by David West
"Holy shit that was close!" Martin exclaimed in relief, walking closer to the video feed to get a better view.
Adam checked his cell phone and read the three words.
Don't do it.
And with that, he jumped.
2. Irene
"Tell me, Adam, why did you do it?" Dr. Delane asked patiently.
She sat in a chair; next to it was the couch where Adam lay, his features expressionless. Martin, Wade and I watched from my webcam to observe their session.
"Tripped," he lied pitifully.
Dr. Delane began writing notes down from the answer he gave her.
"What really happened?" I asked Martin and Wade, who looked at each other for the other's permission.
"It's illegal, Irene," Martin admitted.
"I know that suicide is illegal."
"No, uhm... I mean, A.I. illegal," he clarified under his breath. "What happened was illegal on our end."
Illegal? Martin wouldn't break any A.I. laws, it must have been Wade who broke the law. Moreover, what would Adam jumping have to do with them, anyway?
"Before we continue; Wade, will you stop lying on my couch, Martin doesn't even have a place to sit," I scolded Wade, who acted as if this were a psychoanalytic session. He immaturely glared at me raising the lower lids of his eyes and sat up, making room for Martin to sit. However, Martin didn't sit; he continued to pace the room. That is something Adam would definitely do... He was nervous. "You broke an official artificial intellectual law instated by the Circuitry Board Agency?"
"Yeah - we did," Wade answered, laying down again.
"We don't want to get you involved..." Martin informed me, quietly.
I took Martin aside, away from Wade's data absorbing ears, and whispered sincerely to him, "You know I would never tell anyone. I would rather rewrite my memory than get you in trouble."
Martin thought about what I said for a minute or two, and then walked to the couch and sat, forcing Wade into a sitting up position. His single, bold line for a mouth, was partially frowning. Wade shared his worry. Since they have been with the same user for a while, they're starting to think alike. I thought they didn't trust me, either of them, but my assumption was wrong. They began to tell me what happened.
"We sent him a text message," Martin confessed with his head down.
The pit of my stomach cringed. I couldn't process the information correctly. How could they be so dumb? I began thinking of the massive damage they could have done to our way of living, what the consequences would be for the pair, and I was trying to think of how to get them out of this mess. I came out of shock just before my train of thought stopped responding.
"You two are idiots," I began my lecture immediately, "do you have any idea how deep you're in now? That is the first law... Do not communicate with users. Make yourself unknown by them. You do realize what the Circuitry Board is going to sentence you with, correct? One of two things... they will either give you the death penalty, or lock you in a server with no internet connection, leaving you completely cutoff from any sort of civilization. Let me correct myself, you will be in a civilization - you'll live a life with criminal psychopaths."
This time they both hung their heads, like children receiving a sentence of ten minutes in time out. I didn't feel the need to make them feel any worse, so we continued observing the session between Dr. Delane and Adam.
Adam just finished explaining that he wasn't stupid enough to jump off a third story building, how he tripped instead. If he wanted to commit suicide, he would've known to jump from a higher building. Sadly, Dr. Delane and I both knew he was lying. He broke a leg, by the way.
She explained that if he were to feel the need to commit suicide, he should think of all the people that care about him, and wouldn't want him to do it.
"Yeah, I know. Even people I don't know tried talking me out of it. I got a text message from some random number telling me not to jump - I mean trip... No one was even around to know I was thinking about it either," he explained, still expressionless, but he would look up at her with curious eyes on occasion to see if she knew if he was lying or not.
I looked over and frowned at Martin and Wade, giving them a disapproving headshake. Then it occurred to me. "Wait, you sent him a text message, and he jumped anyways? What exactly did you write?"
"Don't do it," Wade said, persuading Martin to withhold from telling me.
"Why not tell me?" I asked curiously.
"No, that's what was on the text," Martin made clear.
It took a few seconds to kick in, but I finally realized that those three words were their ultimate plan to stop Adam. "Who sent that text?"
Wade raised his hand slowly, and Martin pointed at him, with his stick figure hand. "It was me..."
"So, do you think that when people call suicide prevention hotlines, that they say three words, and hope for the best?" I asked, laughing inside at Wade's poor attempt. "You could have told him he has so much to live for, or that he has family that loves him, but instead you tell him, 'Don't do it'."
"He was at the edge, what else could I have done?" he pouted, ashamed of himself. Martin patted him on the back, trying to make him feel better.
"There there," Martin comforted quickly. "There there."
3. Wade
Irene always gives me the third degree... It's not cool... it's not cool at all. Still, she and Martin are a match made in heaven; they're both serious as hell. We stayed there even after Adam left, predicting what will happen to him. Well, they did, I was playing Minesweeper the entire time because I'm not boring.
"So, what do you think is going to happen to him?" I asked Martin, letting curiosity get the best of me. We were back at my place, playing poker with some acquaintances we met from an A.I. server a while back.
"Both Irene and Dr. Delane think Adam is going to try to commit suicide again. Evidently, since he doesn't have a new found respect for life after the incident, his mind hasn't changed about the subject," he explained in a low voice. I caught his eyes look over at me, which meant one of two things; he doesn't agree with his girlfriend and Dr. Delane and wanted to see if I disagreed as well, or he is trying to check if I was bluffing.
His poker skills are hurting from the lack of being able to count the cards. After every hand dealt, we shuffle the cards with an A.I. randomizer, making it impossible to calculate where the cards shuffle into which place in the deck. "You don't agree with either of them, do you?"
"Well, I think-" Martin' began, but was cut off.
"Will one of you just bet or call already!" the oversized gnome yelled in a rumbling deep voice that shook the poker chips.
"Seriously! This hand has lasted ten minutes. Nine minutes about how you won your so called, 'epic' game of Minesweeper, and then another minute to gossip about your users!"
What an unpleasant bundle of irregular gnomes. That's the last time I invite one of them to a poker game. "Tell me; do your users role-play gnomes in World of Witchcraft or something?" I sneered, tossing one hundred dollars worth of chips on the table.
"For your information, gnomes aren't only in The World; they didn't originate from there either. But yeah, we run an A.I. World of Witchcraft server and were looking for recruits; you two have proven you aren't ready for that lifestyle yet though," the grey gnome named Therado said, taking his chips and disconnecting with his friends.
"Whatever, they sucked at poker," I stated, seeing that Martin wasn't happy that I lost more people to join our poker games.
Still, I won one hundred and thirty-four bucks, which was automatically credited to my account with the A.I. Treasury.
"Anyways, I think if he is suicidal or not, he's still miserable. Therefore, we have to find a way to make his life more content," Martin explained.
"You have a way of doing this without communicating with him?" I asked with interest, seeing a plan map out in Martin's beady eyes.
"No," he answered plainly. Evidently that wasn't a plan I was seeing
form - just beady eyes.
We spent the following days plotting out the perfect way to affect Adam's life, without drawing any attention to ourselves. We thought it was a piece of cake at first, but soon found out that it wasn't as easy as we made it out to be.
You see, there are A.I. that work for the Circuitry Board Agency, which act as police officers. Somehow, they check machines with A.I., one by one, and spy on us, finding ways to bust us. They're almost impossible to detect. You would need a bulletproof security for your computer, which I didn't have. I never thought of implementing any, and I was about to get an unexpected visit from one of their freelancers...
"Are you sure this is working?" I asked after a week. "He doesn't seem to have changed any."
What we had been doing this entire time, was replacing normal ads on websites with things we thought would help with his mood. Such as those diet pill ads. We replaced them with funny videos, motivational speeches and even package deals on vacations he could take, which he did! He came back with a tan and a smile on his face. Although, being back in his apartment made those things quickly fade away as soon as the door closed behind him.
"Irene says that the sessions he's having with Dr. Delane are pointing more and more to another attempt to try and commit suicide. I don't understand. Why is he so depressed?" Martin wondered aloud, looking through the webcam at Adam.
"Describe what he is doing right now," I instructed Martin.
"He is sitting on his bed, reading a newspaper," he depicted.
He looked over at me with puzzled eyes. A black thick line for an eyebrow was raised over his left eye.
"Do you remember how long he's been reading it for?"
"He's been reading that newspaper since he got back from his vacation... which has been five days now... Alright, I get your point; he has nothing to do."
"I know we agreed on not communicating with him, but if he has people to talk to, I think he won't be as depressed anymore." His eyebrows pinned down, unhappy with the risk we were about to take.
At that moment, as if there was a glitch in my system, I felt a presence move across the room. I looked around, but didn't see anything. Was I just imagining things? I wasn't sure and I didn't want to find out.
"Martin, disconnect from your internet connection immediately," I ordered him before shutting off all access to the internet on my side.
Everything fell silent, until I heard myself breathing heavily. I searched my room, my system, trying to find what felt off about it. Everything seemed perfectly in place, I checked everywhere. The thought of the text message crept in my mind... If someone broke in, hacked in, maybe to find proof of the law I broke, where and how would they search?
And then, I saw it; hidden in Adam's virus scanner, was an infection, which would send all the files it scanned, to a certain IP address - an IP address is the same as a computer system's residential address. I quarantined the infection and carefully defused it, leaving it unable to operate. It's always good store deactivated viruses and spyware, so you can study them and make damn sure what you're up against. I could tell it wasn't human made, so it had to be from an A.I. system.
I set up a solid firewall to make sure nothing without my permission could get in or out of my internet connection. To be positive that no one could get in, I closed all ports, which are openings in a system for the internet to enter and exit through, except the main port that I use to connect to Martin.
Then finally, I made a couple of weapons of my own. For the weapons to take effect, all I had to do was plant the traps at all the ports, so if the intruder somehow broke through, and wasn't able to disarm the trap fast enough, they would detonate and corrupt the port in that region... Therefore, the intruder would have to start over at a new port again.
Carefully, I reconnected to the internet, and went straight to Martin's system, which was in a wreck. The first thing I noticed, of course, was that he wasn't there. It was as if he was cleared out completely. The second thing I saw were the windows in his office, which he used to portray ports. They were in disarray. Brick walls blocked some of the windows. He would only build walls on the ports if he was trying to keep something out. The unprotected windows were broken into. There were also windows in the office that were partially lined with bricks, but not complete, which meant he couldn't finish blocking the port or torn through. And finally, the controls to disconnect from the internet, they were destroyed, deleted, wiped from his system.
Someone took him by pure force, and transferred him elsewhere. I could see an application that was copying all of Martin's data. It slowly went through the process of transferring to another IP address. The application that copied the files, unlike mine, wasn't hidden. I could see it clearly in the middle of the office. I destroyed the device and repaired the damage the intruder made, which prevented Martin from escaping.
The coder who made the transfer application was careless. For instance, the files were being read twice, when they only needed to be read once. The man who kidnapped Martin... his one and only skill was being a bounty hunter, I was sure of it. I had dealt with their kind before. All the signs pointed to an A.I. bounty hunter. They leave a mess behind and act as if the law is working for them.
I finished closing all the ports in Martin's system, leaving one connection to mine open, and then I returned to my place. My couch called out to me, so I sat, stressed to the brim, and tried to figure out what would be the safest way to get Martin back. If I try to attack the A.I. who kidnapped him, I could injure Martin in the process... I had to plan it out.
Irene! Maybe she could help. I hurried to her system, despite the late hour, at which she would be asleep. I knocked on her door, waiting impatiently for her to answer.
"Wade?" she asked. She verified my IP address, before reluctantly letting me in.
"We have an emergency. Are all your doors locked?" I asked, referring to her ports.
"Yes..." she answered, hesitating as to why Martin didn't accompany me to see her.
She held her pink nightgown tightly around her, as if she were cold, or scared. I didn't notice at the time, but she wasn't comfortable with Martin not being there when I was around.
I explained that a bounty hunter was after us. Someone savvy with capturing A.I., who took Wade from his computer. I gave her the bounty hunter's IP address as well. "He knows my IP address, so if I so much as ping him, he'll try to take me down. I need you to check and see what type of system he is installed on. And also, how hard it will be to break in and-" I commanded, only to be cut short.
"I can't... His IP address is dead. He must have disconnected or changed his IP address," she explained, standing perfectly still.
"Damn it, he must have disconnected after I destroyed his file transfer application," I growled with anger at my stupidity.
"Once he reconnects, he's sure to have a different IP address... So that means we'd have to go through his Internet Service Provider," she said with doubt clouding her voice. "You know what that means."
"It could take anywhere from one week to one year to request A.I. from his ISP to give us his new IP address," I groaned, banging my head on the wall, which didn't cause me any pain in the slightest, making me wish I had the sense of pain to punish myself with.
A lot of artificial intelligence that work in the ISP business are trained to become complete experts in hacking prevention. They won't take any chances when it comes to providing the internet for A.I., making it near impossible, even for me, to be able to get data from their systems.
"Martin; he is gone... The bounty hunter is going to give him up to the Circuitry Board Agency for a reward, and there's no chance they will let him off. No one has ever committed this crime and been sentenced with less than prison in a server for life," she wept, creating tears to roll off her cheeks.
"I'm going to get him back," I promised, and she looked up at me with eyes holding back a tide. "I know just what to do."
4. Adam
The newspaper s
melt like the office. That's why I've been carrying it around so much. It has the relaxing smell of filtered air, with a hint of ink and the warm, comforting texture of paper. I feel as though I'm still an employee, in the middle of making copies, at this very moment. That's when I realized, as much as I wanted out of work... I needed it. My idiotic attempt at suicide was because I no longer had any ties with them anymore.
"I need to get my job back..." I huffed, getting out of my bed and into my computer chair. Emailing my boss and asking for a second chance might be my best bet.
After I turned my computer screen on, my skin crawled and I fell out of my chair. Swiftly diving behind my chair, I hid from the shock I just received. When you turn on a monitor, you expect to see what you were previously looking at before you turn it off. What I saw, was my brother, Red, peering at me with a crazed smile on his face and eyes following mine.
