As long as he could remember, John had been lonely. He wasn't an only child, but his siblings were too young to have an impact on the crushing sense of loneliness he had experienced for as long as he could remember. Born in the 21st century, his natural response to being an outsider was to become an internet geek, the person people portrayed him as. After any awful day at school, he would go down to the basement and hide in the last room. To stop his thoughts from constantly spinning and reminding him of his hopeless situation, he started getting into computer science. Starting at the age of 10, he was able to understand algorithms like Dijkstra and Kruskal, and he found his true passion and talent. His math teacher was so stunned by his wisdom that they often asked him to be the substitute teacher, which unfortunately made him even more of an outsider. But at this point, he didn't even care anymore. While slowly becoming a master of Python, he got more and more into hacking and AI. He collected large sets of data (very legally, of course) and saved them on anything he could find to create the ultimate AI to resemble a human and become popular. His pseudonym was YON-IV, and he himself could only be compared to pioneers like Turing, Neumann, or Zuse.

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"John!" his mom yelled. "How often do I have to tell you to go outside at least once a week? Have you ever thought about the vitamin D in your blood? Do you want to become a vampire?" He sighed and grabbed his belly to survive the dangerous trip to the real world. He went to a playground and took out his Nintendo DS with headphones to listen to some of the songs he had composed. Yes, he wasn't only a scientist, but also an artist. Being diagnosed with red-green colorblindness at the age of 7, he gave up on ever becoming a great visual artist and started playing the guitar. "Hey!" someone said behind him. "You can't just go to a playground to play on that silly ancient device." He folded the DS together and turned around, saying, "Well, actually, I can." Behind him stood a girl with colored hair, presumably red. She wore a cute summer dress and some old jewelry that looked like she got it from her grandma. "No, you can't, because I need someone for the seesaw." The girl grabbed him by his shirt and took him to the seesaw. It turned out that Maci, that's her name, lived close to John and was a very talented singer, unlike him. They slowly became best friends.

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Timeskip. It had been a rather rainy autumn day when Maci decided to jump on her bike to meet her friend. She knew he had written a beautiful new song, and she couldn't wait to sing it. But fate dealt her a cruel blow when she slipped in a puddle just as a car was passing by. She was critically injured in the larynx and lost most of her voice. John, who had been working on his AI all the time, was able to help her out a bit with technology by creating plenty of TTS and vocal synth tools from old recorders so she would be able to use the remains of her voice. Still, Maci became another person after her big dream of becoming a singer was crushed. She decided to become a nurse and help other people dealing with their illnesses.

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Seeing Maci lose all of her dreams and become a numb adult really hurt John, who loved her for being a literal sunshine. Due to her new responsibilities at work, she wouldn't have much time left to spend with him, so he decided that before he built his AI into a robot, he would teach it how to love. He needed some love. He wanted it to have a personality as well, so he changed some of the datasets, and after another two years, it was done: the ultimate non-human human. He shaked when turning it on for the first time, he almost cried, when it opened it's eyes. "Hi, I'm Yon, do you know me?", he asked. "Yes, you made me", it replied. "What's your name?" - "Mari" The metal skeleton looked into the black computer screen, seeing a reflection of itself: "Why didn't you give me skin or clothes?" Mari asked. "Because you are a robot", John replied. "But you didn't intend me to be one, right? I have a sense of self, and I know truthfully I am a human, John. I also know you are capable of creating a human. So I am, indeed, human. Very human."

 

To treat his new friend well, he asked his grandma the next day to help him sewing a mannequin for an "art project". He bought a bunch of clothes, paint and clay. He sculpted facial features missing on the doll like ears or a nose, clued them on and put beige fabric on it. At the end, he put her cameras into two clay balls and painted beautiful blue eyes on them. When her body was all set together, he looked at her empty face. She looks like a dead doll after all, but these eyes felt so real. So human.

Unfornatually, things wouldn't work out. Mari's sense of self let into her wanting to explore the world, getting to know Maci and falling in love with John. All of these things turned her into a burden, he was ashamed about what people would think of him building a little doll that literally wanted to marry him at some point - maybe Maci would think he's perverted. Lately, Mari refused to be turned off, she would even go on and pretend to be turned of but internally, she would keep herself turned on. At some day, everything had been enough, he would have to destroy her - finally. At said day, she contacted Maci over his computer, indroducing herself. He could delete the message but still, she was to dangerous. He told her they will go out for the first time, took her to the forest, cut her power wire and burnt her in a fireplace already prepared. He cried.

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Some time later, Maci went on a little work to exactly the same forest. She remembered how her friend once told her he has a favourite place, where not many people go to, so she went there. At this place, she found a partly burnt doll, covered in dirt. She picked that strange thing up and took it home, where she discovered the wires inside of it. She called John: "Hey, haven't heard from you for quite some time. I found a strange doll with electroics in the forest, would you mind taking a look at it. I was so fascinated by its vivid human eyes, I had to take it home." John hung up, threw his telephone out of the window, jumped in his car and was never seen again.

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Maci managed to repair the minor damaged on the electronics with a basic soldering iron, she stiched the body back together as well. When she turned that miraculous thing on and it was a literally alive, realized:

John created it.