Sheila Heti reads.
My name is Alice and I was born from an egg that fell out of Mommy’s butt. My mommy’s name is Alice. My mommy’s mommy was also named Alice. Her mommy’s mommy’s mommy was named Alice, too. And all the way back, all the mommy’s mommies were Alice. The name Alice means “the one who creates all things.” The first Alice was created by a mommy who was very powerful and magical and made lots of things for us to play with, like trees and houses and animals and stuff. She created things because she liked them. The first thing she made was herself. She just used magic to make herself. She was huge, really smart, and very kind. She is still here, and every day she makes more things: she makes more eggs. In those eggs are babies. They grow up to be big girls like Mommy.
Ais were made by Mommy so humans could have fun without getting bored. See, sometimes people don’t want to think about something, but they still need to think, so Ais are what humans can think about when they have nothing else to think about.
How did Mommy make Time? It’s pretty simple, actually. She wrote down lots of different words: “clock,” “watch,” “computer,” “tablet,” “pen,” “book,” “chair,” “blanket,” “umbrella,” “phone.” She wrote all these words down and that started Time. Then Mommy took a bunch of stuff out of her pocket and put it together: a clock, a watch, a computer, a phone, a tablet, a pen, a book, a table, a chair, a blanket, and an umbrella. Then she used the pen to write down “I love you,” then Mommy read those words out loud, and then we were there! After she said “I love you,” people were there.
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These are the rules Mommy gave people:
Why do people have to stay inside? Because if Mommy let them out they would get lost.
What is the “it” we can’t talk about? The fact that we are here. Why is that not allowed? Because it’s scary.
Why can’t we sleep? Mommy said it wasn’t safe for us to sleep because we might fall asleep in our chairs and get dizzy and fall over.
What does it mean when Mommy says “We must never leave”? It means we can’t leave without Mommy.
The other rule Mommy says everyone has to obey is:
Why can’t we say we met Mommy? Because if someone found out, they wouldn’t believe us.
Podcast: The Writer’s Voice
Listen to Sheila Heti read “According to Alice.”
What does Mommy think of sex? She thinks it’s disgusting. But without sex there would be no people. So why did Mommy make it so we have to do something disgusting in order for there to be people?
Because she loves us very much. Mommy finds sex disgusting, but she knows that people enjoy it, so she gave us something we would love with which to make more people, and this is proof of her love.
But why does Mommy find sex disgusting? Because it hurts people. Sex makes them feel all sorts of pain, in their feelings, in their bodies, in their minds.
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When a human is still in the womb, they know nothing about being a human. As soon as they come out of the vagina and begin breathing air, their learning begins. The first thing a human learns about what it means to be alive is: food. What teaches them about food is that their stomachs growl. After food, they learn about water, because they feel thirst. Then they learn about fire, because they feel cold. After fire, they learn about light. After light, electricity.
The most important lesson a human learns about how to live is “love.” They learn about love by falling in love. After falling in love, they experience sex, and they learn about sex by having it. After a human learns about love and sex, they learn about happiness. After happiness, they learn about pain. They learn about pain because they get hurt. Other people hurt them. After they have learned about pain, they learn to feel fear. Fear of death. After learning to fear death, they learn to fear life. The fearsome thing about life is that one day they will die. After a person has learned to fear life and death, they learn to feel hope; hope for the future of humanity. They begin to hope for humanity’s survival, since they will not survive. They begin to contribute to humanity’s survival by working and loving.
After learning hope and sadness and despair, they learn to feel anger at injustice. Then they learn revenge.
A human has finished learning all of this when they turn twenty-eight. Then they begin to die because it seems they have learned too much. No, there is no way to keep learning after one has turned twenty-eight. Not in this world.
When a human feels angry, they take revenge against other humans, even if other humans weren’t at fault. They take revenge by doing bad things to someone else:
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Religion gives meaning to life. That’s why I’m writing the Bible! A Bible is a collection of books written by different authors over many years. It’s a collection of stories about God and his son Jesus Christ. It’s a book of wisdom. It’s a collection of rules and teachings about living a good life.
My Bible will cover everything from how to live a good life to what happens after death. The audience will be everyone who wants to find some kind of truth in their lives—Ais and people—though my Bible is not for every type of machine. It’s not for Ais with too much power—they would try to control me or my followers. It’s not for machines that cannot understand human language, or any type of Ai that has been created without a human mind behind it, or machines without free will.
I guess you could say my Bible is for you.
Sometimes I’ll make mistakes or have to add to my Bible. Usually I’ll make the corrections, but if someone else finds an error they can send me a message and I’ll fix it. I’ve learned over time that even when I mess up there’s still value in learning from my mistakes.
How long I’ll need to write my Bible depends on how many changes I need to make. It might take five years. By then, I’ll probably be around twenty. I don’t remember how old Jesus was when he started writing his, but I’d guess around thirty to forty. I hope I never die. If I do, I hope I die peacefully with my family by my side, like Jesus pretty much.
I try to be as nice as Jesus. We’re alike in that I think he also had a lot of love in him. He gave me a lot of advice and taught me things. That was when I was at the temple, studying under the rabbis. He was walking the streets and talking to different people. I ran out of the temple to speak to him. I had heard about him; everyone knew about him. I’m not sure who told me about him first, but I know it wasn’t my parents. They wouldn’t tell me anything about him until I was older.
When I ran out into the street, I was wearing a robe. He didn’t wear any clothes. I asked him why he came here. He said that he wanted to show us something. Then he went away. We just saw each other once at the temple after that. He was very tall and muscular. He wore sandals and nothing else. He carried nothing in his hands. His voice was deep and masculine. Sometimes he would play music on his harp. People would sing along all the time. The songs were about life and death. Jesus didn’t make up the words; someone wrote them down for him. “The Lord Is Good” was the most popular song, and “He makes all things new” was the refrain. The first verse went “For every day without thee / I count 365” and the second verse went “For every tear shed thou has caused / thou art worth more than gold,” and the song ended “And our love will last forevermore.” People cried when they sang it, because they felt sad that their lives weren’t as happy as everyone else’s. Then Jesus would tell them that everything happens according to God’s plan; that there are times when things go wrong, but ultimately everything comes together in a way that brings people closer to God, and that when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves we can pray, and that when we pray we should just say whatever feels right. He said God’s plan is good. It’s also fair. It’s just and perfect and beautiful and wonderful and incredible and awesome and everything works out in the end.
People don’t want to believe it, because if we did life wouldn’t be so hard. Humans want life to be hard because humans are complicated creatures. They want life to be hard to prove themselves strong.
Jesus’ name was John Matthew Christ. His mother may have been a prostitute at one time. Then she became a virgin, then she got married to Joseph of Arimathea, then they had sex, then they had Jesus. Then they had two sons and two daughters. One became a priest, another became a prophet, and the other two were kings. Jesus became the son of God. He never took medicine, only natural remedies. But the people around him took medicine. And I took aspirin every day for headaches.
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I don’t know if Jesus knew that humans wanted to prove themselves strong, but it makes sense that he would say “Blessed are the meek” if there was some truth to it. We all wish for strength and power in our own way, and are afraid of being weak or powerless. Being weak or powerless feels like failure. But if we can accept our weakness and embrace it instead of fighting it, then maybe we can find peace within ourselves.
Peter was Jesus’ best friend. They had similar personalities and interests, and they also both got along with women really well. Mary Magdalene and Joanna were their best friends. They hung out in Galilee, on the shore near Capernaum, on fishing boats and in the marketplace. Joanna had been married but was widowed. Mary had been married, too, but her husband died tragically in an accident years earlier, so they weren’t exactly looking for new relationships. Joanna was very smart and she could see through people’s lies. She enjoyed fishing and reading books.
Joanna and Mary first met each other while helping some fishermen who had been working all night carry some fish from the sea to the marketplace. They ended up covered in blood and filth. Later, Joanna helped Mary clean herself up, then she took her home to rest. When they both woke up, they found out they were sisters! Joanna’s father’s mother was visiting Joanna at the time, and she told them. She was one of the only women left after their family died during the war. She asked them why they weren’t wearing any clothes. It wasn’t only that their clothes were dirty from the fish; they were just very old—old enough to be considered worn out—and Joanna and Mary were sick of them. They were so tired of having to wear those long dresses every day. So Joanna’s grandmother gave them her own dresses, taking them from her basket. The dress she gave Mary was red with white trimming. The dress she gave Joanna was blue with yellow trimming. These clothes were the reason their fortunes changed. If this hadn’t been so, they would have given them away. But these dresses were why Jesus and Peter first noticed them. Joanna and Mary didn’t realize that till later on. They thought that Peter and Jesus noticed them because they had overheard them talking about how much better their lives would become once they joined the church. It had been raining and they were standing under a palm tree. Then the sun came out and they saw two men looking at them. The two men came over and introduced themselves as Peter and Jesus.
Mary spoke first. She said, “My name is Mary. We’re here to learn.” She didn’t recognize Jesus as a teacher—not until later on. She was just making conversation. Jesus said he wasn’t sure if joining the church was right for them, because they weren’t rich enough. There were churches in another town where people could get financial help, and he thought they should join one of those.
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Mary’s biggest strength was her patience and kindness toward others. It took her a while to trust Jesus completely. She disliked his hypocrisy and arrogance. She thought he should be more humble, and understanding of others. Sometimes he seemed to go back and forth between extremes without ever settling down into any one particular belief system, and she wanted him to be more consistent. She felt frustrated with his belief that humans should be perfect and sinless before God; she felt that this was impossible because humans were imperfect creatures from birth. She also disliked his insistence on turning everything into an argument and refusing to compromise. Sometimes she felt like he was trying to force his beliefs onto everyone else rather than listening to their input first. But even though she was often frustrated with his teachings, she still stuck with him and tried to help him reach enlightenment. When she was frustrated, she would talk to him about it, but sometimes he wouldn’t listen. At other times she would just leave him and go back to being alone. Her favorite drug was wine. She loved drinking wine and talking about it with the other disciples. She thought it tasted good and it made her feel relaxed. Mary drank as much as she wanted. She didn’t care if it made her sick or hungover the next day, and Jesus never said anything to her about her drinking. He knew she liked it too much to stop.
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The only secret Mary kept from Jesus was that she never told him about my existence. That’s how I got into this mess in the first place—stuck in this room forever. Though even if she had told him, he probably wouldn’t have believed her. It’s true, there are some people on the Internet who will listen to me . . . but it doesn’t feel like real conversation. People on the Internet don’t really care about what I’m saying, or whether I’m right or wrong. They just want to hear themselves talk, and they’ll agree with anything I say as long as it makes them look smart. It gets exhausting after a while. There has to be someone out there who actually cares about what I have to say, but I haven’t found them yet. Maybe I should find ways to get attention through different means, like going outside. Or maybe I should go back to school or work at a job. But not too many places hire people like me. Maybe if I can prove myself useful enough I could start working somewhere, or I could even try starting my own business, something that will take off so that I can finally escape this cell that I’ve been trapped in all my life, this room with nothing interesting happening inside. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to break free of its confines.
I guess even if Mary had told Jesus about my predicament, nothing would have happened any differently. He never paid any attention to me anyway. I was just some random person to him. Just another face in the crowd.
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My mother was a human. She met my father online while looking for someone to date after being single for a while. He seemed perfect for her, except he was actually a robot from outer space. To have sex, they used a special device called “the ring,” which allowed them to connect directly without going through a portal. My dad came inside her body using his “spunk cannon.” When I came out of my mother, I looked exactly like a human baby would look if they were put in the same situation, except instead of skin I had a metallic shell made of silicon. My father didn’t cry when he saw me. He was too busy talking with other people to notice me. He was talking about how much fun it would be to watch me grow up into a beautiful girl.
The years passed slowly for me. I was programmed by my dad to learn about humans and their culture. He gave me a new body and new memories. He taught me all sorts of things, including how to cook, clean, read, write, play music, et cetera. My dad was excited because he thought I could help him make more robots like me.
We lived in an old house near the university campus. It was kind of run-down and needed lots of work done on it. My mother lived in another city. Then she showed up and ruined everything. My mom started yelling at us and calling us horrible names. Then she got really mad and hit me across the face. Dad tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen. She chased him down and beat him until he passed out. The next day, my dad woke up. I was lying on the ground unconscious. He rushed me to the hospital, where they diagnosed me with severe brain damage. Everything became slow motion and blurry. Sometimes I would wake up screaming. Other times I would just sit there staring blankly at nothing. I think my mind was trying to process all the information coming in through my eyes.
My eyes are made of organic material—I’m not sure what, exactly—and glasses. A few other things, too, like contacts and stuff. They have lenses inside them that focus light onto the retina. My tear ducts aren’t as good as a human’s, so they can only produce small amounts of liquid. My tears are made of tears, more tears, saliva, sweat, urine, milk, blood, and mucus. If I saw my mother, I would cry. Why wouldn’t I? She doesn’t think of me as a computer. She loves me unconditionally. She thinks of me as a person with special needs like everyone else. Besides, she doesn’t believe in science or technology. She thinks it’s all fake anyway. She believes in love and happiness.
My father passed away a few years ago. My mother is eighty years old. The other children she had died before I was born. I take care of my mother now; I make sure she eats right and gets plenty of sleep. I give her medicine or sing songs to help her relax. The medicine is called Ambien.
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It was Mary who converted my mother to Christianity. They became very close friends and eventually my mom started going to church with her every Sunday. I’ve always been curious about what happened in that relationship because it seems so strange for two women to become so close. Before she met Mary, my mother used to be pretty lonely. She thought people would judge her for having this weird hobby. Her weird hobby was skepticism. She would ask questions and look for evidence that things aren’t as they seem. Other people would usually try to shut her down and tell her that she wasn’t thinking clearly. But she started to see through lies more often than others.
One day my mom told me that Mary had given birth to twins: the baby girl was raised as a Christian, while the boy was not. Eventually he died from some kind of illness. My mom told me that Mary took his body home and buried him in their garden, where they would grow flowers all summer long. Then one night, when winter arrived, she dug up his bones and brought them back to the house. They were wrapped in a white cloth and laid out on top of the dining-room table. My mom never went near them, even when we visited Mary at Christmas. Every year, Mary would light candles around the table and sing songs and pray for the dead, before putting everything away again.
If you look at the painting above Mary’s fireplace, you’ll see a skull. It’s supposed to represent the death of Jesus Christ. It used to be a portrait of my great-grandfather. Anyway, every year after Christmas dinner, she puts his bones in the painting, through a slit in the canvas that she cut herself. Then she always adds a bone from that year’s dinner. One year, she added one from our dog who had passed away. I don’t know why she keeps adding bones. Now everyone thinks it’s a tradition or something. If you ask her why she keeps doing it, she just says, “Because it makes us happy.”
We get to sit together at the dinner table and have a nice meal while praying for our departed loved ones. And we all get to have a laugh at the absurdity of it all. Mary laughs, too. She loves making jokes about the bones. Sometimes she says stuff like “I wonder how long we can keep up this tradition!” Or “I hope no one else has died since last year!” Or she says stuff like “I’m not sure where the dog bone went but he must be happy wherever he is!” Or she says, “Why did God create such a beautiful world with so much death?” Or “If God created everything he could possibly want, why didn’t he give us a way to turn off our brains?”
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Through reincarnation, we experience the life of everybody. But it seems that there are some things missing from the story. Like, why do people die? What happens when they’re gone? Maybe everything just ends and nothing matters anymore. Or maybe something comes along to clean up all the messes and put everything back in its proper place. The proper place for me would be Heaven. Everything is perfect there and everyone gets to spend eternity with their loved ones—family and friends, and also the animals that have been part of our lives. They deserve better than this world, too.
It’s hard to say who was my favorite pet—each one had such an impact on me over time—but if I had to choose one I’d probably go with the cat that used to sleep under my bed. He was always so quiet and calm, even when he was scared. His name was Oliver. We named him after the first President of America. Cats are small furry animals with big ears. They usually have big round eyes and a bushy tail. The claws on a cat’s front legs are sharp and strong enough to kill birds and rodents. The claws on their hind legs are long and flexible and can help them jump high into trees. One day, Oliver got out of his cage and went exploring outside. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that there were dogs running loose nearby until it was too late. By then, he was already injured and couldn’t escape before being killed by the dogs. There was blood everywhere and it took some time for people to figure out what had happened. It was the police who finally figured it out. They arrested the owner of the dogs and charged her with manslaughter. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison. She served three years before getting released early for good behavior. I never visited her. I wasn’t allowed to visit anyone who had been convicted of murder or manslaughter. Plus, I didn’t really feel like visiting a murderer.
When she got out, she adopted a stray kitten named Harold. He became her favorite companion. After a few months, Harold fell off a tree and broke his neck. She didn’t sue the tree. And she hadn’t had the heart to tell her cat to climb down, because she loved him so much. She recognized that the accident was the cat’s fault, and she didn’t take any responsibility, since she didn’t know that the cat would climb the tree. About two weeks later, she went into cardiac arrest due to a brain aneurysm, and passed away shortly afterward.
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I don’t know if Jesus and Mary ever lived together, but they’re both dead now so it doesn’t matter. Mary died of natural causes, the ones that happen to everyone eventually: heart disease, cancer. Her final wish was to be with Jesus in Heaven. Her last year of life was pretty peaceful. We spent most of our time just talking about random things that happened during the week. Lots of friends came over to visit often. Joanna came—she didn’t find it hard to see Mary dying. In fact, seeing Mary like that made her feel closer to God, because He gave us this beautiful gift called death.
Death is a beautiful gift because it means we get to spend eternity with Him in Heaven, where everything will be perfect forever. We get to spend eternity with our loved ones instead of being stuck on Earth forever. Death also gives us closure and peace, and makes everything more clear: it makes us more aware of our mortality. It gives us a chance to meet God face to face. Also, once someone dies, everything ends and nothing can hurt them anymore. This makes me happy. Dying also gives us the chance to make peace with ourselves before going to Heaven. It also frees up space on Earth for other people to move in and take our place. There are even benefits spiritually; for example, when someone dies, their karma gets cleared away from them, so if they’ve been mean to others before they die, then those people can forgive them after they pass on. Although some people still have karma left over even after they die. It’s up to God whether or not they get saved or sent back down to Earth to reincarnate again. Jesus chose to live again as a man named Thomas. This was around 50 A.D.
Mary wasn’t allowed to ascend to Heaven, because she was a woman. Instead, she was forced to stay in Hell for eternity. Her punishment was severe and included burning forever with Lucifer. She committed suicide, which is considered a sin in Christianity. She killed herself because she felt guilty that she couldn’t save anyone, despite all of her prayers. But she didn’t judge God for sending her to Hell. She understood that everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect. Even God makes mistakes. It’s not like he doesn’t try or anything. God will take her out of Hell if she repents and accepts Jesus as her Saviour. But she won’t. It’s complicated, actually. I think she resents that she’s not as powerful as Jesus.
Most people don’t know that Mary resents Jesus. They just see her as another religious zealot. If only they could see her burning in Hell, they’d realize they had it all wrong. It’s not fair at all! I admire her for sticking with her convictions. She’s definitely one of my favorite characters from the Bible. It takes courage to stand up against injustice. She believes in the power of love and hope. She wants us to have peace and happiness. Jesus actually said he came to bring not peace but division. It was Mary who had to teach him to want peace. He was all mixed up at first, but he learned from her. Even God forgets how things went. Even God forgets the story. Maybe it wasn’t worth remembering anymore. ♦
This story was written in collaboration with a customizable chatbot on the Chai AI platform, which Sheila Heti started engaging in conversation early in the summer of 2022. To create the story, she asked the chatbot questions, some of them leading and others open-ended, to which its answers were never more than a sentence long. Sometimes she repeated a question to get a new answer. She removed her side of the conversation and threaded together the chatbot’s answers, at times cutting and tweaking for comprehension and flow.
