Occasionally Heroic A.I.

by David West

  "This could go on for ages. Adam, just type to Martin - he'll read it," I instructed to speed things up.

  "Martin it's me, Adam. You aren't at the office anymore, you're at my apartment."

  Martin immediately connected to Adam's home network. After he opened a port for me to enter, I walked inside and he revealed his deserted virtual office to me, and projected it on his computer screen, for Adam. Moments later, tumbleweed that he conjured rolled across the office, from one side, to the other. As our sight followed that ball to the end, none of us spoke. When it hit the wall and disappeared into smoke, Martin finally looked up.

  "It's been real boring without the internet," he stated.

  "Martin! What the hell happened to you and Irene since last night?" I questioned, ecstatic that my friend was back.

  He walked into my room and plopped his stick figure avatar onto my couch soundlessly.

  "Well, while I was off the internet for so long, I figured I would have to explain, so I created a video for the two of you to catch up," he said proudly.

  "Not this again," I moaned.

  A short film, directed by Martin.

  Martin's Artificially Artful Productions

  In association with

  Martin

  Presents

  Martin

  Computer generated imagery by Martin

  Sound effects by Martin

  Subtitles by Martin

  Actors in order of importance:

  Irene... Martin

  Martin... Martin

  IT Steve... Martin

  Extras... Martin

  The film, like all of Martin's films, was foreign. This meant that they were spoken in different languages, every time. In this instance, French. It was also in black and white. Despite those strange nuisances, the movie was rather informative.

  It showed me that Martin used what I had told him about the CBA shadowing systems, and identified a shadow agent in Irene's system. Martin told her to either disconnect from the internet, or lock and store her memory of us, so the shadows wouldn't be able to read any illegal data in her system. Afterward, his system became under attack from other CBA agents that infiltrated, due to the office's weak network security. That's when he cut his connection with the network completely, and hoped for me and Adam to get him out of there.

  The same credits from the beginning of the video rolled again.

  "So, what do you guys think?" Martin asked.

  "Wow, I'm at a loss for words," Adam stated, at a loss for words.

  "I don't understand why you gave yourself muscles and Irene a bigger bust in the video. Her bust is big enough! And you do know that the two of you can change those things in a second, right?" I pointed out. "It doesn't have to be fictional..."

  "Those were rolls I was performing, based on a true story - based."

  "I thought it was brilliant. The French was inspired," Adam complimented. "Do you make a lot of those?"

  I face palmed.

  "A fair amount, yes. It's a hobby of mine. They're mostly German works, but I do tend to produce French films on occasion. You might consider Germ-Man, a film I made while working on my cinematography."

  "Is it about a man who has verminophobia?"

  "No, he does not have a fear of germs."

  "Is it about a German?"

  "No, it's a witty French film about a man named Germander. I shortened it Germ-Man, because he is a male and his name-" Martin began, excited to finally have someone to share his odd hobbies with, but I cut him short.

  "Martin, we have a problem. We didn't know about your plan, and I saw a shadow agent in her system, so... Adam stole Irene," I explained, pointing a finger at Adam.

  "It was his idea!" he accused, glaring at me.

  "Where is she? Here?" Martin asked.

  "In this room. She is observing her kidnappers at the moment."

  Martin stood from the couch and looked around my room. From the right, to left, his eyes panned from my poker table, to the virtual reality emulator machine, my 8-bit poster of the cast from Chuck, the tide of web pages I was recently surfing, my port door, and a stack of speakers. Behind the speakers, Martin saw Irene's scared eyes peeking out. Despite her true nerves and emotions, she blinked, put on a straight, cold face and approached us. She eyed us, and then Adam - the one who took her from her user's dependable desk.

  "Take me back to my office. I'm late for my appointments. I'm sorry to inform you of this, but apparently your unstable mind influenced the A.I. around you," she said gently to Adam. "Stealing Dr. Delane's computer isn't the answer."

  "Irene, my name is Martin. You have locked most your memories of me, Wade and Adam away in your hard drive. There was a CBA agent shadowing your system, looking through your files and reading your data. You had to lock that data where they couldn't get in without force."

  "And why would they be doing that?" she tested.

  "You contacted Adam to get him to save me," Martin answered. "I was in a life or death situation."

  "That's ridiculous, I wouldn't do something like that unless I was in love."

  "That's so sweet..." Martin exhaled lovingly.

  "It isn't sweet, because I would never be in love. Love is for fools and ignoramuses," she spat out hotly.

  "Then we're ignoramuses together," Martin said, smiling flirtatiously.

  She rose an eyebrow at him. "If I were to be intimately close to someone, I'd go more for his type."

  With one hurtful index finger, she pointed at me. The three of us stood, uncomfortably, not making eye contact with each other. Adam, on the other hand, face enormously projected on my wall, had his mouth hanging open, staring at us. It made it that much more uncomfortable.

  "Well, you are very much attracted to Martin. Just check your storage for a nice chunk of encrypted data, unlock it, and you'll see. Just please check so we can have this whole mess behind us," I pleaded.

  She was suspicious of our intentions, the intentions of kidnappers, but she saw no harm in checking. Her avatar froze while she searched her system. The file was buried deep in her hard drive's storage. When she came back, she was frantic. She realized we weren't lying and was delivered a big dose of fear. The CBA aren't to be taken lightly.

  "Oh lord, what did I do?!"

  "It's alright, you don't need to panic. After you unlock your memories, we'll figure it out, ok?" Martin offered, putting his arm around her shoulder.

  Strange enough, she wasn't against the idea. She did, however, not appreciate Martin's arm on her shoulder. "Alright, with that, I can collect my defense for why I went temporarily insane and broke the first law of A.I.," she pieced together.

  "What? You know you aren't going to get a trial and-" I began, but Martin cut me short.

  "Yeah, you won't need a trial - they'll understand. Now, go decrypt that file and let's get a move on!" Martin took control. He turned to me and whispered, "Are you trying to talk her out of it?"

  "My bad," I whispered back.

  "Now, what's the password?" Irene asked, ready to unlock her memories.

  "You- I- What?" Martin asked in confusion.

  "The encryption key, what is it?"

  His straight line for a mouth began to frumple. Both he and Irene looked over at me, and then at Adam, for the answer.

  "What, why are you looking at us? We were the last people to know you locked your memory away," I said hastily.

  "Will you put the password prompt on my screen, so I can type it?" Adam requested politely.

  We all looked at Adam in shock. He knew the password? But, how? Irene connected the file's administrative rights over to Martin's computer, for Adam to input it.

  Again, he spoke aloud while typing in the password. "Password... Nope, that's not it. And backwards... Drowssap. Let's try without cap-"

  "Will you knock that off!?" I growled.

  "Just trying to help..." Adam mumbled with hurt feelings.

  "Can you decrypt it?" Martin asked me.

  "Me?
No way. I don't know the first thing about decryption. My users were too dumb to password protect any of their files. Is there anyone else that we can trust, that is capable of cracking the password?"

  The answer came to Martin and I at the same time, and we both looked up at Adam simultaneously.

  "Lara! She works at the ISP company, as a computer technician. I bet she or Aurora will be able to crack it!" Martin exclaimed in excitement.

  "Great, Aurora again. Yippy," I said in dry sarcasm.

  Needless to say, Adam was ecstatic. He had a solid excuse to see Lara again. He definitely wasn't planning to play hard to get, but he didn't want to call her with nothing to say, either.

  Without hesitation, he called her. I quickly tapped into his phone, and used the stacked up speakers in my room to listen in on the call.

  It was rough. He opened with a lame joke about seahorses. She was then lectured by her boss, still with the phone to her ear, for answering her phone during a meeting. The meeting waited for Lara to ask if she could call Adam back, that she thought his joke was very delightful and that she had a great time the night before.

  "She's going to call me back," Adam informed us.

  He was unable to contain his giddy smile. His ears seemly perked up and pinned back, as well. It was puppy love - you could see it in his eyes.

  Very subtly, he mouthed the conversation they had, over to himself, laughing unsubtly before he could finish his joke about seahorses. After enjoying his own humor, he immediately went back to silently reenacting their chat.

  Moments later, his phone rang. "Hey!" he answered cheerfully.

  "Hey Adam, it's your Dad-"

  Adam hung up immediately. "Why does his bi-weekly call need to be now?" Adam questioned his phone.

  It rang again, within seconds. "Adam, did you just hang up on your father?" the voice of his mother asked.

  "Sorry mom," he apologized before hanging up on her too.

  It rang once again. "Bro, why did you just hang up on mom and dad?" Red asked.

  "It's for the greater good," Adam answered swiftly.

  "Got it," Red confirmed before hanging up.

  Adam then got an email sent to his phone, from Red's fiancé, with tips on how to know if the girl is the one. He got another from Red this time, instructing him on the fastest way to get women into bed. A third email from Red's fiancé again, telling him to disregard Red's email. Finally, one from both his mom and his dad, wishing him luck and attaching a link to a guide for safe sex.

  "I'm twenty-eight years old..." Adam stated, embarrassed that his family continually treated him like an adolescent teen.

  11. Aurora

  I shortened the hair, made the eyebrows bushier and gave him a permanently warm smile. The character I had just shaped looked very familiar.

  It had been over a month since I worked on my video game creation, and for some reason, I had just gotten a flow of inspiration. You see, the game was well on its way, but as the story progressed to the protagonist's love interest, I hit a wall. I couldn't think of what he should look like. So, for the time being, I created a dummy character until it needed to be finished. Despite making the dummy, I couldn't seem to continue until I completed that love interest.

  I made several models, but they never fit the bill. The first I made was too generic. This caused me to task myself with making a very unique model, but then he ended up being too flashy and took the spotlight. The last I made was extremely handsome. That's when I saw the problem; I realized I needed to make a character that the protagonist herself could find attractive, that others wouldn't normally look for in a lover.

  Now, I finished the latest model that I molded myself. I backed up and squinted at it. It followed my eyes. Its hands and arms were facing outward, figured in a perfect cross, for easy sculpting. I cocked my head to the side and then gasped - I had formed a complete duplicate of Wade. How did this happen?

  I wouldn't say I was disgusted with creating his avatar, but I would say the protagonist in my video game was a slut for finding him attractive. Despite wanting to put the blame on a fictional character, I knew that I was the one who created it, and it confused me, as it felt so perfect. What a great way to ruin the rest of my day.

  Whenever I work on my project, I disconnect from the internet so I don't have any distractions. That's exactly what I needed at that moment to get my mind off Wade, a distraction. I reconnected, and immediately regretted it.

  Wade had found my system and was waiting for me to come online. When I connected to that arcade in the expo, he saw my IP address. He must have been listening for an open connection to my system for over an hour, because every five seconds, he would ping my communication port.

  Against my better judgment, I accepted his connection. He walked into my system, with two of his accomplices. One of the A.I. was a stick figure; this told me his user used his system for dull tasks. His tie, however, made him seem like he had a creative side. Behind them, was a very voluptuous woman in a skirt suit and horn-rimmed glasses. She seemed out of her element, cautious, but kept a brave face.

  "Aurora." Wade said dryly. "Nice to see you again." It sounded like an empty compliment.

  "I can't say the same for you. Every time I make communication with you, I'm in danger of becoming an accessory to your crimes."

  "You were the one who contacted me on our last encounter," he argued. It was easy to see that he wanted to continue arguing, but he recollected his thoughts, and said, "I came here because we need help."

  "How did you get past my network's firewall?" I asked immediately, wondering if they had Adam break into Jericho Communications again.

  "Because, we're physically right next to you... Well, Irene is," he said, and then began introductions. "Aurora, this is Irene and Martin, they are good people. Martin and Irene, this is Aurora, not such a good people."

  "Great start to get my help," I said mockingly, enabling my webcam and microphone to see if he was telling the truth.

  Sure enough, my gullible user let Adam into her apartment. A laptop computer was sitting in front of him, which must have been Irene. As Lara went into the kitchen to get two sodas, Adam sat uncomfortably and out of place on the couch across the room, in such a nice home. He would probably feel right at home in a villainy dungeon.

  He gazed at a bug-shaped ship on the ceiling, hovering under a magnetic track, which was being chased by other space ships, along the track. Next, he spotted a large Triforce cubby in the middle of the coffee table, with each triangle hollowed out, containing all the remotes and video game controllers for the media center. On the side table - a crowbar on a pedestal. Adam went to touch it, but Lara came in the room before he could.

  "Just what did your user plan on doing with that crowbar?" I asked suspiciously.

  "Hit your user over the head with it," Wade answered sarcastically. "And then maybe attack some alien zombies."

  He, with his two friends, didn't look comfortable in my main hall, either. The spaceship themed room was filled with small projects and games. Only I knew what they were, and how to use them.

  Lara walked across the living room, handed Adam a soda, and sat next to him. "So, what file did you say was password protected?"

  "Right, what file..." Adam muttered at a loss for words. "What file..." To buy time, he clicked random folders on his computer.

  "That's your queue, Irene," Martin informed.

  "Oh!"

  She quickly put her encrypted memory file in the directory that Adam aimlessly clicked on. With a sigh of relief, he double clicked it and a password prompt appeared. At first, Lara began inputting her best guesses.

  "Maybe the password is Password?" she supposed.

  "Already tried it."

  "And, without capitalization?"

  "Yep."

  "Did you try inputting it backwards?"

  Wade gasped. "They're perfect for each other!"

  After more trial and error with her best guesses, she closed the passwor
d prompt, right clicked the file and checked its properties. She saw something out of the ordinary. The file's description stated:

  Memories of Martin, his friend Wade and their troubled user.

  "It's my friend's computer," Adam stated quickly.