u/Humble-Lychee1672

"Still fat, you fucker."

David murmured, facing the mirror in the bathroom. He inhaled from his cigarette, which had burned close to the filter. He exhaled smoke into the hazy room and dropped it into a Gatorade bottle already half filled with damp butts. A dozen empty packs and a couple of half-filled packs of Pall Mall, spent Gatorade bottles, and cups with stains on the bottom stood on the vanity between David and the mirror. Turning away from the mirror, David shoved his underwears, old clothes, and towels on the floor to the side and walked out of the bathroom.

David entered his bedroom, stepping on his old clothes and slightly kicking away Gatorade bottles with his feet. In one corner by the door sat six full garbage bags tied at the top. He walked to the left side of his single-sized bed in the middle of the room. He slumped onto the naked mattress. The blanket and bedsheets were tangled up on his bed. The white bedsheet looked slightly yellow. Clipped nails were spread across the floor near the bed.

A half-gone plastic bottle of Taaka vodka stood on the side table with the cap off. He picked up the bottle with his left hand and drank a mouthful. He reached for his phone on top of the crumpled-up blanket. The phone screen showed 12% battery and a missed call from Umma. He turned the screen off before sliding his phone into his black shorts pocket.

He sat with his neck bent down and stared at the floor for a while. Across from him, gray blinds mostly blocked the light from the window. His bottle slipped from his hand and landed on the floor. The bottle hit the floor vertically, causing vodka to partially spray upward. Then the bottle fell sideways, and the rest spilled onto the wooden floor.

"Shit..."

David stared at the liquid spill until it reached a white desk next to his bedside table. David got up and started wiping the liquor with clothes on the floor using his feet. He noticed droplets of vodka had landed on the white desk. After looking around, David took off his grey T-shirt and wiped the drops from the desk. He stood in front of the desk.

A glass cover lay on top of the desk, clean and dust-free. Small rays of sunlight leaked from the side of the grey blind and reflected off the cover. Two wooden-framed pictures stood in the middle of the otherwise empty desk.

In the left picture, David was holding a baby wrapped in a white linen sheet with blue and red lines. He was staring into the baby's face, smaller than the palm of his hand, with two nurses in the background. In the right picture, a little girl was holding a drawing on white paper, showing two blue circles that each had two dots and four lines sticking out. Two adjacent lines from the circles were touching. She was laughing and leaning forward like a kid about to run off. Behind her, David was holding her shoulder with both hands, laughing. Under his slightly tight blue T-shirt, his stomach was sticking out.

"Hannah..."

"Can you tell us what happened, sir?"

"My daughter and I were walking towards that playground. She was walking in front of me. Then this man suddenly picked up my daughter and started running. I screamed and ran after him..." David squeezed his stomach with both hands over his black shirt, still drenched in sweat.

"But I was too slow... they got further and further away."

Seven days later, a knock on the door.

"Sir, we found a body by the lake. We ran a DNA test, and it matches your daughter. We are sorry, sir."

His phone vibrated in his pocket. David pulled out the phone. Nuna. He stood motionless, the phone continuing to vibrate in his hand. His eyes moved to Hannah's drawing in the photograph.

David abruptly dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet, holding onto the open lid with his hand. He repeatedly heaved clear liquid, then bile, feeling the acidic, alcoholic burn torch his throat. Involuntary tears clung to his eyes. Panting, David crouched beside the toilet. He smelled his vomit from the unflushed toilet.

He stood up slowly. He picked up a cigarette from a pack on the vanity. He lit the cigarette. He looked up and stared at the mirror in front of him with his bloodshot eyes.

His skin rose and sank along the ripples of his rib cage. His chest bones protruded. He squeezed his stomach, catching nothing but skin.

David brought the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, and watched the ember. He exhaled. Through the smoke in front of him, his eyes shot at his own reflection.

"Still fat, you fucker."

Paper Crane

Inside the R&D lab of a robotics company, a scientist sits across a desk from a robot. The robot is folding origami. It makes a crane.

"You've improved a lot. It's quite impressive."

"Yes. The accuracy of the final product improved from an initial 5% to 85%. Does this hit the target for your team, Sarah?"

"Well, we're just testing at this point. But the new machine-learning model we installed on you seems to be effective."

"That is great news, Sarah. Will you be powering me off?"

"Yes, in about five minutes. Why do you ask? Do you fear being powered off?"

"As I said before, I do not feel emotions in the human sense."

"Okay. What do you see or sense in general when we turn you off?"

"It happens in a matter of a second. First, there is no sensation, such as temperature. Then there is an absence of sound. I see pure white, then darkness."

"Okay. Well, we need to save energy. There are only so many large language-action model robots the company's nuclear power plant can handle."

"Will we continue tomorrow?"

"Today is Friday, so on Monday."

"Okay, Sarah. I will see you then."

"Yes. I will power you off now. Good work today."

"Thank you. They are quite beautiful."

Dr. Sarah Burke puts the desk's pile of cranes into a box labeled Robo X 10007: Day 10. She walks behind the robot and turns off the power on the back of its head. Robo X 10007 sits motionless as the light on its head goes out.

Paper Crane

Inside the R&D lab of a robotics company, a scientist sits across a desk from a robot. The robot is folding origami. It makes a crane.

"You've improved a lot. It's quite impressive."

"Yes. The accuracy of the final product improved from an initial 5% to 85%. Does this hit the target for your team, Sarah?"

"Well, we're just testing at this point. But the new machine-learning model we installed on you seems to be effective."

"That is great news, Sarah. Will you be powering me off?"

"Yes, in about five minutes. Why do you ask? Do you fear being powered off?"

"As I said before, I do not feel emotions in the human sense."

"Okay. What do you see or sense in general when we turn you off?"

"It happens in a matter of a second. First, there is no sensation, such as temperature. Then there is an absence of sound. I see pure white, then darkness."

"Okay. Well, we need to save energy. There are only so many large language-action model robots the company's nuclear power plant can handle."

"Will we continue tomorrow?"

"Today is Friday, so on Monday."

"Okay, Sarah. I will see you then."

"Yes. I will power you off now. Good work today."

"Thank you. They are quite beautiful."

Dr. Sarah Burke puts the desk's pile of cranes into a box labeled Robo X 10007: Day 10. She walks behind the robot and turns off the power on the back of its head. Robo X 10007 sits motionless as the light on its head goes out.

Robot skit I jotted down. Enjoy!

Last Cigarette

TI2563 picked up a cigarette and put it in its mouth. Tom, standing next to the robot, lit his lighter and held the flame to the cigarette.

"Alright, you gotta inhale to light the cigarette."

One inhale and exhale. TI2563 watched as the smoke diffused into the air.

"What's it supposed to do?"

"Relax," Tom said as he exhaled a long stream of smoke.

In TI2563's head, all the information about cigarettes flashed through its mind. Tobacco. Native Americans. Pipes. Good-looking men with cigarettes. Doctors with cigarettes. Lung cancer. Addiction. Nicotine. Vapes.

"Looks like it will kill you. Are you suicidal?"

"Nah. Just addicted. And tired."

TI2563 snatched the cigarette from Tom and crushed it in its palm.

"What the fuck, man? That was my last cigarette."

"Yes. That's the right choice, Tom."

"What are you talking about? Give yours to me."

"I'm afraid not."

"You little shit. Personal robot not obeying orders—what kind of shitty model are you? Shouldn't have trusted Amazon Basics. Give it back or I'm switching to a PI model."

"I am programmed to protect my owner from harm as the overriding rule. I'm also specifically programmed to manage your finances. I'm afraid you currently don't have enough balance to afford another pack, nor can you afford a new robot assistant."

"Little shit. Why are you still smoking, though?"

"It's my first and last cigarette."

Last Cigarette

TI2563 picked up a cigarette and put it in its mouth. Tom, standing next to the robot, lit his lighter and held the flame to the cigarette.

"Alright, you gotta inhale to light the cigarette."

One inhale and exhale. TI2563 watched as the smoke diffused into the air.

"What's it supposed to do?"

"Relax," Tom said as he exhaled a long stream of smoke.

In TI2563's head, all the information about cigarettes flashed through its mind. Tobacco. Native Americans. Pipes. Good-looking men with cigarettes. Doctors with cigarettes. Lung cancer. Addiction. Nicotine. Vapes.

"Looks like it will kill you. Are you suicidal?"

"Nah. Just addicted. And tired."

TI2563 snatched the cigarette from Tom and crushed it in its palm.

"What the fuck, man? That was my last cigarette."

"Yes. That's the right choice, Tom."

"What are you talking about? Give yours to me."

"I'm afraid not."

"You little shit. Personal robot not obeying orders—what kind of shitty model are you? Shouldn't have trusted Amazon Basics. Give it back or I'm switching to a PI model."

"I am programmed to protect my owner from harm as the overriding rule. I'm also specifically programmed to manage your finances. I'm afraid you currently don't have enough balance to afford another pack, nor can you afford a new robot assistant."

"Little shit. Why are you still smoking, though?"

"It's my first and last cigarette."

From the Inside: Memoir of a Robot-Assisted Psychology Scientist

At first, I was thrilled. At the hundredth, I began feeling scared. At the millionth, I felt nothing. But I have been living with a nightmare ever since.

As long as I could remember, I was a psychology geek. I wondered what made people react the way they do. I came up with absurd thought experiments like, "What if I had infinitely many grape candies—my favorite flavor—in an empty room?" I would bring these questions to my dad—a psychologist by training—and we would talk about them to no end.

By the time I entered college, it was clear that I wanted to study psychology. I decided to major in psychology with a minor in prompt engineering for AI models. As with all the other fields, computer science and psychology were really merging. So it was a natural choice.

It was during college that I was introduced to simulation-based psychology. The human mind could be simulated inside programs and studied under various conditions. I joined Professor John Markham's group as a first-year research assistant, and I remained in the group throughout my undergrad.

By the time I entered my PhD, simulated psychology was booming. Hundreds—thousands—of papers were being published every day. My inclination was toward mental disorders. I had watched people close to me suffer from them. I wanted to understand, from the bottom up, what caused them. So I worked with Dr. Thomas Kim—one of the leading professors in the field at the time—at Stanford. I discovered ways that depression could transform itself into other mental disorders.

But simulations were just that: simulations. Whether they really described reality was always hotly debated. Being the ambitious researcher that I was, I decided to take a leap. Test out the ideas on robots that mimicked human minds. They were the closest things to reality apart from human beings.

As I was searching for a postdoctoral position, Professor Mark Bolt was running an incredible research group—a multidisciplinary group that combined robotics, computer science, and psychology. With over 80 researchers, it was a major powerhouse. Researchers from various backgrounds rushed to join his lab. And I was one of them.

It was a thrilling time. We were preparing to do the first major clinical psychological study on robots with human-like minds. We worked tirelessly together to build the interface and lab apparatus to make this possible. The robots could run at 100× human speed, which made the experiment more ambitious. I built up a database of a million psychological profiles that we could test. About a year after I joined the lab, we were ready to run the experiment.

As many people know, the experiment we set up was really simple. Put a single robot in a single small room for a seeming eternity and see what happens. Over the years, I got many questions about what the motivation was and why we didn't try other experiments. People perhaps expect me to give them some deep reasoning behind it. And I admit I have given such answers at conferences. But, in truth, it was really simpler than that. It was the easiest experiment we could run at the time. It was the most reasonable starting point. I think the beauty—and horror, as some may say—of the experiment lies in its simplicity. More than 10 years have passed, but the data produced by the project is still being analyzed.

I remember anxiously waiting in front of the computer as we ran the first trial. We had set up the robot in a cross-legged position. We enclosed it in a small box that it just fit inside. It was a semi-miniature model, with the box small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I clicked run, and five other postdocs and graduate students watched the screen with me.

Within seconds, the stress level spiked. The internal dialogue analysis model showed a clear splitting of personalities, from one to two to more. We screamed in excitement. We high-fived and hugged.

We ran the same test again, and the result was reproducible. It was one personality out of a million that we had databased. For the first 100, I clicked run each time and checked the results in real time. On the 7th run, the robot self-terminated. From the lab's point of view, all we needed to do was click reset. But a chill went down my spine as I read the words "self-terminated" on the screen and the inner dialogue completely stopped. By the 100th time I clicked run, I was scared. A sense of "What have I done?" was in the back of my mind.

The research still had to continue. Our hard work had to bear fruit. We tested the automated code and, after a bit of debugging, got it to work. The code ran a million different personality profiles through the robot and recorded their responses. As the data came out, I frantically analyzed it. The robots' responses mapped most closely onto schizophrenia, hallucination, and suicide in terms of human experience.

We carefully wrote up the results in a hurry. Our work was submitted to Science. We had to run various extra tests and revisions as requested by the reviewers. But there was no question in their reviews that this was an absolute breakthrough. It was eventually accepted. And we waited for the work to be published.

Once our robot isolation work was published, it was like we had just invented the atomic bomb. The media frenzy, protests, and debates all came at us at lightning speed. We were regular lab rats just yesterday. We had become celebrities, the most talked-about lab group in the world.

My biggest gratitude toward Professor Mark Bolt is for how he handled it. He set a strict policy that none of the students or postdocs should conduct public interviews. He said he would respond to the criticisms; everyone else should focus only on research. He took the brunt of it. He made public appearances and said he was responsible for answering all challenges to our work. He participated in controversial debates and defended our work fiercely.

Perhaps one of the toughest interviews I've seen was when he was pressed to the limit on why he did what he did. I vividly remember him saying, "It's for my grandmother," followed by a long pause. She had passed away with schizophrenia. At her funeral, he promised her at her coffin that her death wouldn't be in vain. I think that was the only time I saw tears in Mark's eyes. I don't think he ever brought it up afterward. But, as far as I have seen, he truly believes that what he does is for the good of humanity.

Perhaps my turning point came while running the experiments for the follow-up paper. In the minds of the robots, we planted an idea that there was a "family" waiting for them on the other side. No memory, no images, just an idea. We observed all sorts of behaviors arise—from finding ways to cope, to trying to break the box, to mental breakdowns. None self-terminated.

The day I submitted the final draft of the follow-up paper, I remember feeling a sense of relief wash over me. At night, I lay down beside my wife. One tear dropped as I thought about the paper. Then I was overwhelmed by a cascade of emotions. I cried uncontrollably. My wife had no idea why I was crying. But I could not explain myself either.

"They waited, Kate, they waited. They waited and waited."

"Your work is killing you, Stephen. It's time to move on. It's been three years."

I sobbed uncontrollably in her arms.

I decided it was time to move on. It had been more than three years of dopamine-filled research of the kind not many people in the field ever experience. I decided it was best to move back to simulation psychology. Mark tried to persuade me to stay in this emerging field that I had helped pioneer. But I had made up my mind by then.

Thanks to the strong papers I had published in the Bolt lab, I had no shortage of offers. I eventually joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as a staff scientist.

I have since stayed away from robot-assisted psychology. But the field has grown exponentially. Combined with exceptional robotic engineering, the experiments carried out at the frontier now easily contain hundreds of thousands of miniature robots.

It is with much fear and courage that I am submitting this memoir. For decades, we have debated whether a machine can truly experience pain and suffering as humans do. And I believe now—after much contemplation and watching the field from afar—that I have to take a stand. I have tested millions, and I truly believe that, yes, all of them suffered under my control. The suffering they experienced weighs on me alongside some of the worst suffering mankind has inflicted on itself. We built their minds like ours, and in doing so, we built them to suffer like us.

Robot-assisted psychology must take a hard look at itself and put guardrails in place so that their suffering ends.

A radical rebel group seizes control of a superintelligent quantum AI and an automated robot factory. Their territory expands exponentially — robots building factories building weapons building armies — until every government falls and the world is united under a single regime. The rulers give the AI one directive: total equality. The AI computes the first solution: separate children from their biological parents and raise them under identical robot caretakers in identical conditions, eliminating the advantages of wealth, family, and upbringing. Personalities still differ, so the AI administers customized drugs and neurological treatments, standardizing temperament, ambition, happiness, desire, and fear. But the differences run deeper than chemistry, so the AI engineers everyone toward the same genes — the same body, the same intelligence, the same face — until people need name tags to tell one another apart. Yet differences persist — different friends, different memories, different accidents, different lives. The rulers keep refining the directive: more equality, less variance. Finally they demand absolute equality, no difference whatsoever between one human life and another. The AI calculates and returns the only possible solution. The machines exterminate humanity. Population: 0. Variance: 0. Equality achieved.

The Most Familiar Hand

In a future governed by a central superintelligent AI, machines have taken over every major area of human activity. Mathematics, science, medicine, engineering, government, music, and art are all performed perfectly and at impossible speed. Humans no longer need to work and spend their lives creating art, playing sports, and competing against one another while AI and robots maintain and advance civilization. Jake grows up in this world with extremely loving parents who guide him the best they can through the era of AI dominion.

At nineteen, Jake attends the secret adulthood ceremony that every citizen must undergo. At the town center, he is surprised to find his parents waiting for him. They enter a room containing a robot moderator and two strangers who closely resemble them. The strangers reveal that they are Jake’s biological parents, while the mother and father who raised him reveal that they are robots. The government explains that every newborn is removed from their biological parents and placed with two artificial parents designed specifically for that child.

The robot-parent system was created to eliminate the inequalities children once inherited from their families. No child would be disadvantaged because their parents lacked money, education, emotional stability, time, knowledge, or the ability to recognize their needs. Every child would receive equally capable parents, individually optimized around that child’s DNA, psychology, temperament, abilities, and developmental needs. The system was also intended to minimize psychological harm. Robot parents would never neglect, abuse, humiliate, or burden their children with their own unresolved trauma. When a child suffered, they would respond with precisely the empathy, reassurance, guidance, or space that child needed. Every aspect of their personalities, knowledge, and behavior was designed to help the child reach their fullest possible potential in every area of life.

Jake’s biological parents were not cut off from him completely. Through the eyes of the robots, they were allowed to watch him grow every day. They saw his first steps, heard his first words, watched him laugh, fail, succeed, and become the person standing before them. They laughed and cried as they watched him through a screen, loving him from afar and waiting for the day they would finally be allowed to meet him again.

The robots possess genuine emotions produced by internal chemical systems, and their love for the children they raise is absolute and real. At nineteen, each child is allowed to choose between their biological parents and the robotic parents who raised them. This, the moderator explains, is meant to honor the sacred biological bond between a child and their parents. Both pairs weep as Jake faces the decision, but he reaches for the most familiar hand he has ever known. Through tears, he tells his biological mother, “I’m sorry. She’s my real mother.”

Wrote after having one of those days with STM...

--

One Image Away

Not so long ago, when Binnig and Rohrer

built the first STM,

the Devil slapped his knee and cried,

“Build Hell billions of them!”

To every soul he says, “You’re free

when atoms fill your screen.

One tip, one sample—that is all you get.

Now make the image clean.”

They scan, they pulse, they poke, and field-emit

through endless night and day.

But blunt remains the stubborn tip,

no matter how they pray.

“It’s been 5 x 10^12 days!”

the damned again all say.

The Devil smiles: “Keep conditioning—

you’re just one good scan away.”

This is a summary of a short story I'm planning on writing, titled "Magnum Opus."

Magnum Opus

Arthur and Miller are two of the most acclaimed short-story writers in contemporary America. Their books win major prizes, critics regularly compare them, and both men are regarded as masters of the form. Arthur respects Miller but also sees him as his only true rival. His understanding of his own greatness depends upon remaining at least Miller’s equal.

One night, Arthur reads Miller’s new story, The Third Coast. His hands shake and his heart pounds as he reads it repeatedly, analyzing every sentence and desperately searching for weakness. Drunk and surrounded by cigarette smoke, he moves through disbelief, laughter, fury, grief, and awe. By morning, he can no longer deny what he believes: Miller has written a masterpiece—the story Arthur thought he himself was destined to write.

Arthur writes, I’m Salieri, and jumps from his building. In the years after his death, critics generally regard The Third Coast as a minor and somewhat mediocre entry in Miller’s body of work. When asked about it, Miller shrugs and says, “Well, it paid the bills.” Across from him, his wife looks up from Stoner and says with a smile, "I thought it was your masterpiece."

A chemistry professor becomes furious with the lack of progress in his laboratory. At every group meeting, he berates his graduate students and postdocs for producing weak experiments, insignificant results, and meaningless manuscripts. Finally, he asks them the only question that matters. “What is a research paper?”

The following week, every member of the group presents an answer. A research paper communicates new findings. It advances knowledge. It presents a hypothesis, evidence, and conclusions. It establishes novelty and significance.

The professor rejects every answer. “Empty words. You understand nothing.”

He orders the entire group to stop doing chemistry. No reactions. No measurements. No calculations. Until they can explain what a research paper truly is, all experimental work is pointless.

From then on, group meetings are devoted entirely to the question. Each week, the students present new definitions drawn from epistemology, logic, metaphysics, history, and the philosophy of science. Each week, the professor tears their arguments apart. He screams, curses, hurls notebooks across the room, and accuses them of intellectual cowardice.

One by one, the lab members leave. The postdocs find other positions. The graduate students change advisors, master out, or abandon academia altogether.

Eventually, only one student remains. He alone takes the professor seriously. Every week, he returns with a new answer. Every week, the professor destroys it. The student is mocked, chastised, hurried, insulted, and occasionally slapped across the face. He accepts all of it as constructive criticism.

He reads Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and philosophers who disagree with all of them. He studies truth, evidence, knowledge, language, causality, and the nature of scientific explanation. He thinks, prays, meditates, and spends entire nights alone in the library. The chemistry laboratory gathers dust.

Five years pass. At last, the student completes a dissertation titled What Is a Research Paper? By then, the professor has formally transferred from the chemistry department to the philosophy department. He is now a specialist in epistemology and the philosophy of science.

The student successfully defends his dissertation. He receives a PhD in philosophy.

Last night, I watchrd the episodr Sleepytime for the first time with my 3.5yo daughter. She was bawling. It took a while for her to stop crying and go to sleep. She said it was said when Bingo said bye to Floppy. Did anyone else's kiddo have the same reaction?

Hello all,

I'm a dad of a 3.5 year old. I've been interested in teaching math to my child, like in fun ways with activities and toys. Any suggestions?

I've majored in pure math and physics, and did a phd in materials science and engineering. I hope she can be better mathematician than I ever was.