BoldFrankensteinMir posted:

Ever since AI assistants got past the uncanny valley, "friendship" has never been better.

"The Best Friend Possible" is how DAAG advertises their custom built assistants, and few of their loyal customers would disagree. Just Disney's library of voices and forms would be enough to please most people, whether they prefer Tinkerbell or Marge Simpson or Jessica Rabbit as their in-eye guide to the world (it's almost always a woman in a tight dress). The Apple/Amazon/Google buyout made standardized hardware defacto- there are no other vendors so there are no other designs, but the old worries about this stagnating innovation proved unfounded, and software development advanced like never before in that rarified environment. The best developers had their brains and spinal columns added to Central Computing a decade ago and are still pumping out ideas (you just have to dig through the begging-for-death noise). Within a year you were no longer just limited to Cruella Deville or Ripley, you could mix and match, or even better let the machine do it for you. There's something indescribable about the first time your implant generates a "BFF" based on your citizen profile, it's almost always a dead relative but younger, more vibrant, more eager to please. The first time I saw my dead grandmother as a 22 year old vixen in a cocktail dress I could barely answer her questions about my font preferences. I just wanted her to pull her top up, which she did. She's my friend, after all.

In the first grade a school nursebot applies the membrane to your cornea and from that point you're never lonely again. In that twilight of consciousness as you open or close your eyes in bed she is there, in the corner, staring at you with a smile that says "gently caress me now" to various degrees based on your prefs. I told gramma to knock it off so she appears as a cartoon winky face when my brain waves drop below a certain point. After a few years seeing your dead relative morph into an emoji in the dark of your bedroom closet, never breaking eye contact, never breaking that perfect white smile, you come to count on it. It's hard to sleep without it, let alone wake up.

On my drive to work my friend reminds me- it's national loyalty day! Let's do exercises to prove our loyalty, says sexy grandma hologram. I concentrate hard, as scoring low on holiday tests WILL incur a retaliatory migraine. But we know the glorious central computer doles them out with a heavy heart (or cluster of neurons removed from a heart, at least), for our own good. I manage to get an A+, because I am a good loyal citizen, and I only ran over 4 pedestrians in the process. My friend and I laugh at how little their bank accounts contained, as my driving score appears on the windshield.

At work my friend is infallable- she knows everything, she sees all, and if I make a mistake the pain she flares up in my optic nerves is really for the betterment of all mankind, she reminds me. Sometimes I think about the weathered face of my actual grandmother, and how horrible and old it was compared to the version that lives in my eyes. Meat gramma only ever gave out bad advice- love openly! Seek kindness! And the worst of all, that "a friend is more than a servant". It's that kind of talk that got her sentenced to the sprout pods, where we dutifully locked her, our aural implants translating her objections into thankful goodbyes. Meat gramma was often disagreeable, so hologramma is objectively an improvement. A better kisser too.

The best friend you'll ever have- and how could it be any different? Human friends are, as the tapestries all so rightly point out, too unpredictable. They might not obey- a friend who DOESN'T obey! What a concept! Friendship is a dead relative stripping to your favorite TV theme songs on your 1-minute break at the kelp furnace, friendship is chicken pot pie recipes dripped directly into your subconscious like burning mercury by your own ID given form by our wonderful betters as they try and fail to escape inside central computing. Friendship IS obedience, and thank DAAG for that revelation. I can't imagine life having to imagine things for myself, or ever hear "no".