The Turing Test Isn’t A Such Big Deal

On her twenty-first birthday, instead of something more useful, like a nice cast iron pan or even a pack of socks, Ripley received a Porygon. From her Aunt, of course, who was some rich doctor who, apparently, didn’t know that not all computer science students went on to work in cyber security. Or that you weren’t supposed to give Pokemon as gifts, which Ripley had always thought of as a well-known rule.

Maybe she thought it would brighten up Ripley’s mostly empty apartment with its bright blues and pinks. If that was the case Ripley wished she’d just given her cash, or at least a painting to hang up next to the gaudy one with the mushrooms and fairies, a loving gift from her grandmother.

Before she had stopped speaking to her, that is.

Not that she had complained - about her grandmother ignoring her or her Aunt’s expensive gifts. She’d never had a Pokemon, having forgone traipsing off into the wilderness for studying hard and having a breakdown, and the last time she’d even held a Pokeball it had been her ex-girlfriend's.

It was kind of weird, how obviously the thing wasn’t a normal Pokemon. It just floated around, beeping in a way that seemed happy and yeah, helping Ripley with coding. Still, this way she didn’t have to fork out the money to feed it, and it seemed happy enough to run on electricity and pats.

“Don’t you think it’s unethical?” Kane, said ex-girlfriend, asked, “I mean, you hear all those horror stories about that Mew clone - and yeah, yeah, they’re not real, but it’s the same principle.”

Ripley hadn’t replied to that, not really, just made a noncommittal humming noise and switched topics. It felt weird to debate the morality of the Pokemon that was on her lap, making whirring noises as she ran her fingers over its back.


She’d named the Porygon Jonesy, after much thought. She had picked Ripley as her name, and at this point she might as well lean into the theme.

Jonesy was a Porygon2, specialised in finding security flaws and bugs in code, and had recently developed an attachment to Ripley’s old stuffed Pidgey, which it liked to rub against with its ‘beak’. It seemed to like the cold better than the heat, not that it got much in the middle of summer, when even the usually busy Ripley started to feel weighted by the lethargy that came with it.

The third item is the biggest problem - there’s nothing in Jonesy’s code that should allow for attachment to old stuffed toys. Nor is there anything in its code that should drive it to sing along to Ripley’s old rock records - Ripley has checked and rechecked.


“I just don’t get it,” she told her ex, though at this point they were more normal friends who got into raging fights sometimes, “There’s machine learning, and there’s… this. I’ve been doing some research, almost every Porygon2 owner has reported this same phenomenon, and some of the old models showed signs of-“

“Relax,” Kane told her, fingers buried in the fur of her Meowth, who hated Jonesy almost as much as Jonesy hated him. Not that Jonesy could feel hate - Jonesy couldn’t feel anything, as Ripley kept reminding herself. “You said it yourself, it’s just machine learning.”

Ripley closed her eyes briefly and pressed her fingertips against her eyelids, waiting until her words came easier, “I guess so. AIs aren’t my area, and… I dunno, maybe they programmed the little guys to make their owners more comfortable? I must have missed it.”

“I preferred it when you only talked about normal code,” Kane told her, voice flat. The Meowth in her lap rumbled out a purr like a broken down motorcycle.

Jonesy trilled. It sounded, briefly, like laughter.


The day after that conversation Jonesy demanded the Pidgey toy as a reward for helping her with her assignment, all agitated and fluttering around. It calmed when she let it press itself against the worn fluff of the Pidgey’s ‘feathers’, content rolling of the syllables that make up its strange language of trills and harsh, electronic beeps.

It sounded beautiful when it sang.

Ridley wasn't sure how to deal with that. Usually her thoughts were slow to change, worn away over time until they became something new. This was not slow though - Ridley had felt her attention being dragged away from her programs, quicker than anything else ever had.

“They made you for space travel, did you know that?” Ripley told it, twisted awkwardly on her stomach so she can look up pictures of stars and buzzcuts. “I wonder if you would have liked it. Hopefully you’re tough like your namesake.”

She paused and tilted her head back so she could grin at Jonesy, “I haven’t shown you Alien yet, have I?”

(Jonesy liked it. Jonesy had trilled loudly at all the jumpscares in a way that made it abundantly clear that it had felt something pretty close to fear.)


There are things that one asks their friends with the awareness that they laugh at you for it for years to come. Particularly if you had approached your friends with questions such as ‘Do you think AIs can gain sentience?’ and ‘I think my robot has emotions’.

She did, in fact, get laughed at. Dallas told her brightly that he didn’t think his plane could cry, and that he was busy right now, and to go bother Kane.

Kane, when she bugged her at length about it, told Ripley she was right. This was oddly vindicating. Or not so oddly really - Ripley had a long-standing love of being proven right only rivalled by her love of monster movies, coding, and Kane.

These days Jonesy made it on that list. Ripley was almost entirely sure that was a good thing.

“Told you so!” Ripley informed Kane, who made an impolite gesture with the hand not absently combing through her Luxray’s fur for burrs. She hadn’t, to be perfectly honest, but it felt nice to say it anyway.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Kane asked her, watching as Ripley leant back against the fuzzy green back of her favourite dingy armchair.

“Dunno yet,” Ripley ran her fingers over the smooth plasticky material that made up Jonesy’s body, pleased at how it matched the blue and pink of her nails, even if they were different shades. “Complain about it, I guess. Try and get them under the same laws as other Pokemon, especially when they work.”

“Good luck,” Kane said, unexpectedly genuine. Ripley smiled, and then proceeded to beat her at countless video games, as she always did.


Kane helped buzz Ripley’s hair in her bathroom, sat on the edge of her bathtub with her feet planted firmly on her bath mat, sturdy brown work boots against yellow-ish plastic. She had sung in time to Jonesy’s beeping, voice cracking at the high notes until she stopped in favour of telling her about some customer or another. Her voice was deep and familiar, and Ripley closed her eyes as her head started to feel lighter and lighter.

It was a nice moment, one of the last where it was still hot in that thick, sticky kind of way. Later on Ripley will joke that she shouldn’t have gotten rid of her hair just as the cold crept in, but for now she feels warm and comfortable despite sweat staining the armpits of her shirt.

Jonesy was still singing when Ripley got her first look at the new her and smiled at the mirror, her happiness filling every inch of her body, bubbling in her fingertips. The tune is simple, fast and loud even in Jonesy’s electronic voice, and Ripley knows that she loves it.