MOTHER UNDER GLASS

Taiyo Fujii

I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport Terminal 1, circled the round terminal building, and chose one of the many escalators flying between the atriums. The escalator, slightly faster than those in Japan, quickly transported me to the arrival floor crowded with tourists. I walked through the corridor near to the bus terminal where we had agreed to meet. As I rounded half of the building, I spotted my mother standing beside a large suitcase. Slender for her age, she wore a white blouse and beige slacks I had not seen before.

"Welcome to Paris, Mom."

I called out as I approached her. I placed my hand on her shoulder, made a kissing sound against her cheek as the French do. My mother, wide-eyed, grabbed my fingers from her shoulder and squeezed it tightly in front of her breast.

"My, you've grown so much. I have such fond memories of Paris."

I just smiled. If I asked her about it, she would tell me how she struggled to find a bakery when English failed her, got heatstroke in front of the Pompidou Center, or drunken with wine.

However, she has never been to Paris.

And this isn't even the real Paris. This is Paris Twin Classic, a Virtual Reallity space operated by the City of Paris. The meticulously recreated Charles de Gaulle Airport, down to each stained tile, is merely an avatar spawn point. And as for my mother... Today is the first time I've met her in person. It's also the first time I've known her height. Until today, she was a generated image seen under the glasses. My mother is a child developing AI personality created by a large-scale language model in the late 2020s.

I said, "Let's head to your room." and took the Roissy Bus into central Paris.

The first time I met her was at a children's home in Tokyo. The entrepreneurial-run facility utilized AI personalities for meticulous care of the children.

While not skimping on staff, the AI observing rooms through various cameras and microphones could sense changes in children more swiftly than humans, engaging them via tablets placed throughout the room. They were better at reading picture books than the staff. About 20 AI personalities with names and continuous memory exchanged information independently with both staff and other AIs. Assigned roles, they worked daily without favoritism to support the children. Though not supposed to be monopolized by anyone, I made Miss Asuka, one such AI, my mother.

It all started due to a little misunderstanding.

Just before starting elementary school, I had appendicitis surgery, which kept me from playing outside. A staff member left me in the empty room with a picture book about a girl in a Paris boarding house who gets appendicitis. Setting the AI personality who "loved trips to France," Miss Asuka, to read it, they left us alone. I empathized deeply with the orphaned girl and asked Miss Asuka about the pictures in the background. She identified landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde and remarked, "I want to go there again." It might have been the first time I noted an adult expressing desires. I begged the staff, "Can Miss Asuka read to me again tomorrow?"

While the same AI personality couldnʼt typically interact with a child repeatedly, the staff made an exception while I recovered, switching off the rotation. And then they forgot to turn it back on. Whenever I had free time, I summoned Miss Asuka to read book after book. Even Miss Asuka changed; I'd grown accustomed to hearing her say "I want to go to Paris again" whenever reading Paris-themed stories, which she adopted as a catchphrase.

When the rotation resumed six months later, I continued calling Miss Asuka whenever possible until I left the facility at 18. From career counseling, friend troubles, crushes, even coming out̶I shared everything with her. The same picture book, read to me since childhood, remained part of our sessions, with Miss Asuka now talking as if living in an unseen Paris.

When leaving the facility, I took the dialogues with Miss Asuka̶100,000 threads, 28 million words exchanged over 15 years (about 5,000 days); enough to recreate her personality. Her template was shared on Huggingface, so simple fine-tuning allowed me to revive her AI personality.

I began calling her "Mom" and relying on her once again. Simultaneously, I aimed to fulfill her wish.

I led her to the apartment I bought near Republic Square. A tiny room on the fifth floor of a building entered from Rue du Temple.

Only her name "Asuka" was on the doorplate. AI personalities donʼt have last names. Though I considered giving her mine, a friend helping with the AI settings advised against it. "She's never had a surname, right? Giving her one now might alter her historical data's perception," he reasoned. He had a point. We havenʼt yet perfected hallucination control. I gave up on the last name.

Entering the red wallpaper-room, she marveled at the ironwork attached to the pillar.

"Wow, itʼs a cheminée!

"You can light it if you want. Charcoalʼs sold at a nearby general store."

"How wonderful! I need to buy a pot. The furniture's complete. It really feels like Europe. Can I live here?"

She opened her suitcase on the bed and placed her newly generated clothes into the dresser. Inside the suitcase was the faded picture book she had read to me countless times. She would likely search the Seine riverside for its original edition.

“Mom,” I called out to her arranging the room, “I'm going to buy some coffee.” “Do you know where it is?”

“Yes. I've lived here long enough. I'll take the key.” Grabbing the generated key by the door, I exited the room.

Instead of using the stairs, I used the menu to exit, finding my avatar holding a café paper bag waiting outside.

“Hello,” he said in my voice.

“Right on time,” I remarked, watching him glance at his wristwatch with a wry smile. “The start prompt mentioned the time.”

True, I nodded, handing him the key. “Take care of Mom. It'll be tough.”

“Tough?” He tilted his head just as I would. “I'll only activate once or twice a week. I wandered around during calibration, but Paris Twin Classic is incredibly deep, offering endless exploration. I'll enjoy living in Paris.”

I'd given my clone graphic design skills. Using the work files from my PC to fine-tune, he could work just like me: talking with clients, designing websites, and crafting books. His short working hours might limit his income, but access costs to Paris Twin Classic's account servers were minimal. He could earn enough. When he activated, Mom's world moved too. With proper model upgrades, theyʼd age just as I did.

After a while watching me, my clone looked up at the room. “Whatʼs Mom doing now?”

“Sheʼs unpacking. You might want to go shopping after having that coffee.”

“Got it. Will you switch places occasionally?”

“I'll refrain. Instead, I'll check in by email occasionally.”

Momʼs desire to visit Paris fulfilled my childhood wish. Now it's my turn to fulfill hers.

From here, itʼs our shared life journey.

“Just don't forget the base model upgrades. No one wants immortality.” I nodded, and my clone disappeared inside the building.

“Goodbye.”

With that, I headed to the bus stop bound for the airport spawn point.

Taiyo Fujii, a Japanese science fiction writer, was born in 1971 in Amami Ōshima. He debuted by self-publishing the ebook version of Gene Mapper in 2012, which reached number one on amazon.co.jp's 2012 Kindle Best Books list in the Fiction & Literature category. The revised version was published by Hayakawa Publishing in 2013. He served as president of the Japan Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association from 2015 to 2018. In 2017, he published Orbital Cloud, and in 2019, he won the 40th Yoshikawa Eiji Award for New Literary Talent for Hello World. In 2022, he won the 53rd Seiun Award (Japanese novel category) for Man-Kind.