to the terminal and back again without speaking.

"That’s why you can’t sense her. She isn’t real. She’s one of the most advanced analyticals ever. An artificial intelligence. Holotechnology gave her a body, the resources of the Commonwealth gave her a mind, but nothing could give her a soul. She was never alive, Laura, not like us, and she never will be."

"She’s alive to me," Laura said quietly.

"Yes. Of course. To me too."

"Why does she exist at all?"

Diana patted her on the shoulder. "Let’s take a walk. I’ll try and explain."

——————————

Diana and Laura walked side by side along the promenade. The usual mass of peoples was present and they effortlessly slipped into the stream of the bustling crowd. The noise all around them was the deafening drone of a collective and they found themselves raising their voices so they could be heard over the din.

"Willow is by all rights a sentient being," Diana said, "but that in itself is a major part of the problem, you see. She’s a complicated program, perhaps the most advanced form of artificial intelligence the Commonwealth has ever produced, capable of thought and feeling, a perfect mimic of behaviour. But she’s still a kind of analytical, she was designed to be intelligent, designed to be sentient but not to live. She was created and therefore she has no rights. Under Commonwealth law she is a piece of property, a tool, an apparatus to be owned. Not a person, not something to be respected."

"That’s ridiculous."

"Yes, of course it is, but it’s the law. We know her. We can see she has an identity, we know she has a life somewhere inside her. But by her own admission she doesn’t have a soul. And to the Commonwealth, that means she isn’t alive."

"To me it does," Laura said. "How did you come to… own her?"