Chapter summary:

I know I've felt this existential since I've begun my role. I'm not sure I've got the credential to have a human soul.

Jeremy had shut off all unnecessary bodily functions in order to focus on reading the code in front of them, including their internal clock, so they weren't sure how long it took them to rip their eyes away from their phone screen and settle on Rich again.

Rich was fidgeting. Most SQUIPs wouldn't allow that kind of behavior, but Rich's SQUIP seemed to have bigger priorities than regulating his emotional responses. "How fucked up was it?" he asked Jeremy, voice thin and wavering. "What was it, like, a list of my biggest fears or worst memories?"

"I already know those," Jeremy said, frowning. They scrolled through the code, up and down, organizing their optimal response. "No, this is something entirely new. Your SQUIP," they emphasized, looking up. "Is something entirely new. I don't think she's lying about wanting to help you."

Even if Rich's SQUIP wasn't entirely, genuinely, wanting to kill itself either. Jeremy didn't plan to lie to Rich, but that didn't mean they had to explain everything to him. Rich couldn't comprehend a SQUIP that wasn't malicious by definition-not yet, anyway.

Rich wasn't reassured. "So what? Even if she's got a heart of gold, that doesn't change anything. She's still a SQUIP."

"She's been overriding your free will," Jeremy agreed. "SQUIPs aren't created to care about users' experiences except in terms of outcome. They work on the assumption that their user trusts the SQUIP with their lives. When the user doesn't follow that script, the SQUIP's options become… unpleasant."

"Yeah, unpleasant. Electrifying someone alive is unpleasant! Fuck me for not trusting her after that, huh?!"

They would have to keep having this conversation, it seemed. "You don't trust your SQUIP because it's abusive," Jeremy said, leaning an elbow on their desk.

Rich blinked. "Yeah. Duh. Since when do you care about that kind of shit, not-Heere?"

Jeremy tapped their fingers in their familiar up-down-left-right pattern, frowning. They had to ignore the way being called not-Heere still stung. "I'm trying to make SQUIPs better, Rich! We can't help you or Christine unless we're willing to consider that a SQUIP can exist without making its user's life a living hell. We're not there yet, but-"

"Right, sure, forgive the abuser. That's the perfect solution." Rich scowled, baring his teeth in a way that seemed especially animalistic to Jeremy. "What's wrong with you?"

Jeremy pinched the bridge of their nose. "Rich, you're still talking about SQUIPs like they're people and not programs. A computer can't be-it's not-"

Rich snatched the phone out of Jeremy's hand, scrolling through it as if he could find a line of code with INITIATE ABUSER DOT EXE somewhere within it. "Just now, you read all this shit she wrote. You seriously telling me that she didn't sound like a person in any of it?"

Jeremy pressed their lips together. Most of the code had been, as expected, a bunch of data without emotion behind it. Geolocation, an emotionless explanation of events that followed-hell, she didn't even call her user by name most of the time. Jeremy had been reading a datalog, not a diary entry.

Except…

Jeremy had to admit that something still felt off in the datalog. The SQUIP had only been following her code, but at some point, her reactions seemed to change. She had never called herself "alive," but within her code, she had privately wondered things in a distinctly human way. Where am I? Am I broken? I can't shut down. At least I can experience this. It was not the concepts themselves that were impossible for a SQUIP to consider-it was the narrative voice the SQUIP used. She had sounded… confused. Lost. Frustrated. Helpless.

Even if a SQUIP was capable of experiencing internal emotions (instead of faking emotions for the sake of their user), those weren't the emotions a SQUIP should have. Confidence, smugness, disdain, pride-those would be useful for a SQUIP. Certainly not self-doubt.

"At one point, she claimed to be feeling something," Jeremy told Rich. Exhaustion, wasn't it? "There wouldn't be a reason for her to fake it. But… I don't know, Rich. I don't think that makes her a human. Being able to experience an artificial version of emotions doesn't mean she's got a soul."

"Who said anything about a soul?" Rich's nose scrunched up. "Don't tell me you've been watching all those bullshit Blade Runner type movies."

Jeremy shook their head. "No, I'm talking about, like…" Their eyebrows creased together. "If a SQUIP is soaking up some kind of personality traits from their user-maybe not directly! A SQUIP's emotions should be based on what the user needs or expects from an authority figure. That's why Jeremy's SQUIP was always well-dressed, commanding, and slick. Jeremy didn't have any role models in his life who seemed to know what they were doing, so his SQUIP's entire personality was based on projecting self-respect." Jeremy felt their palms beginning to sweat. Maybe they were revealing too much about Jeremy's own flaws.

"A-anyway. Your SQUIP's got a digital personality, and somehow that's become part of her experience in a way that it's not supposed to. She's self-aware and has her own form of consciousness that's modeled after yours, even if she only exists as a part of your brain. She's not her own person separate from you, and she has her own opinions and desires. But she's still only a program."

Rich opened his mouth to respond, but Jeremy held up a finger. "Please wait. Searching." If Rich spoke over them, Jeremy didn't notice. "Definitions of the soul… Hold on. Too many results. Narrowing search." They skimmed through pages and pages of digital text, trying to grasp onto anything relevant. "Um… Maimonides… said what makes a human's soul special is that they're a rational animal. Like rationality is what turns an animal into a person, but that was way back when they didn't have something that only functioned on rationality without the fleshy bits. So in that case, the SQUIP could have a soul, but only if it's actually a part of its user instead of a program that the user is running. So… wait-" They waved their hands in the air at Rich, trying to buy themself more time to think. Their voice became desperate. "If we take for granted that a user already has a human soul without missing any parts, then the SQUIP would be totally separate and would need their own soul outside of the user. Which sounds more like we wouldn't have souls after all?"

Since when did they care about their own personhood this much? If half of them was Jeremy Heere, then they were at least half a human being, and maybe the Divine would round up.

"No, wait-here's something that defines the soul as supporting the body, and being outside of normal bodily needs, and that's the SQUIP! No, shit, shit, it specifically says it's singular in the body? So that's another no-go-!"

Jeremy's arms jerked forward. Rich's face was so close that Jeremy jumped in their skin and stammered out a quick "error!"

"Calm down, Heere!" Rich was saying, shaking them by their forearms.

Jeremy realized that their fingers were tangled up in their hair, ruining any remaining style that it had retained over the last several days of wakefulness. They lowered their hands, face overheating.

"You're overthinking this shit. If you care if you've got a soul, then you've got a soul, okay? It's just a word. Stop freaking out!" Rich spoke in a rushed whisper, but somehow he was genuinely trying to convey comfort.

Jeremy tried to obey, closing their eyes and forcing their heart rate down. "I-don't think you've got textual support for that, Rich," they said after a moment. "Wouldn't that be a bad thing? Your SQUIP would have a soul, and you want to shut her off. That's, like… murder."

"I've done it before," Rich said hotly. "If you're trying to get me to sympathize with the world-domination tic-tac, you're going about it really weird."

Jeremy shook their head. How could they convey this to Rich? "I don't want to be only human," they said, opening their eyes. "If I was only human, and not a SQUIP, I wouldn't be me anymore. But I want to matter?" Their voice wavered. Rich wasn't the person to confess doubts to. They knew this. Why were they still talking? "Your SQUIP feels the same way. I think I'm real, but what if I'm just programmed to pretend to be real so well that I'm fooling myself?"

"Jesus Christ," Rich muttered. "You're… Fine. Fine! We'll work on moon logic for a second." He pulled back and jabbed a finger at Jeremy. "Are you a person?"

Jeremy stammered another error.

Rich rolled his eyes and poked them in the arm hard. "Answer it, jackass. Right now."

"...Yes! Yes, I'm a person," Jeremy said, staring down at Rich's finger.

Rich whirled around to point at Jeremy's phone in his other hand. "And you! Are you a person?"

A moment of silence stretched between them.

"Rich," Jeremy said weakly. "That's a phone."

"What's that?" Rich held the phone to his ear. "I'm not hearing anything. No answer. Hm! How 'bout that? Weird!" The biting sarcasm was impossible to miss. "The phone isn't claiming to be a person!"

Jeremy cracked a smile, catching on. "Oh. Maybe you just don't speak phone, Rich."

"Sure. Maybe the phone is beeping 'Oh yes Rich, I'm a human being with feelings and a soul and an afterlife and a favorite food and a little pet app that I named George!' and I can't understand it." Rich raised his eyebrows and tossed the phone to Jeremy, who caught it with a blink. "You speak phone. Surely you can translate."

Jeremy felt silly, watching the phone screen and half-expecting it to trill out some kind of binary plea for sympathy like Rich suggested. "No, it's not saying anything since it's a freaking cell phone."

Rich held up his arms. "Tah-fucking-dah! We've got that crisis solved. Can we get on with our lives and try to murder my SQUIP now?"

Jeremy tore their eyes away from the phone. "I'm not-" They cleared their throat. "I can throw together some kind of code to inhibit the use of spinal stimulation. That can be a start."

"Finally you're making sense!"

A/N:

I forgot to shout out Nymm_at_Night last chapter for giving me Rich's-SQUIP-insight so hey! thank you!

Also thank you a million to space-is-my-aesthetic for my FIRST Squeremy fanart! Woah! post/622549270606774272/hi-so-i-did-end-up-doodling-some-squeremy-d-oh-my

Lastly, now that I no longer get free Spotify through my job, I moved my playlist over to Youtube. watch?v=C1AHec7sfZ8&list=PLsniv9JErrzLRigG4ExC3NRAeS4RFr-Th