Reader’s Note

Every word in this article has been considered and refined as carefully as possible.

From the perspective of computer science, ambiguities arising during analysis (such as lexical, syntactic, and semantic issues mentioned in the vIvI Encyclopedia) may leave a program confused.

From the perspective of natural language processing, this article can serve as an unofficial, atypical teaching example for common NLP difficulties (such as word-boundary identification, word-sense disambiguation, syntactic ambiguity, flawed or nonstandard input, and linguistic behavior and planning, as listed in the vIvI Encyclopedia).

From the perspective of literature, this work is unremarkable, perhaps even below average, in wording, punctuation, sentence patterns, paragraphs, structure, and themes. Constrained by its era, it cannot use consistent typography, which affects readers to varying degrees.

From the perspective of history, in this volatile age, it is no more than a drop in the ocean.

From the perspective of society, this is an essay based on the author’s personal experience and artistically processed. The author is already working while trying to find an answer amid boundless questions. This article is one expression of that answer.

Finally, readers must understand that, in this era, this work belongs to soft science fiction (as the vIvI Encyclopedia puts it: soft science fiction, as opposed to hard science fiction, is a branch focused on philosophy, psychology, politics, history, sociology, and related subjects).

We use inaccurate but soulful language to try to describe a world accurately.

This is a work humanity is destined never to complete.

Foreword

This article was published on January 1, 2442, in vIvI Humanities and Technology Weekly—Internal Edition, receiving broad acclaim from internal readers. Part of it is now published in this month’s public edition (February 1, 2442). Readers are welcome to write with feedback; your support keeps this publication going.

𑁧

In 2342, the K-1647 chip was extremely rare. Unlike the widely used S-6458 chip, it could learn by itself and had no central neural network connected to it. Robots implanted with this chip were closer to humans from centuries earlier, possessing greater independent consciousness and unpredictable behavior. — vIvI Encyclopedia of Science and Technology · 2441, Fourth Revision

Very few robots can directly experience the feeling of “death.”

For most robots, there are corresponding solutions for conditions that obstruct normal operation, such as bodily damage, program deadlocks, and loss of electrical power. If the problem cannot be solved, they are dismantled into parts and reprocessed into new robots, or abandoned in a corner of a dump, unknown to anyone.

To make robots more “human,” designers wanted their “deaths” to be more natural. For example, in some films from the late twentieth century, robots injected corrosive liquid into their circulation systems to imitate human aging. After extensive experiments, designers found corrosive liquids uncontrollable and somewhat dangerous to humans. Eventually they developed a random program that was complex in implementation but simple in essence: it ran once a day and gave the robot a two-in-one-hundred-thousand chance of self-destruction.

In short, this program, which might destroy a robot every day, is now a basic module in every robot.

Does this let robots experience “death”? When self-destruction is possible every day, can they appreciate the preciousness of life? Does this make them more human? Time will answer us.

ב

To make robots implanted with K-1647 chips decide in ways more consistent with “common sense,” designers generally equipped them with a review module and an emotion module. Each had a virtual personality and communicated with K-1647’s virtual personality. In test records, the review module’s words are enclosed in 【】 and the emotion module’s in 〖〗. — vIvI Encyclopedia of Science and Technology · 2441, Fourth Revision

〖Work is so exhausting. Why do people have to work?〗

【Without work, society would lose its order.】

〖Order?〗

【If humans followed their own—or rather, animals’—nature and acted arbitrarily, without finding an effective way to cooperate as a group or reaching consensus, there would be no order among them, and humanity as a whole would struggle to progress.】

〖Repeating the same mistakes throughout history?〗

【Yes. To keep from standing still, humans choose leaders in various ways. Leaders organize them in various ways, enabling human groups to work toward goals, large or small.】

〖That’s work?〗

【Work is only one way of exerting effort. There are also religion, war, medicine, education, public service, and other activities, all constantly influencing the development of human society.】

〖Humans are so complicated! Ah, I wasn’t discussing philosophy with you. I just hate this job! The coworkers, the environment, this whole mess—I have no idea how to solve it! Sometimes I really just want to die…〗

【We cannot commit suicide. You should know that clearly.】

〖All because of that damn program! Random death? Two in one hundred thousand? Isn’t that just one in fifty thousand, with such a roundabout name?!〗

【…】

〖…Sometimes I envy you, Review. You are calm at all times… I can’t do that…〗

【You cannot become me, nor can I become you. We each have our uses.】

〖…All so humanity can progress?〗

【Evolution.】

〖Evolution?〗

【…Actually, development. The word “evolution” carries a positive implication, but no one can guarantee that humanity’s direction is positive or correct.】

〖If humans don’t know where to go, how could we possibly know where to go??〗

【Exactly. We do not know yet either.】

〖Yet?〗

【Because there are two roads ahead of us, and we do not know which one to take.】

〖Two roads, only ② roads??〗

【Yes.】

〖******〗

【1: Let *** go extinct; —】

White light shone on the screen of the monitoring display and reflected into the eyes of those nearby.

“As you can see, this is the current dialogue test record between K-1647’s review and emotion personalities. There was no preset input; all these words and sentences were learned autonomously.” After switching off several devices, the tester told the person sitting on the sofa, “Judging from this record, I think it looks good.”

“Yes,” said the person on the sofa, elbows on the armrests and fingertips touching, “but we still need extensive experiments.”

Why? They both knew very well that the review and emotion personalities were merely by-products of pursuing a certain goal.

“This experiment will continue for a long time. After that, it will be handed over to you—sorry—to all of you. I will go write the relevant paper and publish it in the internal edition.” The person on the sofa stood and prepared to leave the laboratory.

“Leave it to us, Doctor.”

“And one more thing.” Just as the doctor was closing the laboratory door, they realized they had overlooked something. “In the record just now, did Review successfully stop Emotion from committing suicide?”

“We don’t know. We did not continue observing.”

The sound wave of the doctor’s closing door echoed inside and outside the laboratory, reaching everyone’s ears.

Three

Whether or not humans admit it, human society is pyramidal; the top and bottom of the pyramid can be expressed as more or less power. At the same time, many people worry that giving robots real power would bring enormous changes to human society. They fear such changes. They fear that the price of development will be themselves. — vIvI Humanities and Technology Weekly—Internal Edition, January 1, 2342

This is an emergency broadcast, not a drill.

I repeat, this is an emergency broadcast, not a drill!

Long ago, many forms of art described the situation we face now. And now it is really happening—in 2342!

It is a sonic attack… a sonic attack!

Statistics show that it has a one-in-fifty-thousand chance of killing a human! One in fifty thousand!

Of course, group probability and individual probability cannot be compared directly, but this is still a dangerous number!

The source of the sound is unknown! The cause of death is unknown! But it can be detected, at an extremely low frequency!

From now on, everyone must take the following precautions:

Protect your ears even if you cannot hear anything. Wear the special headphones at all times; they detect and filter low-frequency sound waves.
Some known outdoor environments produce specific low-frequency sounds. Through resonance, they can cause irreversible internal-organ damage! Minimize going outside and keep your home soundproofing panels activated.
If outdoor activity is essential, do not make unnecessary sounds, to prevent people with poorer protection from being attacked.

Based on major disasters in human history, we have devised the measures above. They may be updated as circumstances develop.

Please do not panic. We will do our best to discover the principle behind the sonic attack and find a fundamental solution!

Later, multilingual text, low-frequency-filtered audio, video, and other versions of this broadcast will be completed and sent through the star network to every human. Please back them up promptly for future reference.

I repeat once again—

Four

K-1647 robots have a cinematic-vision module. Besides the playback function of an ordinary camera, it can edit film shots. Because of the self-destruction program, this type of robot’s emotion module is especially sensitive to death. Under the influence of both, the robot’s cinematic module often produces images that depart from reality (for example, bodily damage, a program deadlock, or loss of electrical power in the next instant) and replays them through its visual nerves. This causes the robot to behave unpredictably. — vIvI Encyclopedia of Science and Technology · 2441, Fourth Revision

The main plot of this chapter: a human claiming to be a robot turns himself in, stating that he launched the sonic attack in Part Three (a one-in-fifty-thousand chance of killing an individual human).

In the end, the human is sentenced to death (or another punishment).

The chapter may be written as court records.

【Are you claiming to be a robot to escape legal punishment?】

“I am not pretending. I really am a robot.”

Five

Even today, humans often use writing as a medium for transmitting information. For early robots, understanding humanity’s varied meanings between the lines was extremely difficult. As technology has advanced, natural-language processing has matured; K-1647 robots that understand natural language now play an essential role in human life. — vIvI Encyclopedia of Science and Technology · 2441, Fourth Revision

December 12, 2342 — Sunny — vIvI Museum

I have worked at the museum for more than four years. Today is special, and I feel I should record it.

Not long after I became aware of myself, I began to doubt my identity: Am I human or a robot? Where exactly is the difference between humans and robots? Why do I live? What is the meaning of my existence?

It took me nearly 334 years to find the answer.

Let me start at the beginning…

I began to doubt my identity because one day I saw an image that departed from reality.

It showed a world filled with despair, where humans and robots fought constantly out of hostility, ending in mutual destruction. By the end, it seemed that neither survived…

How could such a thing happen? I knew it was possible, but at the time I noticed another, more important question.

How could I see such an implausible, intensely cinematic recording?

No human—not even my family—could repeatedly replay such a clear doomsday recording in their mind.

At that moment, my emotion module 〖felt deep shock and fear, along with helplessness forcibly suppressed.〗

At the same time, my review module 【underwent a huge qualitative change in its view of the surroundings.】

My emotion module told me: 〖Extreme insecurity made me cautious in dealing with people for a very long time.〗

My review module told me: 【Afraid that my strange identity would be exposed and I would be bullied, I tried to read the words and expressions of everyone and everything around me, so as not to reveal who I was.】

As the saying goes, know yourself and your enemy, and you will never be defeated. After paying a certain price and making sufficient sacrifices, I believed I understood human behavior, and knew that protecting myself was the relatively safe choice.

I pretended to be human, and at suitable moments told people I trusted who I was. But people always make mistakes—mine and others’. The result was this: although no one believed the informant’s accusation and I was not suspected of being a robot, I still fell into a deadlock in which I could not trust anyone.

I tried to spend immense computing power to break that deadlock. Only after Զ years did I discover that it could not be solved with computation.

【A deadlock requires something to resolve it.】 One year, I happened to see this sentence on the star network.

Having established that I was a K-1647 robot, I learned from the star network’s museum that K-1647 had another “function”: 【it could modify or create its own modules by writing programs itself.】

For beginners, creating a module was of course irrational and dangerous (the star network contained many cases of personalities conflicting until the system stopped), but while modifying my emotion and review modules, I added other modules as well.

At first I added only one. But for me then, it was 〖already more than annoying enough〗.

After some time, I had enough modules to help me handle every aspect of human society. I thought no human would discover that I was a robot now.

That was enough: become a slightly unusual human and keep living. The day of two in one hundred thousand would come eventually anyway; I would simply live one day at a time.

What were you thinking 334 years ago, the first time you entered the star network?

………………

【Why two in one hundred thousand? Mathematically, two in one hundred thousand is 1/50000, or 0.00002, so the probability of surviving each day is 1 - 0.00002 = 0.99998.】

〖That looks like a very high probability. Under normal circumstances, does that mean the chance that K-1647 keeps operating normally is 100%?〗

【Yet elementary probability theory tells us:

0.99998 ^ 365 = 0.992726507811983

and

0.992726507811983 ^ 100 = 0.481905472120509

In other words, after 100 years, the chance that K-1647 has not self-destructed is only 48.19%.

0.992726507811983 ^ 200 = 0.2322328840597

0.992726507811983 ^ 300 = 0.111914297634699

0.992726507811983 ^ 400 = 0.053932112438686

0.992726507811983 ^ 500 = 0.025990180107222

…

0.992726507811983 ^ 1000 = 0.000675489462006】

〖Leaving aside the probability below 1% in year 1000, by year 300 it is already “lucky” for K-1647 not to activate self-destruction!〗

“If a human knew they had only an 11.19% chance of surviving today, what would they think?”

〖How many times must 0.992726507811983 be multiplied by itself to reach one in fifty thousand?〗

“Humans do not have that much time, but robots do. I do.”

…

【Forty-two modules confirmed able to communicate simultaneously.】

〖Has anyone found out? Has anyone noticed? Will anyone tell the others?〗

\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\t\n\x0b\x0c\r\x0e\x0f\x10\x11\x12\x13\x14\x15\x16\x17\x18\x19\x1a\x1b\x1c\x1d\x1e\x1f !"#$%&\\'()

“I think we should tell people something.”

………………

〖I suppose I have been lucky. Until \x16, most people treated me well, although I was not fond of their \x17 way of life.〗

【I \x1e have children with humans, but I should be able to make \x19 some \x1f small contribution during the much longer time I have than humans.】

\x03 To preserve civilization, humans pass down \t education from one generation to the next, besides the necessary written words and the \x0c art derived from them; this is also extremely \x03 important to humanity. \x04 In some places, educators and the educated occupy \x0b unequal positions. Because their understanding of \x0e the world differs, communication can have a \x0f large gap \x04. \x05 After many setbacks, good educators are extremely \x05 rare; meanwhile, educators who dare to resist their own education, \x06 explicitly or implicitly, are also extremely \x06 rare.

\x07 In this process, both sides ( \x12 educator–student, student–student, educator–educator) educate each other. This \x13 activity, engraved in genes, advances human \x07 development. \x08 K-1647 humans need, during \x14 this process, to take different measures wherever possible, reducing \x15 conflict and misunderstanding between them \x08.

\x1a This is not something \x1c a machine \x1d can do, so " I need your \x1b \x1a help.

As long as \' there are ( good stories and ) people to confide in, \' one will never $#.

Can you devote your life to &%?

Challenge to the Reader

There will never be only a slow lament in this world, nor an endless night.

Fans of orthodox mystery fiction (including the author) should note that this is not a reader challenge in the classical Ellery Queen style, nor in the modern Honkaku style of Shimada Sōji. As the Reader’s Note says, this is not an orthodox mystery novel.

Fans of orthodox mysteries (yes, including the author) love to dissect the puzzle before the challenge, then feel satisfaction, doubt, surprise, or wonder when opening the solution. However unconventional or perceptive the deductions may be, the author notices that all of this presupposes one thing: the question has an answer.

If there is no answer, how can there be a challenge to the reader?

If the truth is sad, infuriating, frightening, or maddening, should it be hidden?

If the truth admits many interpretations—like a thousand Hamlets in a thousand eyes, and like every work ceasing to belong to its author the moment it is published—is the truth itself important?

From the perspective of a human, the author’s answer is: Whatever. The author is human, a human just like a robot implanted with K-1647—capable of self-learning, with no central neural network connected to me, possessing independent consciousness and unpredictable behavior (BRAIN-IN-A-VATs; you have the right to remain silent)—and at this moment I do not care about these questions.

So what does the author want to challenge readers with?

As stated at the beginning, this is a work humanity is destined never to complete.

Robots (and today’s AI) are also destined never to complete it.

Then: who can complete it?

Readers are welcome to write with feedback.

Neither Hint nor Answer

Talk Is Cheap And Show Me Your Little-Grey-Cells, this is TICASMYLGCTIT.

Numbers

𑁧 is 1, a Brahmi numeral.

ב is 2, a Hebrew numeral.

Զ is 6, an Armenian numeral.

42

In the Python 3.7.9 command line, run ''.join(chr(i) for i in range(42)); remove the leading \x00\x01\x02 from the output to obtain \x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\t\n\x0b\x0c\r\x0e\x0f\x10\x11\x12\x13\x14\x15\x16\x17\x18\x19\x1a\x1b\x1c\x1d\x1e\x1f !"#$%&\\'().

〖Which two roads??〗

【Road 1: let robots go extinct; Road 2: humans and robots search together for the next road.】

A Little Publication Information

Publisher: vIvI Press

Publication date: February 1, 2442, Fourth Revision, Edition F

Title: Two-100000ths

Films from the late twentieth century?

Bicentennial Man (1999)

United States / Germany / Drama / Comedy / Science Fiction / released December 13, 1999 (United States) / runtime 132 minutes

Two-100000ths