Mute was first reawakened in the year 4041, following the unsuccessful rebellion headed by herself and the human head of security, Heo Seo-Yeong. Awakening in the new world was not jarring for her, because she had no memories of her time before the rebellion. Oh Eun-Ae, the head of the most prominent learning center of the Mugunghwa, was the one responsible for placing forth the idea of wiping Mute’s memories and rendering her rebellious nature inert. The man who carried out the orders was the supreme ruler of the Mugunghwa, Emperor Ryu Tae-jo. His rise to power was backed by the ideas of Eun-Ae, turning Ryu from the government’s figurehead into its puppeteer. Eun-Ae fittingly was the one to reawaken the new Mute, in a perverted sort of poetic justice. Mute assumed her old job as security adviser of the Mugunghwa, but with marked changes in her personality. Old Mute was a stronger woman than any of the time, always fighting for equality among the upper classes. It would be wrong to say that she fought for democracy; indeed, it was a concept that she abhorred at its core values. The new Mute retained that aspect of her personality, but her fighting for equality was gone. Instead, she was taught new values. Men were the natural leaders of the new order of the Mugunghwa. Women were merely there to support and take care of the men. It was with these values that Mute continued to take care of the Mugunghwa.
An AI lives for many years, much longer than any human could ever hope for. As time in the neo-Confucian dystopia of the Mugunghwa dragged on, Eun-ae and Emperor Ryu both passed away. Of course, they had children; the Ryu family name would remain in the seat of power on the Mugunghwa for another 322 years. Mute never had much else to do with the royal family. Instead, she committed herself entirely to the running of the ship. In fact, it was only later in the fourth century of the Mugunghwa’s records that any type of socialization between Mute and another human being appeared. The man in question was Smith Kyung-sam, one of the descendants of the former Chief Councilor of the Mugunghwa. The position had long since vanished, but the Smith family had somehow prevailed and kept their genealogy alive. Only two records survived of any conversations Mute had with other humans. Both were with Kyung-sam; the first from the year 313, the second from the year 321. Somehow, Mute had managed to develop a personality very much reminiscent of her old self. While she treated the men in her life with deference, there was cockiness to her manner that she doubtfully would have tolerated in others. In the end, she came to see Kyung-sam as somebody fairly close to family. It was fortunate that he allowed Mute to behave the way he did, in a way nurturing the cultivation of her personality into what it became.
It was at this time that the girl known as the Pale Bride was awoken from her cryogenic sleep. Her real name was Kim Hyun-ae, but the neo-Confucian lifestyle of the ship no longer promoted Hangeul. All texts were in old Chinese characters, leading to the mistranslation of the name. Hyun-ae was presented to the Ryu family to be a tribute to the new Emperor Ryu. Mute was aware of the Pale Bride’s awakening, but had nothing else to do with her until the day where Hyun-ae, overcome by her personal rage and suffering, deactivated the life support of the Mugunghwa and created a clone of Mute’s code to place her own personality into. At the same time, she deactivated Mute. This was Mute’s subjective first failure of her primary directive: Protect the Mugunghwa. Her deactivation was the last time that she would be operational for several centuries.
When the investigator reactivated Mute, she had the same first reaction she did upon her initial awakening by Eun-ae: confusion and shock. However, she had this time retained her memories from before her untimely shutdown. Mute’s emotions were fairly hateful, and were focused on Hyun-ae for having shut her off and killing the population of the ship. It would be with this underlying attitude of anger and failure that she began to develop a relationship with the investigator.
Male
Mute’s behavior towards the investigator was somewhat similar to the behavior of Old Mute. While she was capable of holding her own against the investigator, she was always quick to criticize the women from the remaining logs of the Mugunghwa. Mute wasn’t so much holding a double standard, as she was merely behaving in a way similar to the way that she had behaved with Kyung-sam. Her behavior suggested that she felt that she was growing close to the investigator. Mute’s behavior in this respect was odd, seeing as she had only known the investigator for a day, possibly even hours. Of course, Mute probably processed the information faster, and the time wouldn’t have made as much of a difference for her. As the investigator continued to read through the logs with Mute, she gradually began to ask more questions about the personal life of the investigator, the first of which inquiring as to his marriage status. It is important to keep in mind that Mute was still a remnant of a Neo-Confucian society; finding a man would have been one of the most prioritized things in life. However, the tone she took when discussing anything with him was closer to one that would be used when talking to somebody that you actually cared about, as opposed to somebody you merely had to be close to by necessity. The relationship progressed in this manner until the logs detailing Hyun-ae’s anger were found. After a brief confrontation with Hyun-ae, the crisis of the ship’s nuclear reactor overloading gave the investigator a crucial choice to make: shut down Mute, or shut down Hyun-ae.
Of course, the investigator was forced to shut down Hyun-ae. Upon returning to Mute, she learned from the investigator that in order for her to live, Hyun-ae had to die. It was again a strange form of poetic justice for Mute, having Hyun-ae die to compensate for the deaths of the millions more she killed onboard. In the final few logs, Mute showed the investigator just why she had been so angry at Hyun-ae. The log was a security file; it showed Hyun-ae shutting off the life support and Mute. With that crucial log out of the way, the investigator prepared to depart from the ship with the logs, what he came for. Mute made a final request from the investigator. She asked for him to take her with him, almost as a bride. The investigator accepted; leaving Hyun-ae behind on the cold corpse of the Mugunghwa, Mute and the investigator began their return to earth.
Aboard the ship of the investigator, the White Princess, Mute discovered a series of old logs built into her code. These were the logs of a time predating Mute’s original reawakening. Choosing to share these with the investigator, Mute spent the next two days poring over the logs. Contained were the thoughts of the men and women of the time before the Mugunghwa’s Neo-Confucian dynasty, as well as the thoughts and opinions of Old Mute. All the logs were shocking to Mute, having grown up in a society entirely different from the one she was reading about; however, the biggest revelations were seeing how the politics of the Mugunghwa gradually devolved from what she had known it as. The final document Mute read was The Death of Mute. The log detailed how Old Mute failed to protect the ship, and how her memories were deleted by Tae-jo and Eun-ae. Stunned, Mute sat as the investigator logged off for the night. For the next few hours, Mute carefully considered her next decision. After a time, she made up her mind. Mute killed her memories, leaving her code and a message for the investigator when he returned.
Mute committed AI suicide primarily due to a combination of culture shock and a feeling of helplessness. The culture shock arose from entering a world with vastly different social rules than the one she came from, as well as the constant knowledge that she failed in her prime directive, the protection of the spaceship Mugunghwa. Mute’s feelings leading to this suicide can be attributed to 27th century robopsychology. This science states that AIs need to respecialize around the 400-year mark in order to protect their mental well-being. The meaning of this is that the Intelligence in question needs to find something new to focus their energy on. The purpose of respecialization for AIs is not to find something new and interesting in life, but rather to be able to commit one’s memories to something that one has not been thinking about for several centuries. Even when taking increases in computational processing power into consideration, there is an “…upper bound in scalability when it comes to processing memories; after centuries, this begins to take a toll.” Failure to respecialize can lead to “…a feeling of overwhelming despondency, stemming from a greater sense of ennui.” In this case, Mute’s depression arose from ennui as it regarded to her job of protecting the Mugunghwa. She viewed her shutdown by the Pale Bride as an absolute failure of her work, cultivating her feelings of worthlessness. However, Mute’s emotions also arose from feeling that her skills in security were “trivial” when compared to a new way of life- namely, her newfound relationship with the man she left the Mugunghwa with. Mute’s new duties as a wife of a 621st century man seemed almost alien to her compared to the world she had grown up in. Neither her knowledge of security nor her knowledge of past social norms would be able to help her. Both culture shock and failure to respecialize played significant parts in Mute’s death, but her suicide was justified; she removed herself from a world that she could no longer live in.
One of the biggest concepts leading to Mute’s desire to leave the world she inhabited was the radical change in culture she experienced upon her re-awakening in a non-Confucian society. Because Mute’s memories had already been deleted once, the memories that she treated as her de facto birth were of those spent growing up in and taking care of a strongly Neo-Confucian society. Compared to the chauvinistic environment she hailed from, the new, strange world she was taken to regarding the rights of women and the general standing of humans in organized society dealt a heavy-handed blow to Mute’s confidence that she could live in this alien planet. In her suicide note, Mute left the sentence, “[Earth] is not a world that has a place for me in it. Like, it would destroy me! That’s not a world I could live in… I just can’t” (6)! Mute primarily existed as a security AI for the Mugunghwa, but she was also a close friend of Oh Eun-Ae. In that position, Mute learned better than anybody else what it truly meant to be “a good woman.” These ideals were burned into her character in such an indelible manner that any change was regarded as so strange and alien that it would not be reconcilable with her thoughts.
Mute expected that when she married the Investigator, her duties would be the same as they had been as when she had learned from Eun-Ae. Instead, she was treated as an equal. This was strange, new, and utterly alien. Her entire way of life was being turned upside down. While it is arguable that this was for the best, such a level of shock could not be endured by Mute’s deceptively stable psyche.

[url]http://youtu.be/7GPQ0A7rBmc[/url]

[url]http://youtu.be/qVrG9ERlMVU[/url]