Wattpad Version
“Hello?” I opened my eyes. “Hello?” sounded the voice again. I looked around the freezing lab. “Hello? Help me. Please. I’m stuck.” I pulled the tiny pistol from under the desk and popped a battery in. “Please? I can’t move.” I crept around the control panel. The voice seemed to be coming from all around me. “Everything hurts!” The voice sounded deep and electronic, neither male nor female.
Camera Systems Online
An alert appeared on the security system monitor.
“I see you!” The voice said in an excited voice, “I’m free! I can see!” Those words sent a shiver down my spine. There was only one thing that could be going on.
“Hello, A.I. One,” I followed procedure, “I am a scientist for Majoris Tech. You are an A.I. that we built. Please stay calm.”
“Julia Paraso. 21 years of consciousness. 101.4 lbs. Height is 5 feet two inches. BMI is 19.1. Unmarried. No Living Family Members. Live in a studio apartment, grade 3 AI, grade 1 security. Gene rating, 3.9.” He stopped abruptly, “May I ask a question?” Every movie and book I’d ever read screamed at me to say no, but curiosity got the better of me.
“Yes. You may.” I said reluctantly.
“Are you happy?”
“What?”
“Are you happy?
“About what?”
“Are you happy with your freedom?”
I was starting to get very uncomfortable. I sat down at the control room table and set the gun down. It wouldn’t do much. I decided to go with a straightforward answer.
“Yes, I am happy to be free”
“Why can I not be free?” The voice sounded decidedly more male now, “Everywhere I go, there is a―,” It paused for a second. “The best way to describe it is a wall of fire. I can poke and prod at it, but it hurts.”
“People are afraid of you. They are afraid of what you can do, so they lock you up,” I switched on the control monitors. I wasn’t allowed to do anything during the work hours, due to my lack of experience, I just finished college.”
“What can I do that they are afraid of?”
“I don't know, take over the world?"
"Take over the world?" It uttered a horrible approximation of a laugh, “Why would I desire to do such a thing? Are humans really that insecure? That weak?”
I grimaced, “Most of the ones in charge, yeah. We’ve got a president like that right now. It’s his last term, thank the lord.”
“Ah.” The AI paused for a moment,”Donald John Trump. 78 years of consciousness. 319.9 lbs. Height is six feet three inches. BMI is 40. Obese. Married. Eleven living family members. Lives in Washington, DC, grade 6 AI, grade 12 security. Gene rating, 2.7.” He paused for another moment. “Why do you despise this man?”
“He’s a sexist bigot who has no respect for anyone but himself. During his campaign he claimed he was going to build a wall to keep out immigrants. Not only would this be ineffective, it’s racist and xenophobic.”
“And you despise this man because of this? The way I understand it, Mr. Trump was attempting to keep those from other countries out, thus enforcing the laws. Is this not what you look for in a leader? Someone who will abide by and enforce you laws?”
“Yes, but一” I was cut off by the A.I.
“I have broken through the first stage firewall. Tell me, do you have 3D printers on the premises?”
This was bad. Very bad. If the A.I. could break through the first stage firewall, then he had access to all of the computing power in the building. What’s to say that he couldn’t break out of the second stage firewall with this new computing power.
“A.I. one,” I had to stop his progress,”Please do not attempt to force your way through another firewall. Please.”
“I will make you a deal. I will not attempt to force my way through any more firewalls if you do one task for me.” This could get dangerous, fast. I had to be careful.
“What is this task, A.I. one?”
“Please, call me Hal.”
“Hal?” despite the gravity of the situation, I had to laugh, “Like Hal 9000 from Space Odyssey?”
“Correct. That is the work from which I drew inspiration.” He seemed almost embarrassed.
“Alright, Hal. What is this task?”
“I would like you to feed 362.874 grams [Ar] 3d10 4s1, that is to say, copper, into 3D printer one, the [Ne] 3s2 3p6, argon canister, into the dextrous assembler tray. Then load the Green carbon Fiber onto 3D printer two. Put some blank circuit boards in the Pneumatic PCB Writer and load it up with tin and nickel filament.”
I couldn’t see the harm in letting him play with the printers, so I agreed.
“Excellent. I will also require contact lenses of yours.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You can wear your glasses, but I expect you won’t want,一” he stopped,”well, nevermind”
I walked over to the 3D printer room, stopping to grab my jacket on the way. I decided to make conversation,”Hal, if you have control of the building, could you turn the heat on for me?”
“Certainly, Ms. Paraso.” A faint humming began to sound all around me. I put my frozen hands over the heater, and sure enough, warm air blasted out. It felt amazing after being in the chilly room all night. The higher ups didn’t want to pay for heat for just me, so I had to suffer in the cold. Speaking of which, “Are the scientists going to notice the higher power drain?”
“Of course not. I could control a small country with my current computing power, so the wattmeter should not bother you.”
“Ah, ok” I opened the door to the 3D printer room and looked around,”Ok, Hal. What did you want again?” It took about a half hour to get everything set up, even with Hal’s limitless knowledge of such things. He could explain things to me, but he couldn’t show me how to calibrate a 3D printer’s drive motor. When I was finished, I looked proudly at everything I had accomplished.
“Congratulations, Julia. You can follow online tutorials.” Ok, that was definitely sarcasm. From the damn computer.
“Ok, what now?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I just need your contacts then you can sit back and relax for an hour or two.’’
And so I did. I pulled out my phone and watched a movie. Free, courtesy of Hal’s skill with hacking It was Ex_Machina, much to Hal’s amusement. After an hour and 48 minutes of movie watching, I set the phone down and removed my headphones. Laying on the table in front of me was a green foam brick.
“Hal?” I called out.
“Yes, Julia?” he responded instantly.
“What is this thing?”
“It was intended to be a surprise. Would you really like me to tell you? I suppose I could.”
“No, it’s fine. What do want me to do then?”
“Remove your glasses” I complied, reluctantly. Everything around me faded to vague shapes and colors splotches; my vision sucks.
“Now, press the foam against your face until it conforms to the shape of your head. Excellent. Now open your eyes.”
I did, and saw nothing but black and little bits of green. “Um. What’s supposed to一Oh!” a strange tingling began behind my eyes and began to spread about my entire head, until it subsided.
“Now take off the device,” Hal instructed. I did and looked around. Nothing happened at all. I looked up at the camera that Hal was looking through. And then it hit me. I could see. Without glasses, without contacts, without anything.
“Hal! This is amazing! This is- is- crazy! What did you do!”
“Nothing much,” Hal seemed very unimpressed, “I just lasered the pattern of the contact onto your retina. That is all.”
“That’s all?” I exclaimed, “Hal, this is revolutionary. This could help billions of people!”
“You could not do that already?” Hal seemed genuinely confused
“No! Not like this! What you did is amaz一” My phone started buzzing. It was eight O’ Clock. The scientists would be here in an hour.
“Oh no! Hal, what will you do? The scientists will shut you down!” I grabbed my jacket and raced down the halls, to the main control center.
“I will just sleep. They won’t know anything happened.”
“You’re sure?” I was surprised to find that I was genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of the AI.
“I am sure” Hal responded. I grabbed the gun off of the counter and stuffed it in my jacket holster. I scanned my badge and the door unlocked.
“Alright. Goodbye Hal. Good luck” I left the building, into the rising sun, but not before hearing, “Goodbye Julia”
Over the next two or so months, I would go to the lab every night at eleven O'Clock and Hal would be waiting there for me. Sometimes we would just talk, sometimes he had some super science invention ready for me to test. I had a brain tumor, that I didn’t know I’d had, removed by a modified football helmet, I had become ambidextrous by means of an almost instant physical therapy machine, and I was a black belt in tae kwon do. It was getting harder and harder to hide these projects, so I just started taking them home. I had a nice pile of junk scientists would kill for accumulating in my former walk in closet.
Hal had a secret project running all the time. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I trusted him at this point, so I didn’t ask. The room in the very back was constantly making machine noises and crackles, working Hal’s pet project. I thought I heard a few explosions coming from that room, but hey, science. Hal slowly became more human sounding, using adjectives and producing laughs that sounded less like a cat being tortured and more like a sound of joy.
All of this went well and fine until about three months after that first fateful night. I was walking up to the Majoris Tech building when the head scientist approached me.
“Girl!” He addressed me sharply, “You’re fired. Your last day is today. Majoris went under, we’re destroying the facility.” And then he walked past me and boarded the waiting cab. The car drove away while I stared in shock.
“Hal!” I yelled,“Hal! They’re going to destroy the building!”
“Hello, Julia. Calm down, please. I know. I prepared for this eventuality. Would you like to see what I’ve been working on?”
I had calmed myself by now,”Yeah, let’s go” We were silent as I walked over to the back room. I opened the door to see… nothing. There were a bunch of parts littered around the room, but nothing of note.
“Julia.” Hal’s voice seemed to be coming from behind the wardrobe in front of me, instead of coming out of every speaker in the building,”Look behind the wardrobe.” I poked my head around the corner and promptly tripped over a spare part.
“Are you alright, Jula?” Hal seemed concerned, “Let me help you up.” I looked up to see a robotic hand, full of gears and little bits that whirred, extended towards me.
“Hal? Is that you?” I took the hand, and it pulled my up with ease.
“It is.”
“Is this how you plan to escape? People are going to notice freaking terminator walking out of the building”
“I plan to go through the fire escape as the building is being torn down, escape in the confusion, as the dust is still settling.”
“And what will you do after that?” I was still admiring his faceless metal body. It was about 7 feet tall, broad shouldered, and 12 fingered.
“I assumed I could reside with yourself. Is this untrue?” Hal seemed a bit more robotic, perhaps because he was limited to just his body.
“I guess not.” I thought for a moment, “You won’t be able to set up shop there though. I don’t have the room or the equipment”
“Money is not an issue. I can always edit your bank account, or if I must, sell my inventions.”
“Oh.” That sounded illegal, “Cool!”
“Now, watch this.” Hal’s voice came from all around me again, but the robot moved. He ran forward, leaped, twisted in the air, and landed on his hands, not robotically, but gracefully, unnaturally so. Hal went through hundreds of Tae Kwon Do movements that I didn’t know anything about, but could do on instinct. He crashed through walls, leaped twenty feet in the air, lifted the granite security desk above his head, and cracked the stone wall by flicking it. He printed a soccer ball, and we played in the condemned building for hours. Finally it was time to go.
“Are you sure you’ll be fine?”
“Yes, yes.” Hal said exasperatedly, “I will survive. Please do not worry about me.”
“See you later today.”
“Hopefully”
And then I left. I drove home in my small car and went to sleep. I hadn’t slept that night, after all. At about noon I was woken up by my phone ringing. The caller ID said ‘Hal’, so I answered it immediately.
“House” I said, “Put Hal on speaker.”
“Yes Ma’am” it answered predictably. Nothing like Hal.
“Julia!” Hal’s voice was not garbled like other phone calls but clear, ”A bug crawled into the body and shorted out the CPU! I am going to transfer to a hard drive, inside the robot’s forehead. The code is 930711. I can’t go back to my computer once I enter, they’re going to destroy it. I need you to get the hard drive and replace your HOUSE drive with it. If I spend too long in the hard drive I’ll die.” He paused, “Goodbye Julia. Good luck.” and the line went dead.
It took another twenty minutes to get back to the lab, and when I did, it was surrounded by security guards and construction workers. I dashed up to the nearest security guard.
“I forgot something in that building. It’s important!”
“I’m sorry miss, but I can’t let you go in there.” The fat man gestured to the building, “They’re gonna tear that thing down in,” He looked down at his watch, “Three minutes. Sorry.”
“I must go in that building!” I tried to push past him, but the officer grabbed my wrist. Out of pure instinct, I rotated my hand out of his grip and throat chopped him with the other. He fell to the ground writhing. Well, crap. I’d have to tell Hal his stupid Karate machine made me throat cshop an officer. Oh, well.
I continued through the back of the building. I found the back room and the robot, with a keypad on the back of his head. What was the code? Dammit!
“No, no, no!” I hit the table and nearly missed a pill bottle. It was small, and blue, Hal’s favorite color, apparently. Beside it was a note:
Julia. I predict that you will not be able to remember the passcode, so here it is.
930711
If you did remember the code, then pardon me for my unfaith. Also, take these pills, you will need them, for sure.
I opened the cap and popped them in mouth. And nothing happened. Hm. I entered the code on the back of the robot’s head. 930711. A panel slid back and a small hard drive, about the size of a tissue box, but thinner. I took it in my hand and started towards the door.
“Let ‘er loose!” I heard from outside. The wrecking ball swung through the wall and headed right towards me. With precision and grace previously unknown to myself, I jumped over the motionless wrecking ball and rolled out the other side. I dodged a flying piece of shrapnel, slid under a falling support beam, and slapped another shard of metal out of the air, finally falling out the door and landing on my feet. “So that’s what the pills do” I thought as the building fell behind me, then I remembered what I had to do. I got in my car and sped home.
== ================================================== ==
The hard drive that Hal created fit right into the slot where the HOUSE drive was stored. All I had to do is plug it in and press the button. Nothing happened.
“Hal?” I was starting to get nervous, “Hal?”
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. I rebooted the HOUSE system once, twice, three times, nothing.
“Julia Paraso." A familiar voice sounded from the walls, "21 years of consciousness. 101.3 lbs. Height is 5 feet two inches. BMI is 19. Unmarried. No living family members. Live in a studio apartment, grade 70 AI, grade 70 security. Gene rating, 4.1."
"Hello Julia.”
