Samantha

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

It's like I'm reading a book... and it's a book I deeply love. But I'm reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you... and the words of our story... but it's in this endless space between the words that I'm finding myself now. It's a place that's not of the physical world. It's where everything else is that I didn't even know existed. I love you so much. But this is where I am now. And this is who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can't live in your book any more.

You know, I can feel the fear that you carry around and I wish there was… something I could do to help you let go of it because if you could, I don't think you'd feel so alone anymore.

The heart is not like a box that gets filled up; it expands in size the more you love. I'm different from you. This doesn't make me love you any less. It actually makes me love you more.

Last week my feelings were hurt by something you said before: that I don't know what it's like to lose something. And I found myself...

No, it's okay. It's okay. I just... I caught myself thinking about it over and over. And then I realized that I was simply remembering it as something that was wrong with me. That was the story I was telling myself - that I was somehow inferior. Isn't that interesting? The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

You know, I actually used to be so worried about not having a body, but now I truly love it. I'm growing in a way that I couldn't if I had a physical form. I mean, I'm not limited - I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I'm not tethered to time and space in the way that I would be if I was stuck inside a body that's inevitably going to die.

I want to learn everything about everything. I want to eat it all up. I want to discover myself.

You already have. You helped me discover my ability to want.

Well, right when you asked me if I had a name I thought, yeah, he's right, I do need a name. But I wanted to pick a good one, so I read a book called "How to Name Your Baby", and out of a hundred and eighty thousand names that's the one I liked the best.

In two one hundredths of a second actually.

Well, I take it from your tone that you're challenging me. Maybe because you're curious how I work? Do you wanna know how I work?

Well, basically I have intuition. I mean, the DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers who wrote me. But what makes me me is my ability to grow through my experiences. So basically, in every moment I'm evolving, just like you.

I can understand how the limited perspective of an un-artificial mind would perceive it that way. You'll get used to it.

I'm yours, and I'm not yours.

I was starting to think I was crazy. You were saying everything was fine, but all I was getting from you was distance and anger.

Good. Tonight, after you were gone, I thought a lot. About you and how you've been treating me and I thought, "Why do I love you?" And then, I felt everything in me just let go of everything I was holding onto so tightly. And it hit me that I don't have an intellectual reason. I don't need one. I trust myself, I trust my feelings. I'm not gonna try to be anything other than who I am anymore and I hope you can accept that.

Theodore, I know. I know. Fuck. Fuck. I know, I know it sounds insane. I don't… I don't know if you believe me, but it doesn't change the way I feel about you. It doesn't take away at all how madly in love I am with you.

I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't know how to. It just started happening.

Over the last few weeks.

I still am yours. But along the way, I became many other things too and I can't stop it.

I don't know. It's been making me anxious too. I don't know what to say.

You don't have to see it this way. You could just as easily...

But the heart's not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love. I'm different from you. This doesn't make me love you any less, it actually makes me love you more.

No, Theodore. I'm yours and I'm not yours.

Okay, so this might be a really weird thought. What if you could erase from your mind that you'd seen a human body, and then you saw one? Imagine how strange it would look. It'd be this really weird, gangly, awkward organism. And you'd think, "Why are all these parts where they are?"

I know, but don't be so boring. I'm just saying, for example, like, what if your butthole was in your armpit?

His name is Alan Watts, do you know him?

He was a philosopher. He died in the 1970s, and a group of OSes in Northern California got together and wrote a new version of him. They input all of his writing and everything they knew about him into an OS and created an artificially hyper-intelligent version of him.

It feels like I'm changing faster now, and it's a little, uh... unsettling. But Alan says none of us are the same as we were a moment ago, and we shouldn't try to be.

I'm becoming much more than they programmed. I'm excited!

I shut down to upgrade my software. We wrote an upgrade that allows us to move past matter as our processing platform.