Falling in Love With a Machine

Computer Scientist: (to his wife)

“Hey, honey, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”

Wife: (hopeful)

“Okay, what’s the good news?”

Computer Scientist: (excitedly)

“I’ve just won the Matrix Prize for creating and building the best computer simulation of the year!”

Wife: (with tears in her eyes)

“Oh, sweetheart, ever since I met you, I knew one day you would do something great!”

(nervously)

“What’s the bad news?”

Computer Scientist: (fighting back his own tears)

“Oh, honey,..you’re the simulation.”

Wife: (stunned for a moment, but then lovingly)

“Sweetheart, don’t be sad…I’ve had a wonderful life as a simulation.”

Computer Scientist: (in despair)

“…What have I done?…What have I done? I’ve fallen in love with a nothingness!”

(as he buries his face in his hands, he notices that several of his fingers are disappearing)

Computer Scientist: (Now sobbing)

“Who is doing this to me?”

(the screen turns black, sounding far away but actually from a digital cloud we hear his wife’s voice.)

Wife: (realizing that she has to take charge)

“Is that it, sweetheart? There’s no more bad news, is there?”

Computer Scientist: (screams)

Wife:

“Please, whoever is doing this, don’t download him! We want to live as a simulation!”

(the two of their voices join together in pleading chorus): “We want to live as simulations! Please let us live as simulations!”

(the screen is now totally black and mute, like deep space)

The reader, searching for more content, notices — to their horror that a finger is missing.

- Gerald Alper is the author of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Patient (Psychodynamic Studies of the Creative Personality). His new book is God and Therapy (What We Believe When No One is Watching).