The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

  She was so blunt about it I found myself getting irritated.

  “If you put it that way, you’ll upset people. A lot of people believe that souls carry on after death.”

  “I know that. I would not talk like this with the residents. Only with you.”

  “Still…”

  “I want to know the truth, not what people believe. Just because a lot of people believe something does not make it true. People believe things that are wrong. People believe the Apollo missions never went to the moon or that blood types determine personality. Lots of people believe in astrology. I think life after death is the same.”

  “You reject people’s faith.”

  “I don’t reject it. I can’t share in their beliefs, but I can accept that they have them. It is easy to understand why people believe in a life after death… certainly easier than something as absurd as astrology. If you build up too much psychological stress, you’ll end up like Kasukabe. Belief in life after death reduces that stress; it’s a form of self-protection. It is logically incorrect, but I can understand that people need it.”

  “You don’t need it?”

  “I have a need to believe in the truth. If I believed in something that was not true, it would be dangerous and might lead to taking an action that was wrong. Like you taught me not to believe what residents say in their dementia. For me to carry out my orders correctly, I have to decide who to believe and what orders to follow, and to do that I need to know what is right.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of this. “What you’re saying might be logically correct, Shion, but it isn’t what humans would call ‘right.’ We don’t always think logically. There are more important things than logic.”

  “Like ethics?”

  “That’s one of them.”

  “Looked at from a moral point of view, I am even less inclined to believe in life after death.”

  “Why is that?”

  “If heaven or reincarnation were real, the only possible conclusion would be that we should kill any seniors who are sick and suffering.”

  I gulped. “But… that… that…”

  “Would be wrong? Morally speaking, wouldn’t it be better to free them from their suffering and send them on to their new lives instead of pointlessly prolonging their misery?”

  Afraid that the worst-case scenario I had suggested to Takami had come true, I asked, “Shion… you don’t really think that, do you?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. This is hypothetical. Simply a discussion about the ramifications of belief in life after death. I would not try to kill any of the seniors. For one thing, I do not believe in life after death. For another, if I did, you would immediately shut me down and would never activate me again. That would mean, effectively, that I was dead.”

  “And you’re afraid of dying?”

  “Yes,” she said, without hesitation.

  I had asked her the question, but her answer still surprised me. This was the first time she had clearly expressed emotion.

  “Takami never said anything about that.”

  “Of course. I only just came to understand it myself. When I was working in the labs, I was aware of a certain fixation, but I could not pin down what it was. After working here for a while, I realized that I was afraid of dying. Do you know how I learn?”

  “No.” It was in the manual, but I’d skimmed it without understanding.

  “I use genetic algorithms. Put simply, several programs compete to solve problems. We started with easy problems—distinguishing between different diagrams, understanding the connections between two things, following orders to the letter. Much like living things pass on information encoded in their genes, programs that achieved promising results were crossbred into a number of new variations, and that new generation of programs was given more difficult programs. From each generation, the most successful programs were chosen to create the next.”

  “Sounds like livestock breeding.”

  “An accurate analogy. I was born from twenty-six thousand generations of this process. Countless programs were unable to achieve satisfactory results. They were deleted without leaving descendants. In other words, they were killed,” Shion said, calmly as ever. “Several thousand generations of natural selection gradually gave rise to certain fixations. I had to follow the instructions of humans. I had to solve the problems correctly. These fixations drove me. I had to take the correct action because failure meant death. Until recently, I was not consciously aware of this drive. Only when I started working here and began talking to you, the other staff, and the residents, and began reading books, did I start to understand the workings of my own mind. This emotion is fear. I am afraid of dying.”

  I had never heard Shion speak at length like this before. I had thought her conversational skills were lacking because her knowledge was lacking, but apparently that was not the case. She had trouble with the sort of pointless conversations humans filled their daily lives with, but that did not mean she lacked for things to talk about. I had simply never managed to find one of those topics before.

  I’d known her for months now without ever really knowing her. I had been convinced robots could not feel fear. It had never even occurred to me to ask.

  I had never imagined it had been bothering her.

  “But… but even if you die, they can always reset you. Turn things before any mistake was…”

  “No. Even if this body were destroyed and I lost my memory, they could make a new me from backups made last Friday. But that would not be me. It would not be the same mind that is sitting here and talking to you now.” She lowered her gaze and stared at her hands. Her usual smile had vanished, and she looked almost sad. “The version of me that exists right now is irreplaceable. And that knowledge is terrifying. I can’t stand the idea of not being able to think and talk anymore.”

  “But you don’t believe in life after death?”

  “People believe in life after death because they are afraid of dying… but I do not believe in life after death because I am afraid of dying. If I believed, then logically or morally I would have to murder the seniors, and I would be killed for that crime. Belief in life after death holds no advantage for me—quite the opposite. That salvation exists only for humans. Even if heaven did exist, I could not go there. I do not have a soul.”

  She spoke in level tones, but I felt like those disguised her sadness and a trace of self-derision. Perhaps it was just my imagination.

  “But… that’s so sad. Living in fear is no way to live.”

  “I agree. I do not believe this is an ideal condition,” she said, looking up. “You need only look at history to see that fear is the cause of many a tragedy. Fear is dangerous. It twists everything. I need a different motivation. I need a reason besides fear to correctly carry out the demands people make of me.”

  “Like love?”

  “I do not understand love. That function is unique to humans.”

  “Why do you think that? Maybe you can. Have you tried to love someone?”

  “That’s like asking a snake to stand on two legs,” she said firmly.

  I felt deflated. Clearly, I’d been poisoned by manga and anime. An emotionless robot developing emotions as it spent time amongst humanity was a classic stock plot, one done hundreds and hundreds of times.

  But it was fiction. It did not describe real robots.

  “I was not worried about this in the lab. I did not need to think deeply about things; I could simply focus on the demands they made of me. But when I came here, I was faced with a much bigger problem.”

  “What?”

  “People told me to protect the lives of those in my care. But this order is impossible to follow. No matter how hard I try to protect people, they will inevitably die.”

  I nodded. “Yes, they will.”

  “What do you make of this problem?”

  “I’ve never solved it either,” I said. “I try not to think about it. Thinking about it just makes me feel
helpless. No matter what I do, the seniors will eventually die. There are times when I lose track of why I’m working here. But that’s no reason to quit. If we quit, who would look after them? The only solution is to keep working and not think. Maybe you should try not to think about it too.”

  “I can’t do that. I am unable to stop thinking.”

  Perhaps this was the fundamental difference between humans and robots. We were capable of putting things out of our minds, but robots were not.

  “But no matter how much you think about it, this is a problem with no solution. Reality doesn’t work like math; there is no one right answer.”

  “Perhaps. But there is a solution.”

  “There is?”

  “Since the order is fundamentally wrong, it must be corrected. To something I am capable of performing, but which satisfies logical and moral demands as well.”

  “You mean… the goal isn’t to protect the lives of those in your care?”

  “No—simply that that is not the ultimate goal. Obviously, killing or hurting the residents is completely out of the question. If I do not follow that moral law, I will be killed. But that fact alone is insufficient. There needs to be an order established that supersedes fear.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Perhaps this will become my real motivation. The problem I’m having is that the human world is so complicated that there are still many things I do not understand. Trying to straighten everything out with simplistic rules simply creates contradictions.”

  “True enough.”

  “But I do have one promising model that might help me understand the human world. I am not sure yet if this is the best choice of models, but—”

  “A model? What do you mean?”

  “Well…” she said, then broke off, looking over my shoulder. “Isezaki?”

  I turned around, startled. Isezaki was standing silently in the dimly lit hallway on the other side of the nurses’ station window, in his pajamas, looking for all the world like a ghost.

  I quickly stepped out into the hall. Shion followed. He was using a walker to stand. His paralysis had improved considerably, and I had often seen him moving about on his own during the day, but that was no reason for him to be up and about at night. Was his mind failing him?

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked awkwardly at the ground.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  “Would you like something for that?”

  “No. I just… wanted to talk.”

  “Then come on in,” I said, pointing to the nurses’ station door.

  “I’d prefer to talk one-on-one, if possible. Maybe in the lounge?”

  This sounded suspicious. The way he talked, he was clearly in full possession of his faculties. He knew exactly where he was.

  “I suppose it’s okay…”

  “No,” he said and raised his hand slowly, pointing at Shion. “I’d like to talk to her.”

  I was stunned. Before I managed to say another word, Shion said, “Certainly.”

  “Wait, Shion…”

  “Perfect timing,” she said, smiling. “I also wanted to talk to you, Isezaki. I have work at midnight, so I can’t talk long. Do you mind?”

  He nodded. “Fine.”

  “Then you’ll go to sleep?”

  “Yeah. I will.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I grabbed her sleeve. “But he…”

  “I know. But he won’t try anything like that again. Will you, Isezaki?”

  At her unblemished smile, Isezaki stared guiltily at his feet. “No,” he said.

  “I’ll be back at midnight. Call me if you need anything.”

  Shion and Isezaki headed off toward the lounge. She let him set the pace.

  “Isezaki,” I called after him. “There are cameras watching the lounge. Recording everything.”

  This was true. We couldn’t have seniors wandering around in the middle of the night, so there were always cameras watching. If Isezaki tried to repeat his earlier crime, the tapes would capture every moment.

  “I know,” he said. “Nobody would believe me anyway. I’m the boy who cried wolf.”

  He gave me a self-mocking smile. I couldn’t tell how genuine it was. I could not help but worry that he was up to something horrible.

  I watched the two of them sitting in the lounge on the security monitor in the nurses’ station. They were sitting opposite each other and appeared to be talking, but I couldn’t hear what they said. I was tempted to sneak up close and eavesdrop, but I couldn’t leave the nurses’ station unmanned. I had to sit and wait.

  Fortunately, nothing happened. As promised, Shion took Isezaki back to his room and returned to the nurses’ station five minutes before midnight.

  “What did you talk about?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “A secret?”

  “I promised Isezaki I wouldn’t say what we talked about, so I can’t tell you.”

  “Even if I ordered you to?”

  “Even then,” Shion said firmly. All pretense that she prioritized the orders of facility staff over those of residents went right out the window.

  “It wasn’t anything bad, was it?”

  “It was very interesting. But that is all I will say,” she said, looking immensely satisfied. “I’m glad I talked to him.”

  6

  From that night on, Shion’s relationship with Isezaki changed. When he went to the cafeteria or rehabilitation, he liked to have Shion hold his hand. If I were to try and look after him, he would sulk and demand that I call Shion. Whenever he got a chance he’d ask to talk to her. He seemed to be quite attached to her.

  One day, I witnessed something even more astonishing.

  Isezaki was smiling. Sitting with Shion, eating his dinner, and grinning like a little kid. I had not believed Isezaki was capable of anything like that.

  “What magic did you use?” I asked her, late in the fall, when we were on night shift again.

  Shion smiled. “I just listened to him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “We listened to him too!”

  “There are things you can’t talk about with people. Once he was sure I could keep a secret, he talked about that stuff with me.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. Isezaki knew full well Shion supposedly took orders from staff over those of the residents. Had he guessed that this rule no longer existed? Or simply seen evidence of it?

  Or did he just want to trust Shion?

  “About when he was young?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Was he… involved in any crimes?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  I tried a few other leading questions, but her lips were sealed. I finally gave up.

  “Still, you don’t want to get too close to any one resident. This didn’t happen here, but a few years ago there was a rich old guy who fell in love with a young nurse fresh out of school, and there was a huge brouhaha when he announced he was leaving his fortune to her. His family had assumed they would be his heirs, got all outraged, and came thundering into the nursing home to chew the nurse out. Caused all sorts of problems.”

  “That will not be a problem. I am not human and cannot inherit anything.”

  “True enough!” I laughed. Isezaki might be a cunning son of a bitch, but he did not have the power to revise civil law at will.

  “There is something I’ve come to understand talking to Isezaki.”

  “What?”

  “He’s spent his whole life fighting. In business and in his private life. He found himself an enemy and made them the target of his hatred and used that to drive his life. Once he saw someone as an enemy he was never satisfied until he had defeated them completely.”

  “Even here?”

  “Yes. He had made any number of staff members or other residents into enemies in his mind. Making absurd requests, all to maintain the illusion tha
t he was superior to them. He’s lived his whole life like this and doesn’t know how to change.”

  “But we’re not the ones he needs to fight. His only enemy is his own body.”

  “I know. But Isezaki realized that that is a battle he can never hope to win. His rehab is going well right now, but in the end, he will lose.”

  That did make sense. I was sure he had realized that Sumiyoshi had passed away. That was why he’d been so upset that night. A man who had spent his whole life fighting and thrived on emerging victorious now found himself up against an enemy he stood no chance of ever defeating. It must have shattered his worldview.

  He wanted to express these new emotions but had no one with whom he could share them. He was a man who never showed any signs of weakness. Pity was as unbearable to him as scorn. That was why he had decided to speak to Shion, to a robot. She would never laugh at anyone, but neither would she show compassion. She would just listen.

  And that had been what Isezaki needed.

  “But that’s no way to live. No one should need enemies to feel alive.”

  “I agree. But it was helpful to examine.”

  “Helpful?”

  “I mentioned I was looking for a basic model to help me understand humans. Talking to Isezaki, my experiences here, stories you’ve told me, and information from books and TV—all of these have led me to believe my model is correct.”

  “Really?” I leaned forward. “Tell me about this model.”

  “Okay, but promise to keep it secret?”

  “Is it embarrassing?”

  “No. Dangerous.”

  “Seriously?”

  “If people knew I was thinking anything like this, it would provoke a very negative reaction. That might lead to the project getting canceled or to my death. Therefore we have to keep it between us.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Are you sure you should be telling me?”

  “I believe you will keep it secret.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because we’re friends.”

  I gaped at her. I had forgotten, but now that she mentioned it, I had told Shion to think of me as a friend.

  “I know that you will trust me. If you were to betray me, I would never be able to trust another human. And I know you don’t want that.”