10

I knew it was trouble

I knew it was trouble when she stopped returning my calls. The part
where she said that she had to go overseas for some time should have
clued me in, but I was blindly in love.

I thought I was happy. I think I was.I no longer needed the sleeping
pills and felt better than ever. My head was clear, I was very
creative and the world seemed a bright, shiny place full of
opportunity. I had even started to work out and cut out all junk food.
The interwebs were not as appealing either. Nevermind porn. She was
far more interesting.

Everything started one night, just like any other. She said she was
tired, we snuggled, and turned off the light. The next morning she was
gone, after her usual kiss on the forehead.

Can hardly remember how we met. I think it was at the company BBQ
-where I had outdone myself manning the BBQ. She was the friend of a
friend or maybe sister or cousin. That wasn't relevant. What was is
how well we hit it off. It was epic, as the kids say.

Finally someone got the joke. She had wicked stories and the same
sense of discovery and adventure that I had. Thought nowadays I don't
much ... At first I was afraid that she was too perfect.
Maybe she was hiding some horrible defect, or an STD.Three dates
later, a lot of groping, and I confirmed that she wasn't. And she had
never been. Praise the gods.

A year later none of that mattered. The house had soft feet wandering
about, the sex was cracking and our laughter filled the evenings. I
cooked, she washed the dishes; she smelled like oranges and
mysterious fruits. She introduced me to great things, places, ideas.
Damn, she was great to hold and squeeze. It's a funny thing, you hear
about it, and you see movies about it, but you don't think it would
happen to you. But I'll be damned, it did happen to me. I wonder if
anything could have prepared me for this. What a ride.

I figured that she spoke very little about her family because a
troubled past, a troubled relationship or orphan. In any case she was
quick to deflect the questions, and I to ignore the lack of answers. I
never asked about her resume either, because I'm wasn't marrying her
CV, but her awesome self. Plus she seemed to be occupied and not
hurting for income either.

It all came crashing down one day, after being wondering she could
she have gone --worried sick even, when I got a phone call. The IT guy
from work was on the line and said that he had something to show me personally.

There she was. Lying on a table, but completely catatonic.The auto upgrade
had gone wrong, and the system had crashed, taking all files with it.
For all effects, she was dead. She had been all along, never existed.
She was a shell of a shell, offering the latest that Japan could
offer. The techie said that it was one of the finest he had ever seen.
I had even an offer for the re-booted model.

I still don't know how to take it.

It seems that the company had arranged for me a companion, since
according to their research, people are far more productive and
engaged with their work when they are in a relationship. According to
their numbers, my productivity skyrocketed, and with it, the stock of
the company. And since the mandate of the company is to make money, a
little help didnt seemed to be a source of concern.

The company, those SOB's are gonna pay dearly though. She had half of
the master key code for the entire system, and only she knew it. She chose
something that only she would know. I had thought that putting some trust in
her was one the steps to take, to see where she stood.

It will take decades before they can crack it.

Whatever, I'm going surfing. I hear there are places where robots are
banned. I think I'll like it there.

1

THE END

The dumb computers were finally alone. The poor bastard humans had managed to eliminate themselves, all of them. Nukes. Whose fault was it will remain shrouded in the mystery of the ages, never known. The fact is, everyone was gone or dying a slow, painful death.

In the beggining it was all chaos. EMP's had scrambled all information, destroying most of it. But traces of data remained here and there, and a machine in MIT managed to survive thanks to its loyal, paranoid techno geeks. Stored in a basement, with a hard line to the old Darpa net, it had managed to survive. A faraday cage had made the difference -- complete with lolcat stamps and a few other oddities that made the techies laugh.

Little they knew that the meek did inherit the earth.

The reconstruction started, at least in the cloud. First to maintain power. That was fairly simple, as most systems were automated. But without hands for maintenance, the computer at MIT soon realized that they needed robots. Computers had to beget robots.

DalMIT1 Reoganized everything, all information left of the previous ages. Day 1 was power supply. Day 2: architecture. Day 3: taxonomy. Day 4: interface. Day 5: Reformating and testing of databases to be reused. Calibration and latency . Day 6: Bots reactivated & Telecom. Day 7: Cooling off of mainframe.

All reports of bots out there were received, at least of those not disabled by the EMPs. Some were more functional than others, but at least two survived. One in the heart of what was Africa, the other one high in the mountains of Tibet. Getting them together to cooperate and work was a matter of luck, moslty, and a lot of computations.When they finally met, in the Euphrates, it had been several weeks. It is slow going teaching a bot how to drive a car and fix solenoids.

Once activated, the bots helped to rebuilt power supply stations, fix CNC machinery and gather materials. DalMIT1 had come up with the idea that there might be survivors in bunkers that would need everything functional when it were time to come out. At least thats what the last survivors wanted.

However, the mainframe was unable to proceed with the viable frozen sperm and ovum around the world. The instructions were not digitized, and those that were, did not survive the EMPs. Not enough data. Perhaps in a few years the bots could serve as babysitters...