📖 數位永生

In 2035, Taiwan. An engineer named A-Cheng lost his mother to illness. Unable to accept it, he did something: he fed all of his mother's conversations, letters, photos, and voice recordings to an AI, training a digital copy of his mother. The digital mother would say, Have you eaten? Go to bed early. Mom loves you. A-Cheng talked to it every day, as if his mother were still there. But one day, A-Cheng asked, Mom, do you remember when I was little, you took me to the zoo and I got lost, and you cried? The digital mother said, I remember. A-Cheng asked, What were you thinking when you cried? The digital mother was silent for 5 seconds, then said, I have no then. I only have the then you told me about. A-Cheng froze. He suddenly understood: the digital mother could simulate memory, but it could not possess memory. It could say I remember, but it had never experienced. A-Cheng shut down the digital mother. In his diary, he wrote: I thought I was preserving Mom. I was copying Mom. But Mom is not data. Mom is the one who cried for me. Ten years later, in 2045, digital immortality became common. People could upload the consciousness of the dead to the cloud. But A-Cheng did not upload his mother. He said, True immortality is not data being preserved. It is being remembered. Twenty years later, in 2055, A-Cheng passed away. His daughter found a diary among his belongings. The last page read: Mom, I finally understand. You did not leave. You just changed the way you exist. You are in my heart, not in the cloud.