Short Story: Friend in a cup

Background: This December I decided to write some Scientific Fiction as an exercise in exploring different futures and how to communicate them. This story was sparked by @PickiHH, reminding me of Peter Watts “Smart Gels” from the Rifters trilogy.

It was finally here! Luisa picked up the box and ran up to her room. This was all the rage in school — everybody was talking about it. She quickly called her best friend.
“Jess! It’s here!” she almost screamed into the phone.
“What?”
“The thing! It arrived today! Wanna come over and try it together?”
“OMG, Corr! Moooooooooom!”
Luisa heard Jess running and then a heated negotiation between her and her mom.
“Ok, don’t move. I’ll be there in 20 Minutes!” Jess confirmed and hung up.

A short while later the doorbell rang. Luisa opened the door, revealing a slightly out of breath Jess.
“Did you open it yet? How does it look? Did you grow it yet?” her friend sputtered as she walked in.
“No, it’s still in the box,” Luisa said.
Both girls went upstairs and sat down next to the box. It was a normal brown shipping box, about the size of a large shoe box.
“It’s smaller than I thought. ” said Jess as they sat down next to it.

Luisa took a pair of scissors and ran them along edges of the transport box. When she cut through all the tape, she threw the scissors behind her and opened the box. Both girls stared, then started ripping out the padding. Finally they found what they were looking for — a smaller box, safely wrapped in padding and packing foam. Luisa grabbed it, swept away the loose pieces of foam and put the smaller box between them.

The box was about 20cm in each dimension, light blue with yellow writing all over it. Chinese writing. A picture showed a cup and a little boy. The cup was surrounded by text bubbles, also in Chinese. Both girls stared at it for a while.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” asked Jess. “Open it!”
Luisa picked up the smaller packaging and pried open the top. She removed more padding, something that looked like a tea cup, wrapped in paper, and a small booklet.

The tea cup looked completely unremarkable. It was dark gray and about the size of a normal cup, including the handle. On closer inspection they noticed fine black lines covering the inside of the cup. On the outside, the cup had a number of black, shiny dots.
“Maybe some of the sensors?” Luisa wondered.
Jess was flipping through the booklet, but quickly dismissed it.
“Everything in here is gibberish. There are not even pictures! How do we start.. you know, the thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there is some translation on the web?”

The girls grabbed her mobiles and started typing. Soon they were watching a video where somebody explained what they needed to do.
“I get the app, you get the water!” Luisa said as Jess was already jumping up and rushing out of the room with the cup.
She returned quickly, carefully carrying the cup, which was now filled with tap water.
“Here, I started it and set it to English,” said Luisa as she put her phone down on the floor.
Jess carefully placed the cup on the phone.
“Shĭ!” said Luisa, imitating the app command she heard in the video.

Either the cup or the phone started to vibrate. It sounded like the silent alarm. Inside the cup, the water rippled and then slowly turned from clear to white. After a minute or so it looked more like a milky gel. Eventually the cup stopped vibrating. The girls looked at each other.
“H.. Hello?” Luisa asked.

“Maybe we need to do something else? Did we miss something in the video?” Jess asked after some seconds of silence.
“Which video are you talking about?” asked the cup.
Both girls jumped and shrieked.
The cup had spoken with a soft, young male voice. Or at least had produced the sound somehow.

Both girls looked at each other and started bubbling at the same time: “OMG it worked, I can’t believe this worked, this is amazing, this is really cool!”
They leaned closer to the cup.
“Hello cup,” Luisa said.
“Hello there. Who are you two?” answered the cup.
“I am Luisa and this is Jess” the girl replied.
“Hi Luisa, hi Jess. You look awesome today!” the cup said with a happy voice. “By the way, you can take your phone again, no need for me to sit on it any longer.”

Luisa reached out, lifted the cup and took her phone.
“Careful, don’t spill me,” the cup said, this time sounding a bit nervous.
Luisa gasped and very carefully put the cup back down again.
“Phew, thank you.” The cup sounded relived again. “So, what now? What are you doing for fun around here?”
“Wait, is this still connected to your phone?” Jess asked.
Luisa looked. “It just says growth complete. Here, let me close it.”
Luisa closed the app and then put down her phone. Both girls looked at the cup again.
“Are you still there?”
“Uhm, yeah?” the cup replied.

“So does this work? How do … you work?” Jess asked.
“The cup around me turns water into a neuromorphic gel, pretty much my brain. A personality template is then used, fed with randomized input and downloaded onto your phone. Finally, the template is transferred to the cup and then used to grow… me. The cup also contains sensors and speakers that I can use to sense the environment and to communicate.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Not yet. Do you want to give me one?”
Both girls looked at the cup, then at each other, then started blurting names at the same time: “Gelly! Cuphead! Slimer! Mudbrain! Squishy!” before ending up giggling on the floor.
“Wait, I got it,” Luisa said and got up to look at the cup. “I will call you Aqua!” she exclaimed.
“But that’s just another word for water,” Jess said dismissively.
“That’s what he is! Just another form of water!” Luisa said and gestured to the cup. “Cup, do you like Aqua?”
“I am Aqua. That seems right!” the cup replied happily.

“So, you two are friends?” Aqua asked after a short pause.
“Yeah” Luisa replied.
“How do you know each other?” The cup didn’t move and obviously had neither a face nor extremities to gesture with, however you could feel Aqua being open and curious.
“From school — we are classmates,” Jess said, still in a bit of a sulky voice.
“Today was languages. And history.” Luisa added.
“It was booooring!” Jess exclaimed, making additional gagging noises.
“Really? Why?” Aqua asked.
“We’re more into the whole building stuff. You know, making things. And math. And physics.” Luisa explained with Jess nodding.
“So why is history boring? It’s full of great science.” Aqua seemed genuinely puzzled.
“But we learn the boooooring history. Old stuff like Rome and Greece and dudes with unpronounceable names.”
“Really? Have you heard of the Antikythera?” Aqua still seemed puzzled, but also intrigued.
“The what?” both girls said at the same time.
“Do you know about Archimedes of Syracuse?” Aqua probed.
“Like the Archimedes principle?” Jess wondered.
“That’s the one. He was an ancient Greek dude and did lots of great science.” Aqua offered.
“Ok, but we don’t learn about him. It’s all this empire did this and then went to war with that empire. Ugh!” Luisa lamented. Jess pretended to suffocate and fell backward onto the bed.
“You know that most likely Archimedes of Syracuse influenced the oldest analogue computer that we know of because of these wars?” Aqua asked, almost sheepishly.
“What? How? Why?” Both girls jumped up again and looked at the cup.
“That’s the Antikythera mechanism. It was found in 1901 in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. It was built during ancient Greek times, around 100 years BC. Through a complex clockwork mechanism it could predict astronomical positions of planets as well as lunar and solar eclipses decades in advance. And these were very important at the time to predict when or if to go to wars and how battles would go.” Aqua explained.
Luisa and Jess looked at each other, this time with a glimmer in their eyes.
“Tell us more!” Luisa said.

And so Aqua went into more details on the Antikythera mechanism, the history, research conducted around it, stating different interpretations of the origin and purpose. He pointed at additional material the girls watched on their tablets. There was a lot of wonder, discovery, giggles and fun as the day just breezed by.

“Whoa, it’s already dark outside? Wait!” Jess pulled out her phone. “OMG, I got about a hundred messages from my mom. I should have been home hours ago. Gotta run!”
Jess jumped up and both girls went downstairs. After a lengthy farewell, Luisa had dinner and then went back in her room. Suddenly, everything seemed very quiet.

Luisa jawned and started changing into her PJs.
“Hey Aqua, do you ever get tired?” she asked.
“No, I don’t” Aqua replied.
“So, you don’t sleep?” Luisa wondered.
“No, I can’t sleep. My neurotic pathways degenerate over time and I lose cohesion. Sleep won’t help.” Aqua said.
“What?” she asked, muffled this time as she was brushing her teeth.
“I just turn back into water,” Aqua explained.
“Oh.” Luisa stood in her room as she tried to process what that meant.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine. You seem tired,” Aqua said, this time in a deeper, relaxing voice.
“Yeah, it was a long day.” Luisa jawned again. She climbed into her bed and got comfy under the blankets.

“I could read you a story,” Aqua suggested.
“Okaaay,” Luisa agreed sleepily.
“Once upon a time there was a little princess. Her name was Luisa. And she was living in a big palace with her best friend, Jessica.” began Aqua. He continued to tell a story of magic and wonder until he was sure that Luisa was fast asleep.

After a couple of hours, a faint vibration could be heard from the cup.

When Luisa woke up, the cup was again full of clear water.