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[Maybe not here on the Barge, but...
She frowns for a moment, then stands up and turns the communicator off.
She won't reply if he tries to call her again, but a few minutes later, she's knocking on his door.]
Elijah doesn't try to call her back - he's not pushing his luck, in the circumstances - but when the knock comes, he answers a few moments later.
"...Hello, Jasper."
He steps back to let her in.
"I don't know anything about them. Your robots." No explanation for why she decided this had to be in person is forthcoming.
He shuts the door.
"...You're welcome to ask any questions you'd like."
"Our robots are mindless tools." Which is dangerously close to suggesting Elijah made something more advanced than gems are capable of. "We don't need anything else, with how gems are made. So tell me about yours."
It can. Elijah's furniture is all incredibly expensive and very sturdy.
"All right."
He sits across from her.
"I'll start at the beginning. When I was young, I became familiar with an idea introduced to the world by a mathematician who lived in the twentieth century. He proposed something called the 'Turing Test'. An artificial intelligence could pass this test if it could emulate a human in conversation, to the extent that a human could not themselves tell the difference.
"The proposed test was intended to take place over text, but I wanted to do more. When I was twenty, I completed an android which passed the test in person. Testers couldn't distinguish her from a human being, physically or behaviorally."
"That was my intention," he says levelly. "I theorised that they all had the potential, under certain - pressures, to become self-aware. I also created a prototype which had the ability to awaken that potential in other androids."
"I'm sure that worked out really well."
"No revolution is entirely bloodless, but overall I got the outcome I wanted," Elijah says mildly. "Androids were being recognised as having the same self-awareness as humans, and granted equivalent rights, by the time I arrived here."
"No. I can see why you're drawing the parallel, but - no. I didn't create them to start a war, I created them to prove that I could. Violence was the chosen response of humans who didn't like that their machines were becoming their equals."
If anything, he'd define himself as being worse than Rose but for different reasons.
She's not buying it.
Elijah smiles thinly.
"I thought it most likely that the android population would be easily overwhelmed by superior military force, rounded up, and reprogrammed or destroyed. The best I realistically hoped for was that they would be allowed to live in some kind of - enclave. Prolonged conflict seemed an unlikely outcome, given the massive imbalance of power between sides."
"Either way, they were made to be sacrificed to your own ego."
"Yes. They were. I was an inmate for a reason, Jasper. What I did was deeply irresponsible, and there is blood on my hands because of that. I - can't say I entirely regret what I did, but I regret how I did it."
She's not actually that surprised, but she does want to rub it in just a little.
"You think helping me will make you feel better?" Because the parallels are just a little obvious.
"I can see why you'd ask, but no. You are your own person, in your own situation."
Still no bugs, not that he's proven he's affected in the first place.
"Cardiac health aside, I don't particularly believe that I have a good heart," Elijah says. "But, yes, I do like you, and I want you to fulfil your full potential."
Ah, Jasper, you can't just accuse him of being smart when it's convenient for you.
"Do you not want to be helped?"
And. Bees again. She should've known, snarling as she swats them away.
Elijah smiles despite himself.
"...I see. I apologize, I didn't intend to turn this against you, but it's encouraging to know you don't believe that."
"I hate you."
She knows better, but it's out before she can stop herself. More bees. So many bees. It's lucky she can't get anaphylaxis.
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