“Come on, can’t you walk a little faster?!”

Woohyun sighed behind his friend. “Sungyeol, you’ve shown me hundreds of your failed inventions already. My motivation to follow you has decreased quite a lot.”

Sungyeol let out an exasperated sound and grabbed his friend’s wrist, almost dragging him into his laboratory. “It’s not a failed experiment this time! I just need you to… test it, give your opinion on it!”

“That’s even scarier!” His tall friend had opened the door and he really wished he could run away, but the grip on his wrist was strong. “Remember that time when I had to test your stupid machine that was supposed to analyze someone’s blood and DNA in less than a second? It almost cut my arm off to take a sample!”

When he finished protesting, he saw a young man in the middle of the familiar messy room. He quickly bowed at him and the stranger bowed in return, a small smile on his lips. Woohyun then turned to his crazy inventor of a friend. “Why did you drag me all the way here to test your invention if there’s already someone else who can test it?”

Only then did he realize Sungyeol’s proud smile, as he was staring at the stranger in the middle of the room. He then slowly turned to Woohyun and the latter swore his eyes shined with a mix of excitement, tears and wonder. The next sentence came as a whisper. “He is the invention, Woohyun.”

The latter froze, the meaning of the few words slowly sinking in, building up one single conclusion that was far from being reasonable. And yet, as much as he stared into his friend’s eyes, he couldn’t see a single trace of malice. He wasn’t lying. It wasn’t one of his stupid jokes. So, carefully, as if he was himself afraid to find out the truth, he turned to the young man that was still standing there, looking at him with that same small smile. And after a moment, as Woohyun was still frozen, the invention took a few steps in his direction and held out his hand.

“Hi, I’m Sunggyu. You must be Woohyun, right? Sungyeol told me you’d be quite shocked when you’d see me.”

Woohyun stood there, not moving a single finger, and looked at the invention in front of him from head to toe. It was a little taller than himself, pale skin, small brown eyes, light brown hair and a sweet smile. It looked… real. He couldn’t wash away the mess in his head. His eyes were telling him that in front of him was standing a handsome young man, but his brain was telling him that he was being deceived. In front of him was a machine. He sent a quick glance at Sungyeol once again, afraid his friend would burst out laughing at his joke, but he didn’t. So Woohyun slowly extended his hand and shook Sunggyu’s one.

He looked at their hands that remained linked, as he was feeling the material that disturbingly felt like skin under his touch and he let out some words before his mind even formed them. “It’s cold.”

The loud voice of his friend broke his trance and he quickly let go of the hand. “Of course he’s cold, he’s a robot!”

It took Woohyun a few seconds to find the words he needed. “It looks… so real.” His hand was instinctively reaching for the robot’s face, but he stopped his movement upon realization of what he was doing. He looked over at Sungyeol. “Can I touch it?”

His friend shot him a small smile. “Ask him. I’m going to leave you two alone for a moment, I’ve got some things to buy. Just… try to talk to him and tell me what you thought of him after, okay?” As he went over to his invention to his hair and tell him he would be back, Woohyun frowned upon his friend’s words. He was confused at the way he was talking about the robot – not as a thing, but as a person. But soon enough, he was teared from his thoughts, as Sungyeol left the room and he was left drowning in the silence between him and this thing.

Sunggyu was the first to break the silence along with their eye contact, as he made his way to a chair and sat on it, motioning for Woohyun to sit on the one next to him. “Are you always that silent or are you still shocked?” Woohyun silently took the chair the robot had pointed to him. “And to answer your question, yes you can touch me if you want.”

Woohyun was at a loss. He guessed that thing was right, he was still shocked, because it still felt like his brain was refusing to form any coherent ideas. However, his hand once again reached for the cheek, this time reaching its destination. It was cold but, just like the hand, it strangely felt like skin. It wasn’t hard, as he thought it would be, but on the contrary a bit squishy, just like real flesh. He carefully caressed the skin to touch the lips and go up again to pass his hand through the soft light brown hair. He really had to remind himself that it wasn’t human when Sunggyu looked away in what could be mistaken for embarrassment. Woohyun retracted his hand and waited for the robot to look at him again before speaking.

“So, your name is Sunggyu…” A nod. “And eerr… How old are you?” He grimaced, realizing his mistake. He had just asked the first thing he would have asked to any human being. “Wait, no. That’s a stupid question.”

Sunggyu chuckled and once again the other was amazed by how natural that sounded. “That’s not a stupid question at all. I was designed to look like a 27 year old man, so I guess you could say I’m 27, even though technically I’m only 6 days old.”

This time, Woohyun couldn’t help but reciprocate the warm smile that was directed towards him. Honestly, he was amazed by his friend’s newest invention. Amazed wasn’t even enough to describe his state. To build a machine that looked so completely human by its appearance, gestures and speech was incredible. Concerning the latter, even with the few sentences Sunggyu had spoken, Woohyun could see that his speech pattern was amazingly designed. In their last interaction for example, he had started by taking into consideration his interlocutor, reassuring him on the nature of his question. He had then not only stated his age, but had come up with a logical answer of the two ways his age could be seen. He could understand why his friend couldn’t wait anymore to show him. If Sunggyu was as perfect as it looked like, then it could only mean one thing: Sungyeol had managed to build artificial intelligence.

That brought Woohyun to his next question. “Sunggyu, can you think?”

Sunggyu looked at the floor and let out a small sigh. “That’s what Sungyeol would like to prove. He thinks I can.”

The other was even more confused at the robot’s reaction. He pressed further. “And you?”

The robot looked up at him, a tint of something that strangely resembled amusement on his flawless face. “Isn’t that a weird question? Asking me if I think I can think?”

It was Woohyun’s turn to act embarrassed and he felt his cheeks warm up a little. So much for taking the interlocutor into consideration. However, before he could justify himself, Sunggyu answered his ‘weird question’.

“But as strange as it is… I think I can. I mean, it depends on how you chose to define the act of thinking.” Woohyun looked at him with curiosity, silently asking him to continue, which, when he thought about it, wouldn’t probably work, because only a human would catch on these signs. But, to his surprise, Sunggyu seemed to understand and continued. “Some people define thinking as a human thing by nature. In that case then, no, I’m not thinking since I’m obviously not human.” He marked a pause in his speech. “However, if you define thinking as a way to make connections between facts, options, effects, results and so on, then yes, I am thinking.”

Woohyun furrowed his brows, thinking about what Sunggyu had just said. “I don’t have to take so many things into consideration to take a decision though.”

Sunggyu smiled as if he was expecting that answer. “You do. It’s just that you don’t do it consciously, while I do. Take when you asked Sungyeol if you could touch me, for example. You stopped your movement and hesitated. Why? Because you thought of all the things that could have happened if you’d had touched me. Maybe Sungyeol would have been mad at you for touching his invention – we both know how protective he gets –, maybe he would have panicked because I could’ve been fragile or toxic… There is an infinite amount of possibilities. And of course, you didn’t think of them all, but your brain analyzed the situation and sent the message that it was probably safer to ask for permission.”

The man thought about it for a few seconds. “It makes sense.” He looked over at the robot next to him and, just like every time his eyes found the other’s ones, he had to convince himself that it was just an object. “Okay, let’s say that you can think.” He marked a pause, the next question burning on his tongue. “Can you… feel?”

Sunggyu shot him another amused smile and his eyes almost disappeared in the process, forming two little crescents. “Sungyeol said you would ask that. He really knows you well.”

Woohyun rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Yeah right, he just got lucky. That guy’s an idiot.”

“Then you might be an idiot as well to be his friend.” Woohyun was taken aback by the remark and the laugh that followed. And soon, he found himself laughing along. When they both calmed down, Sunggyu said in a tone a little bit more serious, even though a knowing smile was still present on his pink lips: “No, he’s not an idiot. He just has… concentration issues.”

The man chuckled at that. “That’s true…” Then he frowned. “What were we talking about again?”

“You asked me if I could feel.”

“Ah, right! So? Can you?”

Sunggyu his lips, as if he was trying to find the right words. “Why couldn’t I?” He turned to Woohyun and the look in his eyes shook the latter to the core. It looked like Sunggyu was looking for support, as if he was lost in a question that was too complicated to process. So, unconsciously, Woohyun dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed a little in a comforting motion. Sunggyu’s smile returned and he started exposing his theory. “Here is what I think. I exist, I am. I have a body and a brain – electronic, but still a brain – and I have sensors to send signals to my brain, to make me experience the world around me. So I have a mind and a state. I am now how I am now. That means I’m feeling how I am feeling right now, right?” He paused. “I probably don’t feel like a human does. It’s the same as it is with thinking. I am not human, no matter how similar I look and sound. But how can I know how a human feels? I can’t because I’m not human. So I’ll never really know for sure. But what does that mean anyways? Because, from what I know, humans feel in different ways. All humans are different and therefore feel differently. So even if I feel like one human, another human would say I don’t feel since I don’t feel like him. Do you understand what I mean?”

He looked at Woohyun with hopeful eyes and the latter just nodded, amazed by the explanation.

“So I’ll simply say this: I probably feel differently, but does that mean I don’t feel? I feel like me and you feel like you.”

With that, Woohyun’s convictions crumbled down. Sunggyu was right. It didn’t matter if he was a person or something else, he was right. And it was at that moment that the laboratory’s door opened and Sungyeol came in.

“Woohyun, seriously? You’re still in the same frozen state?! Did you just stare at Sunggyu without saying anything for an hour?”

Sunggyu chuckled and got up, taking one of the bags full of electronics out of Sungyeol’s hands to put it down on a table. “No, we had an interesting conversation actually.”

Woohyun blinked a few times. “An hour?” His friend looked at him, confused. “I stayed here for a whole hour?!”

“Yes, why?”

He got up quickly. “I have to go! I told you I had to go to the repetition of Dongwoo and Hoya’s wedding!”

He started making his way out of the room, when he stopped in his tracks and went to Sunggyu instead. Before he could think about it, he hugged him. His body was still cold but Woohyun now knew that his mind wasn’t. “I’m sorry for treating you like an object. I’ll… come by later, is that okay with you?” He pulled away to see the shy nod of the robot.

As he went out of the room, he could hear his friend’s scream. “Yah, Nam Woohyun! You can’t just hug Sunggyu like that! What if you break him or something?!”

~ Piou0102 ~

So... I'm reading a book on Artificial Intelligence for my master's thesis and somehow I wrote this. x) I don't really know if this makes any sense, it's probably kind of pointless... :p I still hope you liked it! ^^

As always, leave me some words or a prompt if you have any idea! :) See you next time! :D