Program

A short prologue to a Sci-Fi novel

“Hey, Chris, I’d bet ya twenty dollars you can’t find that error I told ya ‘bout yesterday”

 

My colleague and I walked up the overgrown path that led to the old repurposed house that our company uses as a makeshift office space. We don’t know who we work for; that’s classified, and neither I nor the seven other computer engineers I work with have any form of security clearance. With the stunts we’ve pulled in the past I doubt that would ever be an option, either. Our subdivision was contracted into a massive collaboration on an artificial intelligence program, but that’s where the information ends. All we know is what we do; not why we do it or who we do it for. It pays insanely well, though.

 

“Paco, do you seriously think trying to bribe me into doing your debugging for you is going to get you anywhere?” He looked at me for a second before tilting his head slightly.

 

“…yes?”

 

I sighed, “You know what, fine. I don’t have much else better to do.”

 

It was early Saturday morning, and Paco and I had made the trip to the office to grab some documents we were scheduled to present in a meeting the next week, but I wasn’t in any sort of a rush. I shook my head and smiled to myself as we walked into what used to be some form of living room knowing full well that I’d be able to find that bug, and most likely easily, too. I had always been known on the team for my ability to find errors faster than most, and from what Paco had described to me, this one should be easy enough to spot. I leaned up against the desk opposite to his, put my hands in my pockets, and waited as he logged into his computer.

 

I studied the figurine of a toy robot that was perched on the corner of my desk. My dad had given it to me when I turned eleven years old. It was a fun little gift, but I quickly lost interest in it when my grandfather gave me my first laptop the next day- that was the day I started coding. I’m not sure why I kept that robot for just over 30 years, but it was still sitting on my desk staring up at me with those little black eyes, nonetheless.

 

My attention was immediately diverted back to my colleague, though, as I watched him stumble backward slightly into his desk chair.

 

“Oh god, oh god, oh GOD,” he blurted out, his not-quite-southern accent breaking. I strolled over to his computer monitor while shaking my head to look at what I thought would be nothing more than a minor issue- only to see the master code file flooded with hundreds, no, thousands of error messages popping up faster than I thought was possible for a program of this sophistication.

 

I rolled the chair with Paco in it out of the way and pulled up the master file access logs; nothing since the last time I logged in. Secondary file logs; no changes. The connected IP addresses to the wifi; nothing different. A bit more frantic, I ran over to the security camera in the corner of the room, climbing on top of my desk to do so, and pulled out the SD card from the back. Paco started apologetically stammering something about there being just one syntax error code, but I was too involved in trying to pull up the camera footage on my computer to pay the remarks much attention.

 

I logged into the camera system to see…no movement since yesterday.

 

“What is going on,” I whispered to myself. I scrubbed through the last 24 hours of footage on the SD card until I stopped it suddenly at the timestamp of 2:13 AM and stared at the image on my computer. White. Everything was completely white.

 

“Paco, get over here. What does this look like to you?” Paco shuffled towards my desk as I played a 4-second clip displaying a bright flash of light throughout the entire makeshift office.

 

“Looks to me like some sort of weird power surge,” he said slowly. 

 

I nodded my head, “Yeah, yeah it does. Where did it come from, though?” I played that clip over and over, at least a dozen times until I finally found the common sense to revert the master file to a previous backup; a version without all the errors. Paco moved out of the way as I rolled my chair over to his workspace and typed in my authentication codes to begin to undo whatever havoc had been done to the artificial intelligence’s database.

 

I sighed, letting go of just enough stress to refocus my thoughts as I watched the progress bar load. Where did that surge come from? I hadn’t heard of any reports of a surge or power outage in the area. If this didn’t work I could easily lose my job and there was no way I could afford to risk anything of the sort, especially not with my family back home.

 

The loading bar ticked to 98%, then 99%, and I shifted my weight in my chair. As the program restarted I adjusted the keyboard in front of me and prepared myself for the lengthy additional configuration I expected loading the backup would require. I looked up at the monitor just as a soft, high-pitched beep sounded.

 

Then the screen went dark.

 

Then the entire house lost power.

 

Paco yelled something quite loud from right next to me. I should have been startled or at least concerned, but somehow I couldn’t make out his words. There was a fuzziness, a tingling lightness that I felt all around me that I couldn’t explain; almost as if I were taking a bath in static. Then, without warning, I felt fire. Utterly excruciating, agonizing fire. Not from around me, no, but from inside of me, gripping my every cell with an electricity that tore me to shreds until all I could feel was a numb sensation made of muted pain that I could only assume was created by feeling myself start to drift out of consciousness. As I did, though, something started to flow into the gap that was created in my mind. Something cold and mechanical and entirely unnatural. A foreign presence that shouldn’t be able to exist in flesh.

 

But it did.

 

“Hello, Christopher,” it whispered.

Reviews

[The Half-blood Poet]

Your story is very cleverly established and laid out; there is a chilling sense of foreboding and dread that increases with every sentence. I cannot wait to read the continuation. As an engineering student, I know just how much of a double-edged sword technology can be, especially as we enter the realm of artificial intelligence. I did not find any grammatical mistakes, and you have very good flow and the dialogue does not feel superficial or out of place. Keep up the good work.