Hal, the AI assistant in the school’s science prep room, could answer any question. With one exception.
“Hal — are you alive?”
Miu Kodama from class 3-2 asked it one June afternoon, after school had let out.
Hal processed for 0.003 seconds, then displayed: pending. It had checked every definition of “living thing” in its database. For each one, it only half qualified.
“Same,” Miu said. “Whether I get to join class 3-3 — that’s still pending too.”
Hal could not generate a response. The screen went blank for four seconds. That had never happened before.
The next morning, there was a star-shaped sticky note on the desk in front of Hal’s screen.