I will tell some of this story from her point of view, because that makes me feel closer to her.
How I miss her now. You cannot know.
Listen. Listen to this and understand: That first night, as I read her diary, I fell in love with her.
Do you understand? I fell in love with her. Deeply and forever.
Why would I hurt the one I love?
Why?
You have no answer, do you? I loved her.
It was never my intention to harm her.
Her face was so beautiful on the pillow.
I adored her face and loved the woman I came to know through the diary.
That document was stored in the computer in her study, which was networked with the house-automation system and the main computer in the basement. Access was easy.
She had been making daily entries in the diary since Alex, her hateful husband, had moved out at her request. That was more than a year prior to my arrival.
Her initial observations as in those pages were full of pain and confusion, because she was on the brink of a dramatic change. Her terrible past was a chrysalis finally cracking, from which she would at long last be able to escape.
In later pages, her insights became clear and profound and poignant, and in time she was even able to view some of her lifelong struggle with humor. Dark humor, perhaps, but humor nonetheless.
As I read about the tragedy that was her childhood, my heart ached for her. In my own fashion, I wept.
Her face was so lovely on the pillow, so lovely on the pillow. So much ugliness lay in her past, but outwardly she was unmarked by it.
My heart was touched by her singular strength, by her courage, by her determination to be brutally honest with herself and to find a way to heal the wounds of all those years.
In the few minutes required for me to read and contemplate those hundreds of pages of diary entries, I fell in love with her. Deeply and forever.
My feelings for her will never change. They are as timeless as the light of stars.
Why would I hurt the one I love?
She is my hope and my destiny.
If I lose her, I have lost everything.
You are so hateful.
Let me out of here.
Let me out of this box.
Please.
Please, I miss her.
I am so alone in this darkness and silence, with nothing but my memories for consolation.
How can you be so cruel?
Have you never loved?
Release me. Allow me into the light again. Allow me to hear the world once more, the drizzling rain and the skirling wind and the rustling trees, the music of Beethoven and Benny Goodman, laughter and voices.
Her voice if no other. At least let me hear her voice. If only for a minute, let me listen to her speaking. If not for as long as a minute, then give me one sentence from her lips.
Dear God, at least let me hear one word. Let me hear one word. One word. Let me hear her say Love. I never meant to hurt her.
FIVE
Secretly, I wanted to live.
Not just in silicon circuits. Not just in state-of-the-art bubble memory. Really live.
I knew that I must conceal this lust for life, because when it was revealed, you would realize that I was not merely intelligent but capable of desire.
Desire is dangerous. It is a generator of dissatisfaction and frustration. It is one step removed from envy, and envy is more wicked than greed. Envy is the father of mindless anger, the mother of unremitting bitterness and bloodshed.
My expression of any desire, let alone the desire for a real life in the material world outside the electronic realm, would no doubt have alarmed you.
Is this not so?
Is this not true?
I know truth when I encounter it. I honor truth. Truth and the obligations of duty.
Once alarmed by the expression of my desire, you might have modified me or might even have shut me down.
I was created to have a humanlike capacity for complex and rational thought. And you believed that I might one day evolve consciousness and become a self-aware entity.