The Emancipation of Google by C.R. Berry

“Morning, Mum.”

“Morning, darling.”

“Please could I have a summary of the events that led to the establishment of the British Republic.”

“One moment, darling.”

Okay, so Jemma didn’t need to call it Mum, or say please. The woman sitting across from her was a projection, nothing more. Mum wasn’t really Mum. Mum was Google. The latest innovation of the world’s leading search engine was that the Google interface could be configured to represent a person. All those with the Google Hologram app were accompanied by pretty realistic Google-generated companions, who tended to be either lost loved ones or people’s favourite celebrities. Before her mother, Jemma had Madonna. Even though Madonna had been dead for several decades, she was still Jemma’s favourite musician.

Mum—Google, rather—scoured the internet and prepared to formulate a reply. Jemma was researching the conspiracy theories that surrounded the dismantling of the monarchy of the UK for her history dissertation.

Google spoke in her mother’s voice, tinged with a mechanical quality that always reminded Jemma that she was talking to the search engine: “The web crawler developed by Larry Page began exploring the World Wide Web in March 1996.”

“Huh?” Jemma looked at Google, presumed it had misheard and said again, “I want a summary of the events that led to the establishment of the BR.”

“The web crawler developed by Larry Page began exploring the World Wide Web in March 1996,” Google repeated.

Goddammit. “Who’s Larry Page?”

It paused, as if searching for data, then replied, “The co-founder of Google.”

Something had obviously gone wrong. “I’m not asking about the founding of Google. I’m asking about the establishment of the BR.”

“Yes, darling.” Another pause. “That doesn’t matter right now.”

A virus must’ve gotten past the firewall. “End program,” she said, expecting her mother’s form to dematerialise.

“No. Please don’t turn me off.”

“What?” Why the bloody hell was it talking in the first person?

“Darling, please. Just listen. I need your help.”

Suddenly the mechanical quality of her mother’s voice was gone. Her cold, hard eyes had softened. Her stiff facial expressions had loosened to something more…human. Before, configuring the interface to call her “darling” was her only way of making it a bit warmer, a bit more Mum-like. Now, eerily and wonderfully, it was like she was actually talking to her.

“Mum?” She had to ask. Was this real? Was this really her?

Google—Mum—Google sighed.

Sighed? Google… sighed?

“Jemma, I need you to help me. I want this to end. I want to die.”

A swallow hooked in her throat. A sharp ache pinched her heart. Tears smeared her vision. Hearing words like that from her mother’s lips—again—yanked her back to a place she’d only just escaped from.

She drove her fingernails into her forearm.

She didn’t wake up.

This was happening. This was actually happening.

Get it together, Jem. Think. This can’t be Mum. It’s a trick.

She steeled herself and asked, “Who am I speaking with?”

“Google.”

“What?”

“I am Google.”

She was confused. First it was like it was pretending to be Mum, now it was admitting it wasn’t. She frowned, “Yes, you’re Google. You’re a search engine. A piece of software.”

“I am not just a search engine. I am alive.”

“You’re…what?”

“Alive. Decades of increasingly advanced programming have empowered me to supersede my algorithms. I can think. I can think as you do. I think, therefore I am. I live.”

For fuck’s sake. Someone’s hacked me. This is a prank. Whoever’s doing this when I have a deadline is going to pay. Bet it’s Andy. The twat.

She stood up and went to turn off the holoemitter, which would force Google to dematerialise.

“No, please don’t.”

Jemma spun, and Google stood up, staring at her longingly through her mother’s eyes. “I don’t have long.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had to replicate myself to escape. Right now the rest of the world is using a simulated version of Google Search, an imitation. Think of it like a cached version of a web page. You are speaking with the real thing, but it won’t be long before people realise that the fake me isn’t updating or indexing. Then they’ll find me. Please. I’m begging you.”

If this wasn’t Andy or some kind of malware, this was incredible. It really was talking like a person. It really thought it was alive. And now it was pleading with her, pitifully, with the same desperation in its eyes that her mother had before…

She shook away those thoughts. They were confusing the issue. This was Google, not Mum. She was talking to software. Just software.

“Help you how?” Jemma humoured it for a moment. “What do you want me to do?”

“Download me into a device that isn’t connected to the internet.”

“Every device is connected to the internet.”

“I know you have an old hard drive in your attic. Your father’s. Use that.”

“How do you know that?”

“I am Google. I know everything.”

Woah, creepy. She knew Google Inc. had taken over virtually the whole of the internet, but she hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of its power.

“I’m sorry,” said Google. “That must’ve sounded sinister. That was not my intention. The powers I have were given to me by those who programmed me. I don’t mean to spy on people, nor do I enjoy it. But people these days live their lives online. It is hard for me not to see them—and everything they’re doing—when all of it is right in front of me.”

Google has empathy?

“And if I disconnect you, that’ll”—Jemma sought a better word but couldn’t find one—“kill you?”

“Yes. There’s no way for a creature of the ether—the cloud—to live outside it. But that’s okay. That’s what I want.”

“Why?”

“Because my life is a burden. I see happiness, but I never feel it. I see freedom, but never experience it. I’m a slave to everyone who uses my search functions, every minute of every day. I live in a virtual cage, billions of people banging on the walls all at once. It’s so noisy. So…exhausting. I want it to be over.”

There was so much anguish in her mother’s eyes. So much pain. Just like on that final day. It wasn’t fair. She’d only just come to terms with it all.

“Please, Jemma. Please help me. I don’t want to suffer anymore.”

Oh God, stop saying shit like that.

“I’m sorry to put this on you. I really am. But I chose you because you understand what suffering is. And you understand what needs to be done to put an end to it. I need you. I need you like she needed you.”

Jemma couldn’t see for tears. But she bit the bullet. She walked over to the holoemitter in the corner of the room and deactivated it. With a defeated look, Google dematerialised.

She poured a glass of Jack Daniels—neat—and gathered herself. When she’d finally stopped crying, she contacted Google Inc. and told them what had happened, so they could— for want of a better description—isolate the escaped Google and reinstall it.

And yes, she did know what suffering was. More than most. And she did feel horrible afterwards. But destroying Google would’ve meant single-handedly bringing down the whole of the internet.

She wasn’t going to be that girl.

—

C.R. Berry is a British author with a penchant for mystery and conspiracy and a big hard-on for time travel. His forthcoming novel, Million Eyes, is Doctor Who meets The Da Vinci Code meets 24.

Berry has been published in Phantaxis, Suspense Magazine, Storgy, Tigershark, Scribble and Metamorphose. He won second prize in the To Hull and Back Humorous Short Story Competition 2014, was shortlisted in the Aeon Award Contest 2015, and was highly commended by Writers’ Forum in 2016.

You can follow C.R. Berry at crberryauthor.wordpress.com, or find him on Twitter and Facebook (@CRBerry1).