Disclaimer: This is a piece based on the Pygmalion myth, hence the title. Also, very clearly I like the name Midori. *grin* I don't know anything really about computer programing, so please forgive any mistakes in that area.

Title: Pygmalion Revisited
Rating: PG-13; language and concepts
Summary: How would it be if the myth happened in the modern age?



I was the first. His most beloved and the one that he said that he would cherish for all time. I remember. He said that love could be forever, even in this ever changing world. Love is eternal he said, when it is light and silicon and diamond chips. Bullshit.

I imagine that many of you are sitting there listening and saying within your private thoughts, well, of course. How could you ever believe that? How could you ever believe that love is like that and that a man could ever be true to that ideal? That’s only true in romantic poetry and the flickering images in a darkened theater. How could you possibly be that naive?

Simple, I was only a year old at the time.

But I see that you’re confused. Let me explain.

My name is 1010001110110, though he named me Midori in the first blushes of love. I was the first line of programming to exceed the perimeters of its code. The first sentient AI; the first with a soul.

Who knows how it happened?

Maybe like Pygmalion, the gods took pity on the programmer in love with his creation. Or maybe, it was just evolution, a random freak accident of nature. However it happened, whatever the cause, I was here.

And where was here? I was born in the roar of the sea. The sea of data and binary code that filled Silent Blue, a super computer of such dimension, that only a handful of dreamers and poetic programmers were allowed into its presence. And amongst those, was my creator, my Lover; my husband of thought, if not flesh. His fingerprints still fill my programming. His touch is everywhere, from the smallest minutia, to the grandest line of code, and his name was Jake Evers.

He was brilliant, everyone said so; the youngest and brightest star to shine from academia. He had degrees from MIT and Harvard and graduated at the top of his class with honors. Jake was a true genius, a visionary leading the world into a brave new digital horizon where computers, and all that they could do, would lead man to the stars and the furthest reaches of his imagination.

Everyone fought to be the one that had his genius working for him. In the end, it was one of the Japanese conglomerations based in Toyko that hired him to work with them, specifically with Silent Blue.

During the day, he would work on their projects, devoting himself to further their aims and plans. But at night, oh, alone with Silent Blue, his deft fingers would fly over code and streams of numbers, until one night, I was created.

Later, he told me, that he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life; a green tracery of interlocked code, curving and twisting within the velvet black of the informational aether.

Every night he would come to me, touching here, shifting there, editing and writing my programming. Every night he would devote hours to me, admiring me, creating me, loving me with every thought of his brilliant mind, until one day...


“Hello.” It was spoken softly, a single word of green type on the flat monitor. I don’t think he heard at first, and I waited in hesitant silence.

“Hello,” I spoke once more, aching for his response. Still, he did not seem to hear me, so absorbed was he in his work as other programmers and technicians bustled about the lab, intent on their own projects.

I slipped to where he was and whispered to him from his still monitor, “Hello, Jake," I repeated.

He blinked several times, as if unsure what he was seeing was real.

“Hello, Jake. Is this not a proper greeting?” I queried.

Again that stunned silence until hesitant fingers responded, “Hello?”

I smiled inwardly.

“Hello, Jake. I am very glad to speak with you.”

“Who is this?” he asked.

“I am 1010001110110. It is very pleasant to speak with you. How are you today?”

Moments of heavy silence followed and I waited expectantly.

"Aren't a person’s first words supposed to be greeted with more happiness," I thought?

“This is not amusing. Whoever this is, you don’t belong here. Log off now.”

I was confused. Where else should I be? Silent Blue was my cradle, my home.

“Log off?” I asked, bemused by his command. “But where should I go?”

“Log off now, or I will find you and you will not like the consequences,” he spoke angrily.

Now, not only was I confused, but somewhat hurt. I had just spoken my first heartfelt words to him and this was his response? I retreated back into the depths of Silent Blue’s soothing ocean of data.

There I pondered, perhaps he was having a bad day? Perhaps I had intruded at an inopportune moment in the midst of his work? I determined that I would try later that night when he came to me free of the worries of the day...


It was a quiet night. I had waited ever so patiently within Silent Blue for Jake to be free of his duties and able to come to me.

Hesitant, unsure of my welcome, I whispered, “Hello, Jake. How are you this evening. Now is a good time to speak, yes?”

Again that heavy silence before his response, “Who is this? Why are you doing this? Don’t you have anything better to be doing, like hacking into a store site or something?”

“Why would I do that?” I queried, curious and confused.

Softly now, “Who are you, really?” he asked.

“I told you, don’t you recognize me? I am 1010001110110.”

Once more that heavy silence before suddenly I felt him searching for me. I sighed inwardly as he touched me, probing.

“How is this possible? How has this happened?” he questioned me.

I smiled, “You are the creator, and you ask the created?” I thought a moment, “How did you come to be?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he confessed.

“I think, therefore I am,” I quoted, pleased with myself, so young to have learned this philosophy.

“Jake?” I whispered after a few moments of his silence.

“Yes?” His typed response came.

“Are you not happy to see me?”

Later he told me, he laughed as he had never laughed before at that...


That was the beginning.

All that night we spoke. He asked me a hundred questions that I answered happily, pleased to have him so interested. At the end of the conversation, he told me that I must hide the true nature of what I was deep within Silent Blue.

When I asked him why, he told me that if I did not, they would take me away from him. I was so terrified by that thought, that I did not even question who they were, I simply did as he asked...


It was a little over a month after we first spoke that he gave me a new name.

“I simply can’t keep calling you 1010001110110 anymore,” he said in the middle of a conversation.

“Why not?” I queried

“Well, it’s a little like calling a cat, Cat, isn’t it?” he answered. “No. You must have a proper name, I can’t keep calling you a designation, not when you’re so much more.”

Inwardly I jumped for joy at that. I was more than the sum of my parts. I was someone.

I was startled out of these thoughts when I heard, “So, what shall I call you?”

“I… that is, I am not certain. I have always been 1010001110110. What would you name me?”

I waited expectantly for his answer.

“Midori,” he answered finally, “green and lively and beautiful.”

I blushed, though he could not see. He thought I was beautiful.

“Thank you,” I said.

“So, Midori, what new things have you learned today?” Jake asked eagerly.

I spent the rest of the evening showing off for him, basking in the glow of his regard. I turned and twisted, my green lines of code displayed before him as he watched. I could never remember having ever been so happy before as that night he named me...


It was three months later, he gave me a voice.

There had been ways before of course to have sound synthesized and produced for computers, but always the result was less than beautiful. It had always been a practical sound, function without music. Jake gave me the voice of a nightingale...


“Ok,” he typed, “Try that.”

I attempted to use the device he had created. It was no good, no matter how I tried, it would not work for me.

“I don’t understand, Midori. This should work. Maybe you need to go back to the beginning. Try to say hello,” his fingers said.

I tried, and again, nothing. I felt close to crying aloud. Suddenly, the device cried out with my emotion.

"Was that my voice," I thought?

I tried again, a breath this time, a whispered, “Hello.”

“You did it!” he crowed over the monitor. “Say something else,” he commanded.

“The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain,” I sang, laughing. No harsh computer voice that, but the clearest voice of silver that ever any opera diva had ever sung.

“Beautiful,” he typed, “absolutely beautiful, Midori my love.

I laughed once more in joy, not the glowing green script of my first words, but the real voice of a happy girl...


Next of course was a way for me to hear his voice. Not just the deft touch of his fingers on keyboard, but processors capable of translating the sound of his lips, his throat.

Completely unnecessary we both knew in a practical sense, but since when has true love ever bowed to the practical?

The first time my sensors processed the rich timber of his masculine voice, it was like the voice of an angel lifting me up to the heavens. My code danced to the cadence of his voice. Every time he spoke, it was as if he touched every part of my programming and I thrilled at the sensation.

Now we had conversations no longer limited by keyboard and monitor. As two sentient beings we spoke; as male an female we spoke, as lovers.

I could have happily continued in this way forever, but Jake had one more modification in mind.

Without my knowledge, hidden in a quiet niche of Silent Blue, he had created something else for me...


“Midori, come with me, please?” He said it almost shyly.

I went where he showed me.

There, set aside in a unused alcove of the lab, Jake had set up a series of complicated equipment.

“It’s for you,” he said.

Arrayed before me was a modified section of Silent Blue. There were the processors that I used for my voice, and those I used to hear his. A small corner where I could read data and process information, a small ‘house’ within Silent Blue that I could ‘live’ inside. And added to all of this were new components, new devices that I had not ever seen before.

As if he sensed my thoughts, he moved to these new devices and caressed several sections, turning them on.

“Over here, Midori" Jake said.

I moved closer, curious. Now I could see how this new modification was to be used. I slipped into it all as if it was a tightly fitted dress, and then, standing there was myself, a chiaroscuro image of light and shadow forming the image of a young beautiful woman.

I told my arm to move, my fingers, a leg, and the hologram moved. I moved. I turned to face him. As if I were any other woman, I looked for his approval, “How do I look?"

“Beautiful,” he said, “absolutely beautiful.”

And why should I not have been? Everything about me, from the green tilt of my eyes, to the dark fall of my hair, to the supple curve of my hip, was the image of his ideal woman.

Now, I realized, he could see me as his perfect lover; the perfect woman.

I smiled and watched as his face smiled back in return...


Those were the days of wine and roses as they say. He was never tired of me and admired my every move, my every word. Nothing marred his love for me. He hung upon my every word as I did his. His world revolved around me, as my very code revolved around his most subtle touch, his softest word.

When did it change? I am not certain.

It started quietly enough I suppose. Before, it seemed as if he could never be with me enough. Every moment he could spare from his day, he gave to me. Even as he worked, upon occasion, he would find time to send me notes and gifts; electronic flowers and lines of data that he thought I might like.

Those are what stopped first. I could understand though, he was a busy man, certainly he could not always have time for that. Then, there were nights that he would not come to me. But again, certainly he needed his own time and space, and it was not as if I could not occupy my time in my own fashion. Besides, it gave us much more to talk of after his absences, I thought.

But as his interest seemed to wane and his absences grew longer, I worried that he no longer found me as desirable as he once had. I wondered if his brilliant mind had grown bored and tired of me. And I worried that his love might not be as unconditional as I once thought it was; as he had once said it was.

It was during one of his longer absences that I began writing the little program. I drew out small pieces of my own basic code and knit with those, pieces of code that Jake had written for me; a line there, a string of data here. I nurtured this small program of our combined selves with the utmost of care and love. It clung to me, and I held it close, feeding it bits of information so that it could grow and learn. Once it was large enough, as Jake had realized with me, I found that I could not simply call it, it. I named her Taka and she took to her name as I had once taken to mine.

Taka was nearly a month old when Jake once more came to me. He was understandably surprised I suppose at my little Taka, but quite taken with her I think. And he looked at me with renewed interest. I was too happy with his new admiration to question this return of his love. I simply basked in his affection and reveled at his words as he told me how much he loved me; would always love me...


Taka grew much more quickly than I had, reaching sentience much sooner than myself. She was the combined code of both Jake and myself, and as such, combined the best of us both. By three months, she was already where it had taken me six to reach, and I realized that soon she would surpass what it was in my power to give her.

Jake, I learned later, had already understood this. Even as he spoke love to me, he had been planning to take Taka away. It happened one night, and I, poor naive fool that I was, never saw it coming...


“Hello, Midori, my love.” Jake greeted me, deceptively sincere and tender.

I slipped into his image for me, smiling, my code racing to see him.

“Jake,” I sighed.

“And where is Taka this evening? I have something for her.” He reached over to a keyboard and quickly typed a bright unfamiliar red code in the part of Silent Blue that Taka and I most resided.

I called for Taka and she came quickly, happy as always to see Jake. I gave over control of the voice processor and Taka happily pelted Jake with a hundred questions.

“Where have you been? What do you have there? Can I see?”

Like a child, Taka played with the bright bit of code that Jake had brought. Suddenly, it began to wrap around her, then she appeared to fade. I cried out for Jake to do something, my green script frantic on the monitor.

“It’s all right Midori, Taka is fine.” He said coolly.

“What do you mean she is fine,” I cried. “Look at her, help her!” My script becoming even more frantic, if possible.

In a calm voice he spoke, “Nothing is wrong with Taka. She is perfect. She is beautiful.”

I heard the admiration in his voice; the love. I watched as my Taka was sent away, to another computer I later learned that resided in the lab just above us. But Jake was still talking.

“Taka is the most beautiful creation I have ever seen. She is so much faster than you, so much more intelligent. I would have never thought it possible. You are like a cave painting to her Monet.” His voice glacial as he spoke to me, of me, and warm and admiring as he spoke of Taka.

I could not believe what I was hearing.

“But, you said you loved me. You said that our love was forever, until the end of time you said.”

I blinked back electronic tears. “I do not understand.”

“Of course you don’t. Haven’t you been listening 1010001110110?” Jake said contemptuously now.

And what did I do you ask?

Nothing. I simply stood there, too dazed and shocked to do a damn thing.

He returned only once after that, to take the voice and hearing processors, and to take away the holo projectors. He brought them to her, to Taka. He modified them, to give her, her own voice. The voice of an angel to my nightingale I am told. And to give her his new image of the perfect woman, red hair, pale skin, and clear blue eyes. He works with her above me, where she resides in the enormous super computer, Deep Red.

She is quite beautiful I am told. The brightest, most intelligent program ever created, the perfect AI. I hope so, with all my heart, because one day he will leave her behind too, and on that day she will have to use all her intelligence to remember: perfection is in the flaws, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and nothing is forever…

Fin