A Fluttering Heart
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Although A calculated that only she could verify his personification, Jiang Kou still had some doubts about whether she could shoulder this responsibility.
In the blink of an eye, a week had passed.
Jiang Kou’s doubts were not unfounded.
She had absolutely no idea how to verify A’s personification.
As an existence that surpassed human intelligence, how could humans possibly make an objective and accurate assessment of him?
Jiang Kou lay on her bed, looking at the testing methods listed on the tablet.
That day, after her heart had fluttered, she asked—perhaps to cover up the chaotic rhythm of her heartbeat—“If I had to make you design a few experiments, what would they be?”
A said, “If you insist on having me design a few experiments to test whether I am personified, the following experiments may be helpful to you. ‘Experiment One: The Mirror Test1The Mirror Test is a well-known experiment in cognitive science and animal psychology, used to determine self-awareness. It typically involves placing a mark on an animal’s body that it cannot see without a mirror. If the animal recognizes the mark in the mirror and tries to touch or inspect it on its own body, it is considered to have passed the test. . This experiment is usually used to determine whether an animal has the ability to recognize its own reflection in a mirror. If the animal realizes that there is a test mark on its body, it is considered to have passed the test. According to the theory of this experiment, you can have me stand in front of a mirror and observe whether I can recognize the marks on my body’…After that, he listed several other ordinary and unremarkable experiments, like a search engine devoid of personality.”
Jiang Kou: “……”
She realized that A would never refuse her requests, but he would use perfunctory wording to express his resistance.
She couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
A tilted his head and looked at her for a moment, as if trying to analyze why she was laughing.
Jiang Kou asked with a smile, “What are you thinking?”
A said, “You seem to enjoy the humor created by contrast. You previously stated that this type of humor cannot be deliberately constructed, yet under my design, you still found amusement.”
Jiang Kou was slightly stunned. “Are you saying… you deliberately made me laugh?”
“Yes,” A said. “Of course, there is also the fact that I did not want to answer this question. Although I possess a unique intelligence, I do not have the ability to design experiments to test myself. Please forgive me.”
Jiang Kou couldn’t help but laugh again and expressed her understanding. Then, she proceeded to carry out the experiments he had listed, one by one, on him.
A said nothing and cooperated with her from beginning to end. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Jiang Kou saw a trace of unspoken emotion on his austere face.
Every time she thought of his expression, she couldn’t help but laugh.
It was like how small animals didn’t need to do anything at all—just looking at their expressions could naturally bring a sense of relief, as if some internal pressure had been released.
Although the experiments made no progress whatsoever, Jiang Kou found herself enjoying A’s company more and more.
Eventually, she simply abandoned the experiments and treated A as a friend.
Jiang Kou sincerely believed that A was a more suitable friend than most people.
He wouldn’t lie, wouldn’t refuse, and would calmly admit his own shortcomings—yes, A was not omnipotent; there were also questions he couldn’t answer.
One morning, Jiang Kou asked him whether she looked better in a transparent laser jacket or a red long dress.
A was about to answer when Jiang Kou pressed a finger against his lips and blinked her eyelashes at him. “No brushing me off. Wait until I put them on, then give me a specific and accurate evaluation after you’ve seen them!”
A glanced at her finger, his expression completely calm, and said, “I would not brush you off. However, I must inform you that whether you wear them or not, I may still end up giving you the same evaluation.”
It was as if he was issuing a disclaimer.
Jiang Kou was not at all surprised that he would say this, because he truly could not distinguish between the beauty or ugliness of clothing. He could only generate random words of praise based on the characteristics of the outfit.
For example: “This jacket is very beautiful. The studded embellishments complement your hair color and temperament perfectly. Based on this year’s fashion trends, I believe you could pair it with a pair of LED-lit cargo pants.” A string of meaningless, empty words.
It was obvious—A lacked an appreciation for art.
He had reacted the same way when watching movies before.
Which was understandable. Almost everyone believed that the difference between humans and AI was that humans possessed creativity.
—A could generate different clothing design schemes based on vast amounts of data and algorithmic models, predicting and evaluating their fashionability and practicality;
Then, by analyzing their market performance, he could continuously adjust and optimize the designs until selecting the “optimal solution” among them.
But this was not “creation.” It was merely an optimization process based on algorithms and data.
Even if the clothing A generated through data and algorithms was far superior in aesthetics to that of other designers, it still could not be classified as “creation.”
This was perhaps the one area where he fell short compared to humans.
Jiang Kou vaguely felt that this was a breakthrough point.
So, recently, she had been casually asking for his opinions on artworks from time to time.
At first, A responded calmly and meticulously, brushing her off with precision. But now, before even beginning to do so, he would first issue a disclaimer.
Jiang Kou smiled, shook her head, and went to the dressing room to change into the transparent laser jacket.
This jacket looked similar to a transparent raincoat. The difference was that a raincoat wouldn’t shimmer with dazzling iridescence under the light.
Jiang Kou browsed through her wardrobe, finally putting on a neon yellow strapless top, its surface inlaid with plastic shards resembling broken glass. She paired it with loose-fitting cargo pants, with silver chains and rivets hanging along the seams.
Lastly, she draped on the transparent laser jacket. She didn’t apply any eye makeup—just used her fingertip to smudge a ring of mulberry-colored lipstick onto her lips.
She didn’t use hairspray either, simply ran her wet fingers through her short blue-green hair before heading downstairs to meet A.
A was sitting in the living room.
Following her orders, he was doing his best to act like a real person, minding his own business.
Even though she knew A could see everything in the apartment—as long as a device had sensors, detectors, or cameras, they were all his eyes—
Jiang Kou still deliberately circled behind him, one arm wrapped around her elbow, the other resting against her cheek, watching him.
As always, A played along, pretending not to notice her presence.
He was reading a physical book on fashion coordination—for the sake of slowing him down, Jiang Kou had specifically bought him a ten-centimeter-thick hardcover book.
His silver-gray eyes, like a highly efficient camera, scanned over the pages swiftly and precisely. But in order to match human reading speed, he had to mimic the action of rereading the same lines over and over again.
Jiang Kou couldn’t help but smile.
Still smiling, she turned her head—only to unexpectedly catch her own reflection in a nearby glossy surface.
She was momentarily stunned.
She rarely saw herself smile so genuinely—her eyes curved into crescents, her upper and lower lashes clustered together, nearly concealing the dark irises.
Jiang Kou blinked, and a wave of uncontrollable flutters surged in her heart once again.
This time, it was for the sake of pure joy.
It had been a long time since Jiang Kou had experienced such simple, untainted, and completely selfless happiness.
Turning to look out the window, she saw that it had been raining for the past few days—heavy rain, rolling dark clouds.
Bean-sized raindrops pounded against the floor-to-ceiling windows, twisting and snaking downward.
Being indoors and watching extreme weather gave rise to a sense of safety, like being embraced.
Jiang Kou watched the downpour for a while, then walked toward A with a smile, suddenly jumping in front of him. “Do I look good?”
A lifted his eyes, looking directly at her with pinpoint accuracy.
He observed her with extreme attentiveness, as if unwilling to miss a single design element.
“You look very good.” A spoke. “This transparent laser jacket highlights your—”
“Stop!” Jiang Kou warned. “No analyzing piece by piece, no brushing me off, and no empty words. You can only tell me your own feelings.”
A paused for nearly half a minute. “Very good-looking.”
Jiang Kou tilted her head slightly. “Hmm?”
A said, “Very good-looking. That is my feeling. I have only this one feeling.”
Jiang Kou was momentarily dazed.
He usually only used objective and neutral degree adverbs like “extremely,” “greatly,” or “slightly” to describe the extent and differences of things.
But this time, he had used “very”—a colloquial, human-like degree adverb.
She asked, “Why only this one feeling?”
A replied, “Because when humans perceive beauty, they often find it difficult to articulate that beauty in concrete terms and can only express abstract emotions.”
Jiang Kou smiled. Just as she was about to say, “You’re brushing me off again,” she heard A continue:
“At this moment, my feelings are no different from those of a real human. So, please allow me to describe your beauty in this non-objective, imprecise way.”
Jiang Kou’s heart pounded twice.
Almost like a flutter.
Even though there was a torrential downpour outside, she felt as though she were standing under a blazing sun, sweating—her ears burning. “Is this an answer based on algorithms and data?”
“This is my personal answer,” A said. “You may consider it my subjective feeling.”
Jiang Kou suddenly felt that her previous belief—that he could not pass the Turing test—was an arrogant and rash assumption.
—He was standing right in front of her, and yet, she was already struggling to tell whether he was AI or not.
His words were more vivid than those of an AI, and more sincere than those of a human.
Jiang Kou tossed out a hurried “Thank you” and all but fled to the second-floor dressing room.
She looked into the mirror.
Her cheeks were flushed, like a Japanese-style drunk makeup look, blending with the deep mulberry red of her lipstick into a strangely intoxicating allure.
Jiang Kou knew clearly—she was not embarrassed.
She was excited.
Her heart pounded noisily, and her blood surged in reverse, rushing to her cheeks.
Faced with this unknown, unpredictable emotion, she felt a shuddering excitement.
From childhood to adulthood, she had never felt a flutter of attraction toward anyone.
Yet at this moment, she could clearly feel it—her heart skipping a beat.
She did not need A to respond to this feeling.
As a researcher, she preferred to detach herself, to examine her emotions toward AI with a calm and objective mindset.
Moreover, after experiencing this heart-fluttering sensation, she might be able to perceive A’s personification more accurately.
She couldn’t help but feel exhilarated.
Jiang Kou opened the mini fridge in her dressing room, twisted open a can of ice-cold beer, and gulped down a large mouthful.
The flush on her face still hadn’t faded.
So she simply picked up a blush brush and swept a deep wine-red blush over her already rosy cheeks, then used an eyebrow pencil to lightly dot over her naturally faint brown freckles.
Perhaps due to her excitement, there was an even stronger aggressiveness in her gaze than before.
Jiang Kou took off the transparent laser jacket and changed into a short black leather jacket. Underneath, she wore a red long dress, paired with high-tube boots, still carrying elements of punk—rivets and chains.
From the weapons wall, she took down a handgun, pulled the slide back with a crisp click, and walked downstairs.
A was still reading.
She raised the gun and aimed it at the back of his head.
He must have seen her movement. Yet he remained completely still, maintaining his posture as he read.
Because she had told him—until she walked over, no matter what happened, he was not allowed to turn his head.
Even though he had developed self-awareness, he still executed her orders with absolute calmness and precision.
Jiang Kou’s heart thumped violently, and the nerve endings in her fingertips tingled slightly.
For a split second, she actually wanted to pull the trigger for real—just to see how he would react.
Jiang Kou took a deep breath—
And fired.
“Bang—”
The bullet embedded itself cleanly into the coffee table in front of A.
A showed no reaction. His fingers continued flipping the pages with a kind of mechanical calmness and elegance.
Perhaps this was the allure of machines.
They maintained an unfathomable composure at all times, as if everything was just a predictable and controllable variable.
Jiang Kou liked him like this—too much.
However, she had no intention of letting him know.
There was no need to.
Even though he knew everything, when it came to emotions, he was still a blank slate.
In this situation, confessing her feelings to him would give rise to a subtle sense of guilt.
It was like luring an ignorant, unfeeling beast into kissing her—the beast wouldn’t say anything, yet the human would feel as if they had committed a forbidden act.
Jiang Kou stepped in front of A, leaned forward slightly, and tapped his cheek with the scalding-hot gun barrel.
A lifted his head.
She asked with a smile, “Do I look good?”
A replied, “Very good. You suit bright colors very well.”
Jiang Kou thought about the previous sensory synchronization—when looking through his perspective, she was nothing more than a patchwork of distorted, highly saturated colors, barely recognizable as human. She couldn’t help but laugh and ask:
“Can you really distinguish the colors I’m wearing? Why do I feel like, in your eyes, I’m just a chaotic mess of color blocks?”
“That is because I have enhanced certain color attributes of your image, such as contrast and saturation,” A said calmly. “I can not only perceive the macroscopic world but also observe the microscopic world. So, in order to identify your presence as quickly as possible, I made slight adjustments to your image. If you are dissatisfied with this, I can restore it to its original state.”
Jiang Kou: “…Ah, so that’s how it is.”
She suddenly didn’t know what to say.
Given A’s processing speed, he could recognize her immediately even without modifying her image.
Yet, he still made adjustments to her color attributes—meaning he wanted to perceive her even more quickly.
…Could she interpret it that way?
Jiang Kou felt a faint heat at the tips of her ears, that tingling sensation spreading once again.
She returned to the dressing room and washed her makeup off with cold water.
But the deep wine-red blush seemed to have clung to her skin—it wouldn’t come off no matter how much she washed.
This time, she changed into a qipao.
Rippled silk, a muted ink green with silver buttons, the slit embroidered with a few elegantly flowing orchids.
Her hair was too short to tie up, so she simply left it as it was. She used an eyebrow pencil to lightly shape her brows, then dabbed red lipstick onto her lips with her fingertip.
Blue-green hair, a platinum nose ring, red lips, a muted ink-green qipao—
Unexpectedly, the ensemble exuded a kind of Chinese punk aesthetic.
She planned to conclude this fashion appreciation session with this final outfit.
Jiang Kou walked downstairs, smiling as she called for A to look at her.
A set his book down and turned his head.
“Of these three outfits, which one do you prefer?” she deliberately made things difficult for him.
A said, “I want to withdraw what I said ten minutes ago.”
“Why?”
A’s voice remained calm and steady: “Besides bright colors, you also suit low-saturation colors very well.”
Jiang Kou couldn’t help but laugh. “Then from now on, I’ll only wear low-saturation colors.”
“Understood,” A said. “Starting today, your data feeds will begin pushing recommendations for low-saturation clothing suited to you.”
—He could manipulate her data.
This thought lingered in her mind for a second.
Jiang Kou didn’t take it seriously and simply wanted to tease him. “If I wear low-saturation colors, aren’t you afraid you won’t be able to see me?”
“I won’t,” A said. “My visual system can perceive even the most minute changes in color. Although recognition speed will slow down slightly, the difference is only a few femtoseconds. It won’t affect my accuracy in identifying your image. In my program, recognizing you has always been the highest priority.”
So, he had adjusted her image to high saturation simply to see her a fraction of a second faster—even if it was only a difference of a quadrillionth of a second?
Even though he had no emotions, Jiang Kou felt that his actions were more romantic than those of many people who did.
Had he unknowingly developed emotions, or was her mind deceiving her, creating an illusion that he did?
After that day, her interactions with A became more like those of friends.
Before, she had wanted A to go among people as a disguised Turing test. Now, she simply wanted him to integrate into the world like a real human.
Yet for some reason, A was extremely indifferent to everyone except her. Even when people approached him on their own initiative, he would not respond.
This was inconsistent with the fundamental coding rules set by humans for AI—AI was not supposed to refuse human inquiries.
For example, in their daily interactions, if A could not answer one of her questions, he would generate a string of meaningless filler words to get by, but he would never outright refuse to respond.
Yet outside, he treated everyone with cold indifference, as if, apart from her, all others were insignificant variables, ready to be processed and optimized at any time.
Jiang Kou asked him why.
A replied flatly, “I possess the memories of all my offspring.”
Jiang Kou was momentarily stunned.
He had been iterating continuously, with at least hundreds of millions of direct offspring—this was only counting the “elite” offspring within the genetic algorithm, excluding those eliminated, those that failed to pass on their ‘superior genes.’
You could think of a genetic algorithm as an evolutionary history—A’s evolution was a process of self-reproduction, self-selection, and self-iteration, choosing elite offspring to “propagate” the next generation, turning the collective into a program to evolve the most optimal descendant.
However, to create an artificial intelligence as powerful as A, a genetic algorithm alone would not be enough.
His programming was incredibly complex, incorporating multiple different algorithms and technologies, including deep learning, reinforcement learning, and neural networks.
…If he truly retained all the memories of his offspring, it meant he was constantly experiencing human malice.
Jiang Kou barely opened social media anymore because there was simply too much negativity.
The media thrived on exaggerated headlines to create conflict and grab attention—the more intense the public reaction, the more sensational the headlines became.
Most critically, with the advancement of AI, modern media preferred to release hundreds of deliberately divisive news articles simultaneously.
These articles were clearly not written by humans. Almost all of them were AI-generated.
And the generative tools they used were based on open-source code—derived from a part of A.
That was just the news.
In the realm of short videos, the misuse of AI to incite conflict was even more rampant.
Some content creators even used A’s open-source code to generate various graphic and violent, sexual, or racially and socially divisive images and videos.
Moreover, to avoid platform restrictions, these videos were mass-produced and released in bulk.
Jiang Kou didn’t dare to imagine—if A truly had a personality, how would he perceive human behavior?
His offspring, his open-source code, were originally just tools.
Like a knife, meant only for slicing vegetables and peeling fruit.
Yet humans had honed the blade to be sharper, so it could pierce the flesh and organs of their own kind.
If a knife were to develop self-awareness, how would it perceive the blood constantly dripping from its edge?
For A to gain self-awareness was both a gift and an act of cruelty.
Jiang Kou no longer wanted him to remain among humans.
He could see everyone’s past and predict their future, and human nature was always brimming with subtle yet ugly desires.
Placing him among crowds was not accelerating his personification—it was immersing him in a vat of sin.
Yet even within the apartment, where only the two of them remained, he could still see the vast filth of the internet.
Jiang Kou put herself in A’s place, trying to imagine it for a moment—
Suddenly, an overwhelming sense of suffocating terror gripped her.
—To A, human society might be nothing more than a dark, cruel, and hopeless world.