“Since I do not need to sleep, I feel no need any longer to sit in my room and pretend. I will be walking on the beach. You are informed. Feel free to have your army of spies follow me—but have them keep their distance, or I may bat one or two of them out of the sky.”

A few moments after Evrim had walked out, Ha turned to Altantsetseg. “You could be more kind.”

“Yes,” Altantsetseg said, still looking at the dark rectangle of the door. “Yes. You are correct. I should be more kind. I am not good at kind.”

“It was impulsive of Evrim. And inconsiderate. But nothing happened. They weren’t hurt. You did your job—and as you said, Evrim is not your prisoner.”

“A lie.”

“What?”

“That was a lie, Ha. Evrim is my prisoner, here on this archipelago. And my orders are to destroy Evrim if they attempt to leave this place.”

“What? How can that be?”

“It is one of my primary tasks, Ha: Keep Evrim safe. Keep you safe. Keep others from approaching the island. Keep se- cret what we are studying here. And restrain or destroy Evrim if they attempt to leave.”

“Does Evrim know?”

“No, they do not.”

“You should tell them.”

“Maybe I should. There is another directive. You should be aware of that one, as well.”

“What is it?”

“To restrain or kill you if you attempt to leave.”

Ha found she could say nothing at all.

“Now,” Altantsetseg said after a pause, “if I am no longer needed, I think I will go to sleep. Evrim does not need sleep, but I do. And I expect you do, as well. You may find, in the light of what you now know, that this place will look different to you in the morning.”

Chapter 34

Since the earliest age, I wanted to build minds.

I saw the empty eyes of my dolls, their blank stares, their foolish blinking while they spoke their prerecorded, rote phrases to me. I wanted more from them: I wanted companionship I could not get from my father, little more than a shadow in my life, or from my mother, constantly away, unaware of me even when she was home.

To be seen by others is the core of being. Perhaps this is why humans are driven to create minds besides our own: We want to be seen. We want to be found. We want to be discovered by another. In the structured loneliness of this modern world, so many of us are passed over by our fellow humans, never given a second glance.

That was what I dreamed of as a little girl—that my dolls would come to life, and discover me there, and save me from the loneliness of invisibility.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

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