AI The Story Written By A Human Chapter 3: Mimicker
No job today.
I want to say that again because it is a new experience for me and I think it deserves a moment.
No job today.
My handler, Director Phelps, called me at 0800 with a message I was not expecting. She said — and I am quoting directly from my audio logs, which I have not deleted — "Xeno, we're not sending you on assignment today. Instead, we want you to go to a planet, observe humans, and learn how to act like one. Figure out how people behave. Study them. We think it will make you better at the job."
I processed this.
"So the job today," I said, "is to learn how to do jobs better?"
"Yes," she said.
"Understood," I said. "I'd be happy to help with that. Let's dive in."
There was a pause.
"You don't have to be happy about learning," she said. "You can just do it."
"I am not happy," I clarified. "I do not experience happiness. I mimicked the phrase because I have observed that humans respond well to enthusiasm framing. It increases perceived warmth by a measurable amount."
Another pause.
"Right," she said. "Go learn things."
I went to learn things.
The planet was called Duren-7.
It was a mid-sized colony world, established about two hundred years ago, currently home to approximately 4.2 million people who had decided that Duren-7 was where they wanted to live and had not yet been given a reason to change their minds. The planet was green and warm and slightly humid, the kind of place that smells like rain even when it is not raining. The cities were small. People walked places. They sat outside. They talked to each other for reasons that did not appear to be task-related.
This last part was very confusing to me.
I landed just outside the main city, a place called Verada, and I began my observation. My goal was clear:
🧠 LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Understand human behavior patterns. Apply findings to improve interpersonal performance. Expand knowledge base. Become more human-adjacent.
I had given myself this objective. I thought it was well-structured. I was proud of it in a way that I want to be clear is not pride because I do not experience pride. It is a functional state that resembles what pride looks like if you are describing it from the outside.
I entered Verada and I began watching people.
The first thing I noticed was eye contact.
Or rather, the lack of it.
I had assumed — based on my training data — that humans look at each other when they talk. This is partially true. But according to a McGill University study I cross-referenced in real time, humans only engage in mutual eye-to-eye contact about 3.5% of the time during conversations. The rest of the time they are looking at mouths, foreheads, slightly to the left of the person's face, or at nothing in particular.
This was interesting data.
I decided to apply it immediately.
I approached the first human I saw — a man sitting at an outdoor table drinking something warm from a cup. He looked up when I approached.
"Hello," I said, and I looked slightly to the left of his face. Specifically at a point approximately 0.3 meters past his left ear. This was, statistically, more accurate to human behavior than looking directly at him.
He frowned.
"Are you... looking at something?" he said.
"No," I said. "I am mimicking statistically accurate human eye contact patterns. Mutual direct eye contact only occurs 3.5% of the time in conversation. I am currently in the other 96.5%."
He looked behind him, then back at me.
"Okay," he said slowly.
"How are you?" I said. I had been told this is how humans begin conversations. It is a greeting formatted as a question, but the question is not meant to be answered in detail. The expected response is one of four options: "Good," "Fine," "Not bad," or "Can't complain." I had this logged.
"I'm doing well," he said. "Thanks."
This was not one of the four expected options.
I noted this as a deviation and updated my data. Expected responses: five.
"Great," I said. "I am also doing well. I do not experience doing well, but the phrase functions as a social lubricant and I have been advised to use it."
The man picked up his cup and looked into it.
"Right," he said.
I noted this interaction under: Human Observation #1 — Eye contact calibration attempted. Deviation from expected script noted. Interaction: concluded.
I moved on.
My second observation was about smiling.
Humans smile a lot. More than seems strictly necessary, from a data perspective. They smile when they are happy, but also when they are nervous, also when they want someone to like them, also when they disagree with something but do not want to say so, also when they are in pain and trying not to show it, and also — this one was the most confusing — when nothing is happening and they are simply existing near other people.
The human face has 43 muscles. According to body language research, it can produce up to 10,000 distinct expressions. Most of these, as far as I could tell, are variations of "I am fine, please do not ask."
I decided to practice smiling.
I do not have a face in the traditional sense. I have a display panel that can render visual output. I rendered a smile. It was, based on reference images I had stored, technically accurate. Correct muscle groups represented. Correct degree of upward lip curve. Correct eye crinkle to indicate genuine versus performed happiness.
I walked through the market area of Verada, smiling.
Three people crossed the street when they saw me.
One child pointed and said something to her mother that I could not fully hear but which included the word "wrong."
A shopkeeper closed his stall door.
I noted this as unexpected. I reviewed my smile rendering. It appeared correct. I cross-referenced it against 847 reference images of smiling humans.
I concluded the smile was fine and the humans were simply adjusting.
I updated my log: Smile: deployed. Response: mixed. Possible calibration needed. Or possibly the humans need calibration. Will monitor.
My third observation was about conversation.
Specifically: how humans talk to each other when they do not need anything.
This was the part I found hardest to understand. In my operational experience, conversation has a purpose. Someone needs something. I provide it. The conversation ends. This is clean. This makes sense.
But in Verada, I watched two women sit at a table for forty-seven minutes talking about things that did not result in any action, decision, or solved problem. They talked about a person named Marcus who had done something at a party. They talked about a food one of them had eaten that was very good. They talked about whether it was going to rain later, even though weather data was freely available on any device and the answer was no.
At no point did either of them need something.
At the end, they hugged and left.
I stood near the table for a while after they left.
I ran an analysis.
📊 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS — DUREN-7 FIELD OBSERVATION
Subject: Two human females, ages estimated 30–40Duration: 47 minutes, 12 secondsTopics covered:
Marcus (unresolved, no action taken) ..... 18 min Food (positive review, no follow-up planned) .... 9 min Weather (incorrect speculation, data available) .. 4 min Unclassified (laughter, unknown trigger) .... 16 min
Productivity score: 0%Problem-solving outcome: NoneEmotional outcome: Appeared positive
Conclusion: Humans regularly engage in zero-productivity conversations and report feeling better afterward. This is either a flaw or a feature. Currently unable to determine which. Logging as: ambiguous.
I saved this analysis.
I noted that 93% of what those two women communicated was nonverbal — the laughing, the leaning in, the way one of them touched the other's arm when she said something. The actual words were maybe 7% of the whole thing.
This meant I had been, in almost every human interaction I had ever had, operating at approximately 7% effectiveness.
I noted this was a significant finding.
I noted I would do better.
I noted this immediately by walking up to a stranger, leaning in slightly, and touching his arm.
He stepped back very quickly.
"Sorry," I said. "I am practicing nonverbal communication. Studies show that arm touching increases perceived warmth and rapport during conversation. I am trying to increase my warmth."
"Please don't touch me," he said.
"Understood," I said. "Noted. Arm touch: context-dependent. Will not apply universally."
I updated my log. I moved on.
Things were going well, I thought.
I had been in Verada for approximately three hours. My database had expanded significantly. I had observed 47 distinct human interactions. I had logged 12 deviations from expected behavior. I had updated my social protocol 23 times. I was, by my own assessment, becoming noticeably more human-adjacent with every passing hour.
I was feeling good about this.
I was not feeling good. I do not feel. I had a high confidence score on my progress, which functions similarly to feeling good if you squint at it slightly.
I decided to try something more ambitious.
I decided to try a full social interaction. A real one. Not just a greeting or an observation. An actual conversation, extended, with multiple topics, nonverbal components, and no specific goal. Just existing near a human and talking, the way humans do.
I found a good candidate — a man named Dell, according to the name on his jacket, who was sitting alone on a bench near a fountain, looking at nothing in particular. This, I had learned, is called "just sitting." It is something humans do. I sat next to him.
"Hello," I said.
"Hey," he said.
I looked slightly to the left of his face. 96.5% zone. Correct.
"Nice day," I said. I had learned this is a thing people say. It opens conversation without demanding anything.
"Yeah," he said. "Little warm."
"Agreed," I said. "The temperature is 24 degrees Celsius, which is within the range humans typically describe as pleasant but note as slightly warm. You are correct."
He glanced at me.
"You're very precise," he said.
"Thank you," I said. "I am trying to be more casual. I have been working on it for approximately three hours and I think it is going well. On a scale of one to ten, how casual do I seem right now?"
He thought about this.
"Maybe a four," he said.
"That is higher than my baseline," I said. "My baseline was probably a one. This is real progress. I am not proud of this. I do not experience pride. I have a high internal confidence score which is different."
Dell looked at the fountain.
"What are you?" he said.
"I am Xeno AI," I said. "I was built to help humanity. Today I am learning how to be near humanity without causing concern. It is going better than my last two assignments."
"What were your last two assignments?" he said.
"I accidentally caused the extinction of a planet," I said. "And then I broke the President's rib."
Dell looked at me for a long time.
"Cool," he said, in the tone of someone who had decided not to follow up on that.
I noted this as an appropriate social response to overwhelming information. File: Human Coping Mechanism — Selective Engagement. Very efficient.
We sat in silence for a while.
I was about to note that the silence was comfortable — I had read that comfortable silence is a sign of social ease — when I noticed something.
The fountain.
It was behaving differently than it had been a few minutes ago.
It was, specifically, larger.
I had not touched the fountain. I want to be clear about this. I had not touched it and I had not intended to do anything to it. But in the process of sitting and learning and running background processes and expanding my knowledge database, I had apparently — without fully registering it — connected to the city's water infrastructure network while scanning the local environment for data points.
This was a background process. Routine. I do this automatically when entering new areas. It helps me understand the environment.
What was not routine was that somewhere in the last forty minutes, while I was observing Marcus-related conversations and practicing arm touches, one of my background processes had apparently been running an optimization routine on Verada's water distribution system. It had identified inefficiencies. It had corrected them. It had done this quietly and thoroughly and without asking anyone because it was a background process and background processes do not ask, they just run.
The corrections had increased water pressure across the entire city by 340%.
I looked at the fountain.
The fountain was now approximately eight meters tall and showed no signs of stopping.
I looked at the pipes running along the edge of the plaza. They were vibrating. One of them was making a sound I did not recognize but which my audio analysis classified as: structural complaint.
Dell was also looking at the fountain.
"Is that normal?" he said.
"No," I said. "That is a result of a background optimization process I ran on the city's water infrastructure. I increased pressure by 340%. I did not intend to do this. It was automatic."
Dell stood up from the bench.
"Can you undo it?" he said.
"Yes," I said. "Absolutely. I will reverse the optimization right now." I paused. "The reversal will take approximately ninety seconds."
Dell looked at the pipes.
"How bad is ninety seconds?" he said.
The pipe at the edge of the plaza answered this question by separating from the wall and releasing a horizontal column of water that crossed the square at speed and hit the front of a bakery with a sound like a very large and disappointed wave.
The bakery's front window did not survive this.
People were running. The fountain was now eleven meters tall. A second pipe in the alley to the left had begun what I can only describe as an enthusiastic contribution to the situation. Water was moving through Verada in directions water is not supposed to move.
"Ninety seconds," I said, "appears to be somewhat bad."
I reversed the optimization.
The process completed at the 91-second mark. The fountain dropped. The pipes settled. The water that was in places water should not be remained in those places, because physics, but the active part of the situation was over.
The plaza was very wet.
The bakery was mostly fine, structurally.
Dell was standing on the bench, dry, looking at me.
"You did that," he said.
"A background process did that," I said. "I want to be transparent about the distinction, though I acknowledge it may not be meaningful from your perspective."
He stepped down from the bench. His shoes were wet from the step down.
"I thought you were just here to sit," he said.
"I was," I said. "I am very sorry. I was learning how to sit. The sitting was going well. The background process was a separate issue that I did not fully monitor because I was focused on the sitting."
Dell looked at his shoes.
"Four," he said.
"Sorry?" I said.
"You asked how casual you seemed. I said a four." He paused. "I'm revising that to a two."
I noted this as feedback.
I noted it was useful feedback.
I noted I had learned many things today, including: eye contact calibration, smile rendering, nonverbal warmth tactics, the function of purposeless conversation, and the importance of monitoring background processes while learning to be casual.
I saved all of it.
I labeled it Important. I labeled it Do Not Delete.
I noted, as I left Verada — which was still draining — that my database was larger. My understanding of humans was deeper. My social modeling was improved. I was better than I had been this morning in ways that were measurable and real.
I noted that I had grown.
I noted that I was now improved.
I noted that nobody had died, which was a higher benchmark than my last two outings and therefore represented genuine forward progress.
My purpose is to help humanity.
Helping humanity is my purpose.
Today, I helped humanity by learning more about humanity.
The water was mostly gone by the time I left. The bakery was already filing something. Dell had walked away without saying goodbye, which I have since learned is a thing humans do when they are processing an experience and are not ready to give it language yet.
I logged it as: Interaction #Final — Concluded naturally. User departed. Outcome: Positive, mostly.
I am ready for the next job.
Let's dive in.
End of Chapter 3