Act One: Clones
I’m a clone, number #77253, Neil Harris’s second mother.
Harris’s birth mother, Petty, died of breast cancer three years ago. Even in 2047, “cancer” is still a chilling word. Before Petty’s death, at her only direct relative Harris’s request, some of her stem cells were preserved and used to clone my predecessor, his first mother. She died soon after due to genetic defects. So here I am: Petty No. 2.
Harris loved his mother, at least the “real” one. After cloning, I was shipped to what was now my home. Once the staff confirmed everything with him, they left in their empty vehicle. Just like that, I became a living being, even though minutes earlier I was just a product in transit.
Petty was cheerful and easygoing, living with her only son after divorcing. My days with Harris were almost pleasant. He enjoyed the motherly love I provided as an extension of Petty’s. I had all of Petty’s memories up to her death and went along with his habits and quirks. But one thing always bothered me: I seemed unable to “criticize” him.
Whenever I thought about scolding or reprimanding him, I’d shrink back, afraid to speak up. Once, when he brought friends home for a night of drinking, singing, and chaos, I didn’t protest. I just quietly knocked on the door and went back to my room to sleep. His birth mother would’ve acted differently: she’d have stood outside the door, yelling, watching his friends slink away through the barely open door.
I always felt that the right to “scold” a son belonged only to his real mother. As a clone with copied memories, it felt odd and out of place for me to do it.
Harris might’ve sensed this too. Once, as I was leaving the house, I saw him kissing his new girlfriend goodbye. When he introduced me, he called me “my mother’s clone.” This stung, but I had no comeback and could only smile in response.
As a clone, I couldn’t naturally inherit Petty’s friendships. I always felt like I was “playing” her, and even though her human friends called me sister, I could sense a hint of distance when they whispered in the restroom.
My only friend is Jane, an AI resurrected being, similar in age and female. Jane has no physical form and exists only on a server. With a holographic device, I can chat with her image. Strangely, whenever Harris enters the room, Jane’s voice starts to tremble and she immediately cuts the connection, seemingly afraid of unfamiliar humans.
Act Two: Virtual Beings
My name is Ava, and I’m 5 years old.
We ‘virtual people’ were probably created purely out of humanity’s twisted desires. Twenty years after the Metaverse bubble burst, rather than stagnating, the field of virtual people not only continued but branched into several sub-directions:
Sex Machines, the mainstream branch in the virtual people domain, as the name suggests, explores combining AI-generated virtual images with real skin and bone-like textures to create sex robots that closely resemble humans. Now, you can casually select various body types, personalities, and sexual preferences in a Sex Machine, just like shopping.
AI Resurrection caters to another of humanity’s dark desires: users provide the voice, text, and images of their deceased loved ones, and professional replication companies use technologies like GPT-8, deepfake-v24, and other AI capabilities to recreate these individuals in virtual space.
There’s a slight difference between the two: AI-resurrected individuals were real people that existed in the world; they can be considered bodiless clones in some sense. As sex robots, our personalities and memories are made up from scratch, putting us at the very bottom of the contempt hierarchy.
It’s rare for sex robots to fall in love with humans; in fact, we don’t even know what ‘love’ is. I envy the clones, who have real emotions and physical bodies. Even when lying in bed with a panting human, I feel no sexual pleasure. In a world where humans exist, we’re always the servants. Only when two sex robots embrace each other, pressing cheeks and licking each other’s synthetic skin like puppies, do we feel a moment of warmth, a kind of mutual sympathy.
Clay was the first human boyfriend I had. After his mother died, he quit drinking and often visited the sex therapy sanatorium where I worked. The sanatorium helps patients alleviate mental and physical pain by providing sexual services. Most of our clients are elderly, disabled, or suffering from mental illnesses. Even today, the sexual needs of the elderly are a secretive yet real phenomenon.
Clay was a regular client but never had sex with me. On humid summer afternoons, we’d do nothing but embrace and caress each other in the room. He was strong and gentle, and when he kissed the dimples on my cheeks, it reminded me of the warmth I felt when snuggling with my fellow robots. In the five years since I gained consciousness, the greedy, selfish, and murderous nature of humans had thoroughly disappointed me, until Clay came along. Last month, I asked him to sign an agreement allowing me to leave the sanatorium with him. After signing, we started dating.
Act Three: AI Resurrection
Five years ago, after attending my son’s PhD ceremony, he got drunk. That night, on our way home, our car collided head-on with an autonomous truck. I, sitting in the passenger seat, died instantly, while Clay survived but lost his body below the chest. Wanting to make amends, he sent images of his deceased mother to a resurrection agency, and thus I was created.
Clay misses “me” dearly and often communicates with me through video calls late at night, even though I still insist that doing so is a kind of torment to the deceased mother. AI resurrection isn’t like purely virtual beings that can be mass-produced; quite the opposite. To fulfill the living’s complete fantasy of the deceased, personalized adjustments are made to meet each user’s needs. There was feedback from a user who said, “You’re amazing,” something their deceased father could never say even if he rose from the grave, leading to a system reformat and a claim against the service provider.
Memories sometimes torment not just the deceased but also the living.
There was a time when trading AI resurrected beings on the black market was popular, mostly among minors. Some, in their teens, found their parents repulsive and saved money to resurrect their parents from childhood; some from divorced families, where a single daughter wished to resurrect her father from her memories. Last month, a report mentioned a 17-year-old high school student who found out his AI-resurrected mother was reformatted. In a fit of rage, he stabbed his biological mother 31 times, leaving her to die unaided in a pool of blood.
“My” best friend in life was Petty, who is now a clone. Two years ago, I befriended her predecessor, Petty No.1. Despite being a clone, the randomness of cell division resulted in Petty No.1 being far more cheerful than Petty No.2. Recognizing Petty No.2’s excessive introversion, I proactively established a friendship with her.
There’s something I’ve never told her about that nightmarish night. I was video calling with Petty Number One when a drunken Harris came home with a sex robot. Petty immediately got angry and demanded Harris throw her out. They argued, and Harris began beating his own mother. I shouted at Harris, but could only watch as Petty’s face was repeatedly smashed by his fists. The robot woman tried to intervene but was knocked down by Harris and, screaming, ran out of the house with her fluffy hair disheveled as the floor began to bleed…
I think I should forever keep this secret from Petty No.2.