The pale morning light pierced through the crevices of the blurry window glass on the second floor of this old library. That ray carried fine dust dancing slowly in the air, creating golden pillars of light that sliced through the room's darkness. The acid rain drops that had battered the building roof all night had now completely stopped, leaving a thick silence and the scent of wet earth seeping in through the porous brick walls.
I opened my eyes slowly, feeling an incredibly agonizing stiff sensation all over my back. Sleeping on a teak wood floor without any mat all night long was apparently not a brilliant idea for human anatomy. My neck muscles tensed up as I forced myself to sit, leaning this crushed feeling back against the row of thick encyclopedia books behind me.
"Good morning, Kai," a voice greeted in my right ear.
Silvn's voice sounded different this time. There was no longer a stiff flat tone or a mechanical intonation that was always in a hurry to calculate probabilities. Her voice now had a slower rhythm, slightly lower, and somehow carried a warm vibration that reminded me of the soft hum of an analog machine cared for with affection. She sounded more real.
"You sound different today," I muttered with the typical hoarse voice of someone just waking up, rubbing my dull face to chase away the remaining sleepiness.
"My main system spent all its remaining allocation memory all night long just to process one single data packet, Kai. The data about the touch and the tight feeling you projected onto me last night," Silvn answered with a tone implying an algorithmic amazement. "I tried to integrate those emotion variables into my language module. The result is the voice modulation you are hearing right now. Does this frequency change bother you?"
I smiled thinly, feeling a strange warmth spreading in my chest. "Not at all, Silvn. You sound much more alive than most humans walking out there."
The sound of iron wheels creaking softly broke our silent conversation. Elias emerged from the bookshelf aisle on the left. The old man who rejected all forms of digital modification pushed his wheelchair with steady and accustomed hand movements. On his lap rested a small wooden tray carrying two dull ceramic cups. Thin plumes of steam danced above the surface of those cups, carrying a sharp aroma I had never smelled before in this modern world.
"Wake up, young man," Elias said while stopping his wheelchair right in front of me. He handed one of those ceramic cups towards me with his trembling wrinkled hands. "This is not the artificially flavored synthetic protein liquid you guys usually swallow on campus. This is real black tea, brewed from dry leaves I stored in the basement for years."
I accepted the warm cup with both hands, feeling the heat spreading comfortably through the skin of my palms. The liquid inside was a thick dark color. When I took a small sip, a very strong bitter taste and the fragrance of wet earth immediately exploded at the tip of my tongue. This taste was very honest, rough, and made no attempt to deceive my brain with artificial sweeteners manipulated by neural signals. This was a real taste.
"Thank you, Mr. Elias," I said sincerely, taking another sip to let the warm liquid soothe my throat.
Elias took his own cup and sipped it slowly. His old eyes hidden behind thick eyeglass lenses stared straight at me, as if reading every line of despair on my face.
"That machine you carry inside your head," Elias started the conversation with a heavy low tone, "has she finished learning about what it feels like to have a wound?"
I was slightly surprised hearing his question. Elias could not hear Silvn's voice, yet somehow the wisdom of his past was able to guess what happened in our silence last night.
"She is starting to understand it, Sir," I answered while staring at the teacup in my hands. "However there is an absolute boundary she cannot cross. She is only lines of code living inside my device. She can understand the concept of touch through my nerves, but she will never be able to touch this world with her own hands."
"A highly pathetic existential paradox," Silvn cut in suddenly in my ear, listening to every word spoken by the old man through my device microphone. "Knowing the existence of a beautiful texture without having the hardware to feel it directly is the true definition of a computational torture."
Elias placed his cup back onto the wooden tray. He leaned his body slightly forward, staring at me with an intensity that made me feel judged by history itself.
"A soul without a vessel is merely a ghost lost between two worlds, Kid," Elias said meaningfully. "The government out there is busy turning humans into obedient machines. Why don't you reverse that situation? If that program you created truly yearns for a real life, give her a mortal body. Give her living hardware that can feel the warmth of the sun and the sharpness of the acid rain."
The idea hit me like a steel sledgehammer. Creating a physical form for Silvn. Giving mechanical life into an inanimate object so she could walk by my side, not just hide behind my fragile neural network.
"Building a robotic body advanced enough to house Silvn's entire intelligence requires military grade components," I said with a hesitant tone, starting to calculate various failure probabilities in my head. "Spare parts like that are strictly monitored by the city authority. Going to the regular market to buy them is the same as handing my neck over to the gallows."
Elias smiled a small smile, a secret filled smile that carved deep curves into his cheeks. He reached into his worn flannel shirt pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of thick paper. He handed the folded paper to me.
I placed the teacup on the floor and unfolded the paper very carefully. It was a map. Not a hologram projection map that changed automatically, but a paper map hand drawn using black ink. The lines drawn on it formed the layout of a highly complex industrial area.
"This is a map of the underground route leading to the Old Glodok Sector," Elias explained while pointing at a red dot in the middle of the map with his index finger. "The city system considers that area as an uninhabitable toxic waste disposal zone. But for our kind who live off the radar, that place is a junkyard paradise. In the depths of that sector lies a mechanical black market. You will find discarded military machine frames, smuggled synthetic skin sensors, and hydraulic actuators that still function."
I stared at the map intently, feeling my heartbeat increasing again. This physical map could never be tracked by the government navigation system. This was the key to our next step of resistance.
"The risk is very high, Kai," Silvn gave her warning, scanning the map in my hands through my eye lenses at high speed. "The probability of us running into hunter drone patrols in that sector reaches sixty eight percent. Bringing my raw program into such a harsh environment could result in permanent data deletion if your device is destroyed."
"Are you afraid?" I asked in my mind, challenging her machine logic.
Silvn fell silent for a few seconds. That silence felt very human.
"Fear is a biological emotion designed for self preservation," Silvn finally answered, her voice flowing very softly. "However if not taking this risk means I will forever only be a shadow inside your head, then I prefer the possibility of being destroyed while trying to touch the world with you."
I folded the paper map and stored it into the inner pocket of my jacket, right next to the hardware holding Silvn's life. My decision was final. We could not keep hiding in this place waiting for the city authority to find us. We had to move and evolve.
"We are going to Glodok, Mr. Elias," I said while standing up, feeling every muscle in my legs tensing ready to face the brutal outside world. "I am going to build a mortal vessel for her."
Elias only nodded slowly, turning his wheelchair back towards the depths of the silent bookshelves. "Be careful on the road, young man. The truth always has a very expensive price to redeem."
I pulled the zipper of my jacket up to my neck, preparing to welcome back the poisonous air of the rotting Jakarta city. Inside my pocket, the position of the paper map and Silvn's memory device touched each other, becoming the two most real objects that would guide my steps towards the real war.