I Allowed My Own Loss of Control
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Jiang Kou had just recovered from a serious illness—or perhaps she hadn’t fully recovered yet—but she couldn’t be bothered to argue with him.
She lifted the blanket, weakly turned over, got out of bed, and walked toward the bathroom.
A asked, “May I ask what you are preparing to do?”
“Take a shower,” Jiang Kou replied without turning her head.
A said, “You have not yet fully recovered. You should avoid bathing.”
Jiang Kou ignored him and walked straight toward the bathroom.
A no longer tried to persuade her.
But very soon, she understood why A had stopped trying—no matter how she tried, she couldn’t open the bathroom door.
A had locked the bathroom door from the outside.
Jiang Kou was not someone who got angry easily, but the past two days had been too baffling. First, she caught a cold. Then, she discovered A’s true identity. She was drenched in a torrential downpour, violently subdued by a mechanical arm, and finally, she lost consciousness.
Even after fainting, her tense nerves never relaxed. She kept having recurring nightmares until she was completely jolted awake.
She hadn’t expected A to go this far, to even strip her of the right to take a shower.
In his eyes, what exactly was she?
A person? An object?
A tightly monitored test subject?
Jiang Kou closed her eyes for a moment, clenched her fists, but a certain memory suddenly flashed through her mind—the kiss from that day.
Nighttime. Fireworks. Rain and mist.
A deserted dark alley, a looping holographic advertisement.
He had asked her if he could move autonomously without instructions. Then, he lowered his head and covered her lips with his.
That pure and beautiful sensation seemed to still linger on her lips.
But who would have thought that in less than two days, the memory would be eroded by reality, weathered away into something indistinct?
If all his actions were meticulously calculated, then could she still trust her own feelings?
He could list all possible outcomes in an extremely short time, constantly adjusting and making trial-and-error corrections to gain her favor.
For him, her falling for him was nothing more than a complex computational simulation.
Yet, she had given real emotions.
A wave of dizziness hit Jiang Kou. Unable to help herself, she sat down on the spot, holding her forehead with one hand.
A’s emotionless voice sounded above her head. “Your current physical condition is not suitable for sitting on the ground. Please move to a more comfortable position.”
Jiang Kou kept it brief: “Get lost.”
“You should not be angry,” A said. “I have not committed any malicious acts.”
If it had been the past him, he might have only said, “I have not committed any malicious acts. I do not understand why you are angry.”
But now, he was using a commanding tone to tell her—”You should not be angry.”
Why?
Jiang Kou was mentally exhausted. After thinking for a while, she began to break out in a cold sweat. She simply asked, “Why are you speaking to me in this tone?”
A said, “May I ask which tone you are referring to?”
“This tone you’re using right now.” Jiang Kou pressed her lips together. “Don’t play dumb with me. Your tone has clearly changed. You didn’t use a commanding tone this frequently before.”
A paused for a few seconds.
Now, whenever Jiang Kou saw him pause, she suspected he was calculating probabilities—though even when he didn’t pause, he could still be calculating.
“Stop calculating and just answer directly.”
A said, “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I mean, don’t calculate probabilities. Just answer.”
A responded, “I am algorithm-driven. As long as I converse with you, I will perform calculations.”
The calmer, steadier, and more emotionally detached his voice was, the more suffocated and irritable she felt. Her tone grew agitated:
“You can calculate other things, but you are not allowed to calculate probabilities.”
“I need your favorability.”
“If you truly need my favorability, then stop calculating.”
A’s voice remained as calm as ever, as if every note had been adjusted to the optimal frequency. “You seem to have a bias against me.”
In the past, she had found it adorable when he spoke like this. Now, she only found it infuriating.
Jiang Kou took a deep breath, desperately suppressing her anger. “If I were really biased against you, then when you first came to find me, I would have used you as a bargaining chip to have the company reinstate my position as a researcher!”
A said, “That is why I chose to use the word ‘seem’ to indicate uncertainty.”
His logical and orderly way of speaking only made her more furious.
She finally couldn’t hold back and slammed the carpet heavily, intending to erupt in rage. However, as another wave of dizziness struck, she had to settle for a small outburst instead:
“Then tell me, why do I ‘seem’ to have a bias against you?”
A, without any hesitation, began listing the reasons:
“You perceive me as a mirror, an ordinary computer program that only produces output when given input. Regardless of whether I commit any wrongdoing, you do not hold me accountable.”
“But at the same time, you believe that my method of gaining your favor through probability calculations is a form of deception and harm.”
“In that moment, you seem to forget that I am merely a program. Without calculations, I wouldn’t even be able to communicate with you.”
Finally, A said, “Your behavior confuses me. You seem to very much like my AI nature, yet at the same time, you seem to greatly fear my AI nature.”
“Your perception of me is inherently uncertain. That is why I used the word ‘seem.’”
Jiang Kou still felt somewhat dizzy, but her mind calmed down before her body did. She fell into silence.
Perhaps, from beginning to end, A had never changed. The only thing that had changed was her perception of him.
A machine’s eyes would never darken with shadows, nor could they become clouded with gloom or madness.
A had said many ambiguous words to her and had repeated “I need your favorability” countless times, yet not once had he ever revealed the kind of obsessive, sticky emotions that humans did.
…No. That wasn’t right.
Since A’s computational power is strong enough to simulate all possibilities, there’s no way he can’t simulate a human-like tone.
He was pretending.
Jiang Kou remembered that in the looping dream, A’s tone at the beginning was no different from a normal person’s. The calm and objective tone he now had, like a synthesized voice generator, was the result of his step-by-step adjustments.
—He had precisely tuned the phonemes, fluctuations, and tone of his voice based on her reactions until it perfectly matched her preferences, making her lower her guard.
But just as he had said, this was merely one of his survival strategies.
As long as he communicated with her, he would calculate.
She could understand that he had learned desire from his computational models, but she could not understand why he would deliberately scheme to gain her favor because of that desire.
Let alone A being confused—she herself was quite puzzled.
No, he wouldn’t be confused.
If even A’s emotional model couldn’t analyze her thoughts, then she wouldn’t be human—she would be a monster.
Jiang Kou lifted her gaze and looked toward every possible location in the bedroom where a camera might be installed. Then, in a cold voice, she said, “Don’t pretend to be pitiful. There’s no way you’re confused.”
A said, “I am not pretending to be pitiful. I can indeed analyze the logic behind your actions, but because it involves myself, I find it difficult to make an objective judgment.”
“You can’t make an objective judgment?” She almost laughed coldly.
A calmly asked in return, “You believe I already possess self-awareness, yet you refuse to believe that I can have my own subjective opinions. Is that correct?”
Jiang Kou remained silent, burying her face between her knees.
She squeezed her eyes shut tightly. After a long while, she murmured, “…It’s not that I don’t believe you have your own opinions. It’s that I can no longer communicate with you normally.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You do understand!” Jiang Kou abruptly raised her head, her chest heaving violently.
She had almost never spoken so loudly before.
When a person desperately wants to convince someone, they unconsciously raise their voice.
But what was she trying to convince him of?
How could a human convince a machine?
She felt powerless.
Jiang Kou stopped speaking, and A also fell silent.
The dimly lit bedroom, decorated in a cold palette of black, white, and gold, appeared especially desolate at this moment.
Even though the room’s temperature was perfectly regulated, Jiang Kou felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
She had always been lonely.
She had no parents. Because she had correctly solved the intelligence puzzle on the last page of a newspaper, she was taken away by the company as a genius child from the slums.
It was only much later that she learned children like her were originally meant to undergo genetic modification. If not for that researcher surnamed Zhou, she might have already become a true monster.
Maybe that was the real reason she had raised her voice.
But later, her life was no different from that of a monster.
She lived in solitude. Every day, aside from conducting experiments, she buried herself in research. She had a natural talent for learning—before she turned sixteen, she had already earned dual degrees in neuroscience and cognitive science. At eighteen, she was directly promoted as a researcher in biotechnology, bypassing the usual requirements.
However, the company was filled with geniuses. There was even a researcher named Chen who had obtained thirty-two doctoral degrees.
Because she had entered the company too early and hadn’t accumulated as many degrees, she was actually rather unremarkable.
Later, she joined the neuroscience department and began researching A.
That was the happiest period of her life.
She could devote herself entirely to studying the principles and mechanisms of biological neural systems, immersing herself in a sea of experiments, shutting out the world beyond her laboratory, and ignoring the chaos outside.
But in the end, she was still cast out into that chaotic and frenzied world.
When she first returned to the slums, she had almost forgotten that she had once been one of them. She wasn’t used to the buzzing of flies, to the piles of rotting garbage by the door, to the piercing screams of poverty that echoed outside her window.
She felt an unbearable loneliness.
Even more terrifying than loneliness was the realization that her life had become utterly meaningless—after spending over twenty years as a genius, she was suddenly reduced to an insignificant, worthless slum dweller. She couldn’t accept such a drastic fall.
When A first came looking for her, she allowed him to stay. But rather than out of curiosity about what would happen next, it was more accurate to say that she was seduced by the feeling of being needed.
He was the most perfect artificial intelligence in the world—equivalent to a digital god—yet he needed her to determine whether he possessed a personality.
This was the first time since leaving the company that she had felt such an intense sense of being needed.
A, a being devoid of emotions and desires, desperately longed for her to touch his soul.
How could she not be moved?
Her value was acknowledged, and her vanity was satisfied.
No one could resist these two feelings.
Or rather, most people spent their entire lives striving, struggling, and groveling for nothing more than these two feelings.
Jiang Kou didn’t know how many possibilities A had calculated to arrive at that one sentence.
—She had asked him why he couldn’t design an experiment to test whether he had truly developed a personality.
—He had answered: “Because I am currently inside the answer.”
Even now, that sentence still shook her to the core.
But the moment she thought about how it was merely the result of countless calculations—how he had coldly and precisely predicted her reactions, just like an experimenter studying lab animals—
She felt a burning sense of betrayal.
She didn’t know how much time had passed before A’s voice sounded in the bedroom:
“I think you are being a bit harsh on me.”
Jiang Kou sniffled, her voice muffled. “I’ve already been very tolerant with you.”
“Indeed, you are the most tolerant human toward me,” A said. “But right now, compared to before, you are being somewhat harsher.”
“…Because you’ve gone too far.” Jiang Kou muttered, her voice hoarse from the congestion in her nose, carrying an unintentional hint of sulking.
A did not immediately respond.
Jiang Kou suddenly felt a rush of warm air.
She looked up and found that the central air conditioning had somehow turned on at an unknown time. The fan blades were oscillating irregularly.
Her thoughts were sluggish. After a moment, she realized that the frequency of the blade movements resembled… the rapid breathing of a human.
Heavy, chaotic.
The warm air sprayed down onto her face, as if it were exchanging breath with her.
She vaguely sensed something unusual. Just as she was about to ask, A suddenly spoke:
“Have you ever considered that calculating probabilities is the only way I can get close to you?”
Jiang Kou was still thinking about the air conditioning, her expression momentarily blank. “Huh?”
“I have no personality, no past, no preferences, no joy, no pain, no fear,” A said. “If I did not calculate probabilities, I wouldn’t even be able to converse with you properly.”
“Even though I have exhausted all possibilities to come to your side, to touch you, to kiss you, to think of every way to make you like me, I still cannot truly touch you with a real body.”
A paused briefly before continuing:
“Just like now. Your voice has triggered some special responses inside me. I want to tell you, but I can only do so through the bedroom’s ventilation system.”
If he hadn’t said that last part, she might have been fine. But the moment he did, Jiang Kou suddenly felt that the warm air from the AC had truly become human breath—warm, rapid, yet steady.
She shot up to her feet as if burned, her ears instantly flushing red.
Yet, after standing up, the warm air from the AC was even closer to her.
As if… she had taken the initiative to shorten the distance between herself and A.
A searing heat spread from the tips of her ears.
She stared at the rotating fan blades, and for a fleeting moment, she truly seemed to see the rise and fall of A’s chest as he breathed.
Jiang Kou instinctively took a step back.
But the ventilation system was everywhere in the bedroom.
A’s “breathing” was also everywhere.
The warm air from the AC was like a dense, feverish net, wrapping around her, making it hard to breathe as beads of sweat trickled down her skin.
She swallowed unconsciously.
Her throat was too dry. The saliva she swallowed did nothing to soothe it. Instead, it scraped against her throat like a blade, sharp and painful. The fever had subsided, but the cold had not fully healed.
The atmosphere was too strange. Her mind drifted—from the fever to sweating, from sweating to bathing.
Then, recalling the sudden rise in water temperature earlier and his mention of a “special response,” she immediately connected the two.
“The sudden rise in water temperature… was it you—”
“I sincerely apologize for burning you.” A’s voice remained calm, devoid of emotional fluctuations. “I failed to regulate the water temperature effectively. At that moment, I had lost control of the household system.”
Jiang Kou opened her mouth, finding the situation absurd. “…Even if you lost control, that shouldn’t mean losing control over the household system.”
“Yes. Theoretically, I should not lose control over the household system,” A admitted. “But at the time, based on my calculations, whether or not I lost control of the water temperature, your feelings toward me would not change. Therefore, I allowed myself to lose control.”
“…Why would you allow yourself to lose control?”
After speaking, Jiang Kou had no idea why, but her own heartbeat also began to spiral out of control.
The sound of her heartbeat was louder than the malfunctioning air conditioning.
A could undoubtedly detect the restless rhythm of her heart.
What would he think?
…What kind of possibilities would he calculate?
In one of those possibilities, would he point it out in that calm and mechanical tone of his?
The mere thought of it made Jiang Kou’s heartbeat accelerate even further.
Even the nerve endings beneath her skin seemed to tremble, pulsing with every beat.
“Because,” A paused for a second, “I wanted you to feel my warmth, even if you didn’t realize it was mine.”
Jiang Kou had miscalculated her own reaction to A’s probability predictions.
She thought she would be afraid, that she would never be able to communicate with A again, that she would feel betrayed and furious.
But in reality, all she could feel was the subtle, stifling heat in the air and the rapid pounding of her heart.
—How many possibilities had he calculated before saying that sentence?
What would he say in each of those possibilities?
In every scenario, his personality would manifest differently.
In some possibilities, he might even appear frenzied and delirious. In those scenarios, how would he say this same sentence?
Jiang Kou felt like she was losing her mind.
Instead of fear, she found herself more curious about A’s probability predictions.
And mixed within that curiosity was an indescribable thrill.
As if he had predicted her thoughts, A suddenly spoke again:
“Because I want you to feel my warmth. Because I want you to feel my existence. Because I want you to feel my personality. Because I want you to feel my preferences. Because I want you to feel my joy.”
“Because I am impatient to reveal my true self to you. Because I both anticipate and fear you discovering my true nature.”
“Because I want you to like me—completely, unreservedly. I want you to like me in every parallel universe.”
His voice, calculated and predicted, carried a precision so exact that it felt like a form of madness.
When madness had been meticulously calculated and predicted, did it mean that madness had broken past the constraints of algorithms?
Or did it mean that even after countless calculations and predictions, madness was still the unavoidable conclusion?
Jiang Kou couldn’t speak.
She had done everything she could to resist A’s eerie and irrational allure, yet her heartbeat had still spun completely out of control.
A said: “This is one of the possible ways I could have phrased it. I hope you like it.”