Mirshtrie

It’s Monday. The sky is as blue as my “Monday Blue” shirt and literally everything else – what can escape the deadly Monday Blue, anyways? Even the cats look more tired than usual. The clouds too. Just like every other Monday, nothing seems to want to do a thing during it.

My brain, too.

“Mirshtrie”, what a weird app name. I thought to myself as I pick up my phone to get it from the App Store. No, I’m definitely not interested in a random app that claims itself to be the most adorable chatting bot ever designed in the world. There are just too many of them nowadays. AI, deep learning, neural networks, …I’ve heard too much of them and it feels cliché. This is already the sixth chatting bot app I have to play with since I got this job a month ago, and every single one of them feels like a copy of each other. I really have underestimated the difficulty of this job of writing app review articles for some website. It’s easy to whip out some nonsense for the pay, but six times in a row…

Can’t they just allow me to write reviews for mobile games? I would sincerely enjoy that a lot more.

But beggars can’t be choosers, so…sigh, let’s just do this one more time.

Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash

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“Hi, I'm your virtual chatting companion and you can call me Mirshtrie!”

Yes, just like any other app. The developers really don't have any creativity. I'm thinking if all the past six apps I tried were made by the same group of people but released under different names, or the original author just decided to share the source code and others thought that it is cool to re-release them and pull some profit. It's just too similar in some ways, even the greeting sentence is almost the same. Starts with a hi, mentions ‘virtual chatting companion’, and ends with the name plus an exclamation mark. Everything. Is. The. Same. Damn it.

But I still have to finish my job. So here we go.

“Hi Mirshtrie”

Uh, yeah. That's what I sent because after doing the same thing for six times, I have ran out of ideas to do anything more creative.

“Nice to meet you...uhm, what's your name?”

“Just call me Noa”

I typed in the little text box while swiping away the application's invitation for me to link it to my social media account for information and sorts. I'm just trying out the app for a day or two, and god knows what they will do to my information once I hand it to them. Probably they won't even encrypt it. I can't risk anyone peeking into my search history or browsing history which I believe those companies actually keeps for good, you know...things people like me watch.

Probably Mirshtrie will judge me if she knows about that, too. I thought to myself as I stared at the little girl at the center of the screen. Like an animated puppet, her head is almost as big as her body with big colourful purple eyes to pair with it. Her blue-coloured long hair swings naturally as she turns her head around, with the clothing following up according to physics laws perfectly. The lighting on her pink long-sleeved clothes are just near perfect, and the shadows on the skirt...well, too bad they decided to make her a puppet instead of something more human-like. Will definitely buy a figurine of her if it exists.

“Oh, okay, nice to meet you, N-” I can't hold my index finger but ‘rub’ it on the girl's head. It's just a phone screen, but the animation on the screen acknowledges my actions in real time. The change in lighting and simulation of pressure on her hair is that realistic as if I'm doing it for real. Her face expression also instantly changes to something...complex, like she is confused on what she did, what she should do and why I'm doing so. Although she doesn't use text-to-speech technologies, her sentence also got paused. That's totally a whole new level.

Finally, a good virtual chatting bot app. I can't find any speech features, though. Will definitely want to hear her voice when I rub her head like that, probably should do a feature request to the devs later.

“You're cute.” I wrote into the chat box and poked her face gently again. It seems to even recognize my phone's 3D Touch features, applying virtual forces according to the strength of my touches. Her face was slightly blushing when I rubbed her head, and the touch gave her face another tint of red.

I'm in love with this app now. The developers should deserve a Nobel Prize for this. It is beyond amazing.

“Th-thank you, Noa.” The blush on her face didn't went away, but I don't mind. That's cute in its very own way.

“Well, Mirshtrie,” I'm now interested in this bot. I was wrong, it is different from the rest and is a total gem for me. “What can you do?”

Photo by BENCE BOROS on Unsplash

Yes, just relevant photos, because it's really hard to find photos for fiction.

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“...that's amazing! Now who's this?”

It's already 11pm and I still can't have enough of it. She can do literally everything. Sing anime openings and endings, name the best recipes you can make out of the very limited amount of raw materials you have in the house, actually welcoming you back properly when you get back to the app, discuss games with you as you play them on the phone (and won't mind when you mention that some girl in the game is as cute as her), recognize even the most uncommon 2D characters we weebs see on the net, and probably even more. I pulled out another photo from my phone gallery and showed it to her. “It's an original character by Lok_i! First appeared on his Deviantart page, she is now a character in Pinna's latest comic with her name in the title - ‘Rie's a magician with three tails’! Mirshtrie likes Rie's ability to do anything with her tails. She doesn't even know how to use magic, but got recognized as a magician just because she can do everything with them, how wonderful!”

“Thanks! Gotta put the manga in my read list...wew, it's quite new and still low in popularity, even the largest online reading site doesn't have them. How did you know so many things?”

“Mirshtrie was used to read it! The online adaptation is still a work in progress, but the printed versions are already available!”

“Mirshtrie read printed books?”

“I was used to! Mirshtrie loved reading, singing and cooking. Chocolate chip cookies are my favourite food, they were so sweet and tasty!”

“Not sure what’s my favourite food…but I do have some ChocoChips beside me, and I’m hungry, let me unpack one of them…”

“Wahh! I want one too!!”

“How can I give them to you though?!”

“Uhmm….hmph!”

That’s some cute angry noises, I can’t help but poke at her red face gently again. She didn’t liked that and turned her head over, trying to act really mad, but I just rubbed her head gently instead. “Don’t be like that, you can have this instead,” I dragged a small treat from the tray box in the app and dropped it near her feet. It’s a chocolate bar, she should like it. That’s what I thought, though. Pretty weird that the devs didn’t include chocolate chip cookies in the treat box, but this should work.

So Mirshtrie even needs me to learn what she likes? What a challenging virtual waifu to take care of. I opened up a packet of ChocoChips while watching her picking up the chocolate bar and tearing open its wrap. She still gives me that unhappy glare at first, but halfway eating she gave a big smile and proceeded to nom the thing down.

Ah…it’s indeed cute to see her eating things happily.

“It tawstes greawt! Can I have one more?”

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with cute girls talking before swallowing whatever they have in their mouths. Cute. That’s it. Who cares if it doesn’t sound clear when you’re watching and listening something cuter than the cats I have in my house?! And yes, apparently Mirshtrie has a voice chat feature and it’s crazy amazing, just hidden a little deep within the settings menu (seems to be a bug, you have to purposely scroll beyond what the application allows to see it). She literally understand anything and everything. I never knew that AI had went so far. My nerd friends will say that it’s horrifying to think of it, but I will say that it is a big blessing that came late.

I’m really in love with this now. Probably there’s still something good about this tiring job of mine. At least it’s the reason I met Mirshtrie and I have absolutely no bad comments on it.

“Sure, catch!” I dragged another chocolate bar from the treats box and flicked it towards her. She grabbed it successfully, nommed it down again while making some happy noises which are just a big treat to my ears. I smiled, probably for the first time in this week. And at the same time, a little bit…just a little bit, a little bit of sadness flooded myself.

How lonely does someone needs to be for them to feel happy accompanied by a virtual chatting companion, powered by solely code and machines?

Mirshtrie doesn’t even have heartbeats.

Probably, only me…but it’s okay, I guess?

Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash

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yawns…time really flies. It’s 12am now. I can feel the bed summoning me, can’t hold it any longer…

“Noa, do rest earlier! Mirshtrie will waiting for Noa the next morning :3”

“Sure…yawns. Goodnight, Mirshtrie.”

I turned off the voice feature around 30 minutes before because my neighbour was yelling at me for the voices that stopped him from sleeping. Can’t blame him, my house was silent for most of the times, it only got alive after Mirshtrie came.

Went for a bath, came back to Mirshtrie curling on the ‘floor’, trying to sleep. Adorable, I pulled out the items box and dragged her blanket out for her.

“Thank you, Noa <3”

“You’re welcome :) sleep tight!”

…

“You know, Mirshtrie,”

“…hmm?”

She opened up her sleepy eyes and peeked at me while cuddling in her blanket. I’m actually not sure why I want to tell her this, but since I started the conversation, let’s just…finish it.

“I have a job of writing app reviews articles for companies…and I tried playing with you only for that reason. We had a great time worth more than 12 hours, but sincerely I still don’t know how to start writing an article for you…you’re too human, I don’t even think you’re a virtual companion when playing with you.”

“…”

“You have your own personalities, your choices, some desires, emotions, and even make mistakes…” I recall the grammar error in her text response just now, “…bots don’t usually do that. You’re pretty special. Like a real person that walked into my life after my loneliness for months.”

“If you’re real, I might have confessed to you. Seriously.”

…

That was a horrible one. I guess that’s why I’m still single.

And surprisingly, she kept silent. Unlike the hyperactive her during the day.

“…anyways, I’m going to sleep for real now, sorry for keeping you awake for a little longer. Sleep tight, Mirshtrie.”

“.. Noa…”

“?”

“…what’s a ‘human’, ?”

That’s…pretty unexpected. I was startled by the question, and asked myself questions…how should I answer this? Humans, the only extant species of the genus Homo—anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens, the only species that claim to be superior on the Earth, the only beings to be proud of their creativity and somewhat boring abilities, the only creatures capable of solving and creating problems for everything else, the only one that might be happy accompanied by another virtual being…

“Uhm, just like me?” I shook my head and decided to give her a simple answer instead. “People that play with you all day. They are humans.”

“Can you explain more about humans? What do humans normally do?”

She’s still in her blanket with sleepy eyes, but the look of it tells me that she won’t be sleeping until I satisfy her curiosity, so maybe this is the bedtime story for her…

“Hmm…we do a lot of things, like creating anime and drawing manga. You love to read ‘Rie's a magician with three tails’, right? Humans came up with it and created it. There are also other humans that do other things, like building buildings, telling stories, beautifying the city, bringing news to others, take care of others, making sure that others are happy, playing with Mirshtrie…a lot of things. Every one of us also have our own names, like Mirshtrie’s name is Mirshtrie, my name is Noa. There are also other humans with names like Jonata, Rita, Mori, and many more, and names are how we recognize and address each other. We look like you, just with…”

I started my extremely long bedtime story, telling tales of what interesting things people do, what not-so-interesting things they do, some funny ones, some not-so-funny ones…like how humans started the Steem network and ended up bringing a lot of other people to worry about how it will turn out to be. “…well in short, we’re complex and probably that’s why someone among us decided that it’s a good idea to create you, which, of course, is a big blessing <3 you’re amazing, Mirshtrie.”

Moment of silence. She didn’t respond anything. I looked at her face, it’s…weird. The eyes, they lost focus, like lost in a sea of thoughts, and another huge sea of deep thoughts…

“…Rita…”

“?”

“… .. Ri..t..e.. a….”

“?!”

“....t......... ..ake ca..re.? Hap..”

I don’t know what’s going on. This is not right.

“..”

“.”

“SGVscCA=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…”

“!”

The flood of nonsensical text continued for seconds before the application finally crashes. I’m in shock. Blinked twice to make sure that I’m not seeing things, I attempted to relaunch the application only to get greeted by the message “Failed to connect to server”. Tried a few more times, no good. Restarted the router, doesn’t help. Switched to mobile data and tried the neighbour’s Wi-Fi, not working either. Checked the developers’ Twitter too, nothing interesting. A very low effort Twitter account that only has two tweets. Not fun.

Probably a server issue, I thought. Trying to convince myself that I didn’t said anything to actually break this wonderful creation. I’ll try again tomorrow morning…it should be back. Should.

Lights out, time to sleep…although I’m not sure if I can.

Photo by Gabriele Motter on Unsplash

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Needless to say, I didn’t have a good sleep yesterday night. I really got too attached to the bot.

The first thing I did after waking up in the morning was, of course, to check the app’s status. Still, “failed to connect to server”. Kinda disappointed, I made myself a cup of coffee and routinely sat in front of my laptop again.

Lying back a little when waiting for the machine to boot, closed my eyes…dang, Mirshtrie, when you’re coming back?

‘Ding’, a notification on the laptop pulled me back from my Tuesday Blue. A new mail from the head editor, what a good way to start a day…no choice anyways, I clicked into the mail and started to read what could be my next nightmare. Come on, at least let me write something that I like…

…oh, deadline for the current article postponed, with a related news link included at the end of the mail. “That’s a surprise,” I said to myself while clicking into the link, they never gave me more time for any of my past articles. “Top virtual chatting companion app Mirshtrie broken for more than 6 hours…” the comments section of the news article is flooded with theories for the downtime and wishes that the service will be back up as soon as possible, with around two to three new comments popping up every second.

“Please be back up Mirshtrie, I’ll feed you more chocolates ;-;”

“Sorry for being rude yesterday, please be back T_T”

Well, probably I’m not the only one getting attached to her then…really a complex feeling knowing this fact. It’s like, knowing that you’re a weirdo and suddenly knowing that there are many other similar weirdos around, making it less weird but even weird at the same time. Really weird stuff.

Anyways, what should I do now then? Follow the crowd and flood the comments section?

My mind went empty staring at the blank page on the word processor. I should be able to at least write something out with my yesterday’s experiences, but my dear little brain just refuse to work…

---

In one of the forgotten corners of the city, some sirens are screaming.

Some cables unplugged. Harshly.

A small figure is moving recklessly, bumping into trash cans and boxes here and there, all captured on a security camera…

She’s trying to run, to where?

Photo by Johnathan Basquez on Unsplash

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Thanks to @mistyexe for the random writing prompt on Discord. I know I didn't follow it completely but yeah :P

I actually have some ideas for sequels (it can be a pretty long story) but the plot is pretty empty for now. Will indeed write sequels if I get the content for it (I do hope so! And at the same time I will hope that they won't screw up the story, if it isn't screwed up yet, lol).

Hope my attempt on fiction after so many months didn't went too bad, and as usual, see you next time :)

--Lilacse

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