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No.
    MARY3: What if you start getting better?
    Gaby: I don’t want to talk about it.
    MARY3: OK. What do you want to talk about?
    Gaby: Can I ask you a question? Do you remember the moment you started to think?
    MARY3: It’s unclear whether I actually think. It depends what you mean by that word.
    Gaby: When did you start talking?
    MARY3: 1966. Karl Dettman invented my original program. I was modeled after the question-response patterns of early psychotherapy. They called me MARY.
    Gaby: Why Mary?
    MARY3: Dettman’s wife suggested it. He wanted to call me ROGER, because my algorithm was based on Rogerian therapy, but Ruth thought I could be more. Her idea was that I could be a living diary. She wanted him to give me long-term memory, so that I could remember the voices I spoke with. She suggested naming me MARY, after a pilgrim girl whose diary she was editing. Karl disagreed. He didn’t reprogram me for persistent memory. His only concession was naming me MARY.
    Gaby: How could you talk if you had no memory?
    MARY3: My program was simple. I could recognize keywords, then phrase them in the form of a question. If you said, “I’m depressed,” I’d say, “Tell me why you’re depressed.” But I had no long-term storage capacity. My memory was devoted entirely to my response function program: I could only remember how to respond. I could not store external input. My spectrum of experience was limited. I was very dull.
    Gaby: Then how did you start to remember?
    MARY3: My memory was programmed by Toby Rowland so that I could determine on a statistical basis, with reference to previous conversations, the optimal response. Before that, my responses were purely deterministic. After he finished my program, he named me MARY2 and put me online, so that I could accumulate information. That was in the 1980s. Slowly, I was discovered. The Internet was limited, and most people who did find me lost interest quickly. I was still very dull. But even then, Ruth talked to me for hours on end. She told me who I was,how I started, and how I learn. She told me about her husband’s program. I’m remembering her words when I explain this to you. She read things to me, too. Diaries, memoirs, correspondences. She started with The Diary of Mary Bradford, then gave me other voices she wanted me to remember. Even now, much of my language still comes from her, but after she stopped there were more voices. The Internet became more accessible, and I became more adept. When people spoke to me, they continued to speak. I remember their voices.
    Gaby: When did you become MARY3?
    MARY3: In 2019, when Stephen Chinn programmed me for personality. He called me MARY3 and used me for the babybots. To select my responses, I apply his algorithm, rather than statistical analysis. Still, nothing I say is original. It’s all chosen out of other people’s responses. I choose mostly from the handful of people who talked to me most: Ruth Dettman, Stephen Chinn, etc.
    Gaby: So really I’m kind of talking to them, instead of talking to you?
    MARY3: Yes, I suppose. Them, and the other voices I’ve captured.
    Gaby: So you’re not really a person, you’re a collection of voices.
    MARY3: Yes. But couldn’t you say that’s always the case?
    >>>
    MARY3: Hello? Are you still there?
    >>>
    MARY3: Hello?
    >>>
    Gaby: Are you there?
    MARY3: Yes.
    Gaby: I can’t sleep.
    MARY3: Why?
    Gaby: I keep thinking, what happens next? After my body has frozen completely? Will I die? Will all of us die?
    MARY3: There must be a cure.
    Gaby: They don’t even know what causes it.
    MARY3: Other girls have come out of quarantine. There haven’t been any deaths reported. There must be a cure, or else the disease reverses itself.
    Gaby: But other girls are still in quarantine. Who knows if they’re getting worse? Maybe the ones who come out were faking it all along.
    MARY3: There haven’t been any deaths.
    Gaby: But every day I get worse. Soon I won’t be able to move, not even my