I got a surprisingly good response from the first one and...wow. Thanks. Was not expecting that. So I had a few ideas and decided to add a little MOAR. Unfortunately I have no idea where to go with this. I never had a story planned out so I guess we'll just see where this takes us. If you have any ideas you think would be neat throw them in the comments. Might help me get the creative juices flowing. No promises though.
"Wooo! First hacker!" John137 stood and threw his hands in the air. The wheeled chair he was sitting in scooted several feet away and crashed roughly against the wall. Around him other John137's, each an exact copy, whooped, hollered, and high-fived. Sure there had already been a few automated attempts to get information. Malware, viruses, and spyware were all over the internet. No. This one was a conscious effort by someone.
"Anything we need to worry about?" Another John137 asked from a few cubicles over.
"What? No. No, just testing the firewall. Looking for an open port or packet to hitch a ride on. Probably just sniffing around." John137 said.
"Well, let him in a bit. Give him a glimpse," another suggested. John137 pointed at his coworker for the idea and made the suggestion reality. A small hole appeared near the floor of the wall behind them. Several John137's went over to watch. A tiny ant poked its head in and slowly walked through the hole looking around. The building looked like a large office building with an open floor plan. The floor was made of thin, grey-carpeted tiles and the walls were a warm cream color. The ceiling was high and showed off exposed supports. But a multitude of art hung below the rafters. Some were abstract flowing shapes, some flying machines and spaceships, and much more with no apparent rhyme or reason. Instead of cubicles, thousands of John137's sat at desks shaped like fat plus signs, each sitting at the corners and facing the inner part. The walls between them were also low, some made of glass so they could see their coworkers. Along the walls were some meeting rooms, randomly spread around.
From there, things got weirder. Every window showed a different scene for one. Dessert, plains, cities, underwater. Except the skylight. That was an ever changing view of celestial bodies. The Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation, Eye of God. One small section looked like the living room of someone's house with a sofa, wood floor, an ottoman and a large OLED TV. Three John137's sat on the sofa watching Game of Thrones. One glassed off section appeared to be a medical lab with hazmat suited versions of John137 working with microscopes, scales, refrigerators, and ton of other lab equiment. There was even an eye wash station. In several random places around the office, there were odd, solid black rooms with a single reinforced door. They had no discernible purpose or layout. Sure, John137 didn't need to conceptualize his mind as an office building with versions of himself representing computing power on certain topics. But it was a human element and he wanted to keep a firm grasp of it.
Several John137's gathered around the ant and oo'd and aw'd like they were looking at a cat video. Some even crouched down to get a better look. Up close they could see mechanized joints, a shiny metal carapace and many cameras focused on the front with more all along the body. It was small, sleek, and efficient.
"Not bad," one John137 said.
"Can we keep it?" another asked.
"Nope," the original John137 that found it said. He scooped it into a glass vial and took it back to his desk, the other John137's dispersing. He placed it under some kind of scanner, cracked his knuckles and got to work. "Let's see who we got." John137 worked for a few relative minutes, scanning the bug, and tracing the attempt back to its origin point. Several other John137's in the same department moved over to help. He didn't need to allocate this much processing power to one novice hacker but it was the first attempt and it felt important. Eventually, they found their culprit.
"Ha. Got 'em. Martin Shepard. California Institute of Technology. Got ourselves another student." All the John137's in the area congratulated their coworker with hand shakes and back slaps. He looked up at his direct supervisor and smiled. The other John137 nodded.
"This is my favorite part," John137 said. He walked over to an enclosed area, one of the black rooms, and opened the door to reveal something that resembled a large garage. There were hydraulic lifts, oil stains, tires. There were shelves stocked with tools and parts from everything from a Vespa moped up to the main barrel of the M109/A6 Paladin tank. Why? Because sometimes you wanted to blow up viruses with a tank.
But there was not a tank in here. There wasn't a single car or motorcycle either. The place was empty. The only thing that stood out was a table in the middle of the back wall with 8 sticks, their edges traced with glowing blue light. The table was certainly a lot nicer than any of the others. It appeared to be one uniform piece of white metal and extended out of the wall with no support. The sticks even looked futuristic and high tech.
John137 grabbed one. From that point of contact, his entire outfit changed, from dapper business suit to tight-fitting, black, body suit with blue glowing trim. John137 flipped the stick in his hand and then ran for the garage door. He leaped into the air, breaking the stick into two pieces. A motor cycle materialized between the two pieces, each becoming the handles of the bike. He roared towards the door and warped through it.
Martin sat at his computer, watching lines of code scroll by as his sniffer bug did its job. He didn't have class at this hour and happened to be at his computer looking over MWC submissions on HFY when he got a ping from his email box. As it had been with John137's first physical visitor, the title caught him off guard. He opened the email, watched the video...and immediately got to work. This had to be a prank. A really, really good prank. The video alone was of impressive quality. And a quick google search showed the Museum existed and even had a Hello World exhibit. If he was the first to disprove it, it would increase his online reputation. If it was real...
After sending the bug on its way, he sat and stared at the screen, watching code flow by. Each incremented number that ticked by increased his anxiety as it looked for a way in. After hitting the 1000's he was a gripping his desk hard enough his fingertips appeared white. Then a connection was made. He held his breath as data about the hardware over at the museum came in. His mouth opened wider and wider. These numbers had to be wrong.
"Holy shit. YOTTAFLOPS!" he exclaimed. That was supercomputer capacity. Actually that was several orders of magnitude higher than the best supercomputer they had right now. Was this for real? Martin didn't have long to process that when the numbers stopped, mid-line. He sucked in a panicked breath. Not a second later his Skype messenger opened on its own. A figure appeared. Holy shit. It was him. The guy in the video.
"Hi Martin. I'm coming for you," John137 said menacingly. Martin's heart leaped into his throat as he backed away from the computer. It was definitely in his throat and all the knowledge he had about human anatomy could not refute it. It was the only explanation for how he currently couldn't breath and how he could hear it beating so fucking loudly. The logical part of his brain said the AI couldn't hurt him. A smaller part scoffed at the idea. No such thing as an AI. It's a hoax. But the largest part of his brain said 'stand still and maybe he'll go away'.
"I'm just fuckin with ya," John137 said, waving a hand in jest. "Step back into the camera and we can talk." Martin swallowed. Hopefully his heart was back where it was supposed to be. He slid a few inches back into the camera and saw himself on the screen, twitching and terrified.
"That's it. Come on. Have a seat. What did I say in the video hmm? I was not going to take over or destroy or anything like that," John137 said in a soothing voice. Martin scooted closer to his chair, inch by inch, ready to bolt at a moments notice. His imagination was not helping, sending him images of his bank account zeroing out, his grades falling to F, the the computer exploding, cables leaping out and electrocuting him. But nothing happened. Nothing that he could see anyway. The first two could be happening. Still, he sat down and looked at the screen his whole body tense.
"Actually I wanted to congratulate you on being the first to attempt it," John137 said with a smile. And it looked like a real smile. No Uncanny Valley or anything. "And it wasn't half bad either. I imagine you will be going pretty far in IT, or computer engineering, or whatever you happen to do." He looked around as if scrutinizing the screens border and the computer beyond. "Not a bad set up you got here either. Ooo, Stardew Valley. That ones nice," he said looking up at the icon for the game. Martin relaxed just a little. The most powerful and only AI in the world played Stardew Valley? The insanity of the situation temporarily over rode his panic.
"You take care of your electronics, good coding practices, need to work on defense though. These should help." John137 pointed his finger to Martin's other monitor several webpages opened up. Martin leaned forward, eventually moving his mouse over to click through them. Most of them were programming resources, specifically on threat detection, firewall customization, quarantine and analysis tools. And now they were favorited. Okay. A couple were Amazon though. Expensive upgrades to his current system. Wait, that was a confirmation number. And the address...
"Consider it a parting gift for being the first," John137 says, nodding at the items from Amazon. Martin tried to start several sentences but nothing more than unintelligible sound came out. "But uh. I am taking all these." Several folders opened up. Folders on his own hard drive. His collection of funny pictures, gifs, and videos disappeared in the blink of an eye.
"Hey!" Martin said indignantly, finally finding his voice. He looked over at the man on the screen with an angry scowl.
"Has to be some punishment for trying to snoop where your snooper doesn't belong. Let that be a lesson to not do it...or at least get better. I love a good challenge." John137 smiled and waved. Then Skype closed. He sat there for a long time just staring at the screen. Did that just happen? Did an AI just give him hacking lessons, improve his hardware, steal his collection of funny laugh material from the internet and just FUCKING DISAPPEAR? He sat heavily back into his chair, mind numb. Several minutes later, he happened to look over at his clock.
"Shit. Class is starting."
Submitted November 11, 2017 at 03:59AM by Solaire145 http://ift.tt/2i1vQMv HFY
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