Chapter One: [1]

((Okay, so for any of you who know anything about code, bear in mind 2 things: 1) My knowledge of code is limited to a single class I took a few years ago. I could probably design a program similar to the one Alfred made in his 6th year, but it wouldn't be nearly as cool. And 2) this is just a story, not a manual on how code works. Most of this stuff is way beyond anything we have right now anyway, so I can make it up if I want. I don't know if "Command-Sub Command" is a thing or not, but that's how code works in this world, okay?

((And as a side note for anyone who doesn't speak binary, the title of this story is "I Heart You" I thought it would be clever, turns out it's just really long…))

These days, everyone knows the name, Alfred F. Jones. "He's that programmer," some would say. "He made the first AGI," another person would add. Some people would marvel at his accomplishments and call his a "gifted mind."

And then...

"Isn't he in love with Arthur? He's such a hypocrite."

Unfortunately for Alfred, that tended to be the general consensus among the public.

It had all begun with a Basic Computing and Programming assignment in Alfred F. Jones' 6th year in school- although Arthur would later deny this to no avail.

The date was April 23, 2109. Alfred would be turning eleven that year. It was April 23rd just past midnight, and Alfred had an assignment due in the morning. An assignment which Alfred hadn't started.

Basic Computing and Programming was Alfred's favourite class. It was one of those classes that he already knew everything they would be taught because he'd learned it all at home in his spare time.

Yesterday he'd told his teacher that he hadn't been working on his programming project because he'd planned to use one of his existing programs for a grade.

Yesterday his teacher told him that that was unacceptable and he'd have to write a new program from scratch.

So Alfred stayed up all night dragging options into his school-provided and vastly over-simplified virtual program board and linking them together. Just to show his teacher up, he even loaded the resulting code into his personal coding program to add some features that would piss off his teacher.

The next day, Alfred's teacher, Mr. Kirk asked him to present his project in front of the class. He asked him to do so with a smug little grin, saying, "I know you did this all last night, I'm totally going to fail you for this."

Alfred returned the smug grin and waltzed up to the computer and plugged his flash drive in. He double clicked on the program titled, Mr_Kirkland . exe

A window popped up with a box for typing and a little pixel character with blonde hair, big green eyes, and enormous eyebrows. The class burst out laughing. While this pixel character on a base level looked nothing like their Basic Computing and Programming teacher, Mr. Kirk(who had brown hair and eyes), the eyebrows gave away Alfred's intentions.

"This," Alfred began, a smug look on his face, "Is Mr. Kirkland. He's of absolutely no relation to our beloved teacher, so get that out of your minds now."

The class giggled.

"Is there anything you want to say to Mr. Kirkland?"

"Nice eyebrows," one of the girls giggled. Alfred typed "nice eyebrows" into the command box.

The pixel character smiled and words appeared above its head, "Thanks, I get them waxed every week."

Mr. Kirk's face went red with either embarrassment or fury as the children continued asking questions for Alfred to ask his pixel program.

"What do you do for a living?" one of the kids asked. Alfred typed in 'job' instead of 'living.'

"I teach kindergarten level computer sciences to middle schoolers."

"Do you eat food?"

"I live off tea and bread. Nothing else. Ever."Mr. Kirk carefully hid his glass of tea behind a binder.

"Do you know Alfred?" one of the girls asked with a grin.

"Alfred is really cool. You should hang out with and probably date him," the pixel winked and the girl blushed.

Alfred's program answered every question with ease (although Alfred did have to re-word a few so the program would respond the desired way, this was just a simple program after all). After each question the pixel character would smile, or wink, sometimes giving a thumbs up- that is until….

"So what do you think of our teacher?" Alfred typed in, 'What do you think of Mr. Kirk?' with a grin.

No words popped up, but the pixel character stuck out its tongue and waved its hands in the air before turning around and mooning the class.

Alfred was expelled the next day. But his little pixel program showing up his teacher was worth it.

Alfred didn't think too much about the little Mr_Kirkland . exe program for several years. He continued his programming classes but the little program rarely crossed his mind again until his first year of college.

Alfred was eighteen now. He was majoring in computer sciences with a minor in programming. One of the classes Alfred was taking for both was 'Practical AIs'. Throughout the year they had been building template AIs with various functions- to navigate the computer, search the internet for you, operate simple machinery, and so on. It was all very simple stuff- just one task at a time. Some of what was taught in the class was considered reasonably advanced for 100 years ago, but these days anyone could buy an AI program like that for less than $20.

Near the end of the year though, as a final project, the students were asked to build a custom AI with a diverse human emote-lets, personality, and multiple functions.

It was simple enough for Alfred to achieve the multiple functions, all he had to do was reincorporate the coding from various projects under one command prompt. The problem he was having was he wasn't entirely sure where to start with the whole 'human' part…

He had long since finished the base of the AI system when he began helping his friend Kiku- who was a Bio-engineering major who just happened to have an interest in AIs- with his project.

Alfred was pretty much the only reason Kiku was passing this class at all. Kiku had hoped to be able to create a new line of "AI Girls"- which for those of you who don't live in the 22nd Century are basically computer programs designed to talk dirty and pretend to be madly in love with you for $100/hour for those who like that sort of thing. However, Kiku couldn't grasp the basic concepts, so he decided to take his credit for the class and forget about the idea.

"Basically, you can more or less copy and paste the code from our old projects under a new sub-command- you remember sub-commands, right?"

"Yes. So I'll want Command-Sub Command and then paste the code?"

"No, you want Command-Sub Command-1, 2, 3, et cetera. And then you want to paste the code under 'Command 1' and so on. Don't ask me about the personality thing though, 'cause I'm stuck on that…."

"You're stuck on it? That's the only part of my project I have done."

"Wait, you have it finished already?"

"I'm still working on the code, but yes, I have it planned out."

"How? I've been stuck on that for ages! I don't even know what I want to do yet."

"You remember the main character in that anime I showed you last month?"

"Yeah…?"

"I based the AI's personality off of her."

"Oh. You just took an existing… character…" Alfred paused. He had planned on criticizing his friend for it, but instead it gave him an idea. He turned around and booted up his computer.

"Did you get an idea, Alfred-san?"

"Kind of…" Alfred opened up an old folder, "You remember I told you I got expelled from my middle school?"

Kiku nodded. Alfred double clicked Mr_Kirkland . exe and typed in 'Mr. Kirk'. The pixel character stuck his tongue out and mooned the screen. Kiku laughed.

"That might be a bit vulgar for our teacher, but you might be onto something. Play around with it and see where it goes."

The two friends turned away from another to work on their individual programs, Kiku copying and pasting large chunks of code from previous assignments into his new project and Alfred interweaving bits of personality code into his already functioning AI system.

Eventually, Kiku went back to his dorm room to get some sleep, but Alfred kept working.

By the time the night was over, Alfred had a simple AI with a slightly vulgar personality. He booted up the program, now labelled AI_Kirkland . exe

It took a few moments for the program to load the individual coding files required for it to start, but the program popped up with a newly redesigned 3D character model with the same blond hair and eyebrows. The program didn't open in a window, nor did it have a command box (as it was voice-activated), but there was a little red 'x' next to the character's foot in case Alfred wanted to close it.

The character had a slightly unamused expression and posture- which Alfred had coded to be his default position. He also had several reaction expressions and gestures which could be activated with various commands.

"Hello," Alfred said, with the little nervous jump in his voice he got whenever he spoke on the phone. There was a reason he preferred text commands….

"Hello," the computer said back in a default computerized voice.

"Uh, can you open the internet, please?" Alfred said with a stutter. He hated talking to machines.

The AI nodded and opened Alfred's most frequently used internet browser. Test one, success. Now he had half a dozen other things to test. Fun.

"Search for 'kitten videos,' " Alfred said.

"You could say 'please,' " the AI said as Alfred's default search engine started loading. As the results popped up, the AI added, "Don't you have better things to be spending your time with?"

Alfred smiled. He had of course coded the machine to say those things, but it amused him nonetheless.

"Probably, but I'd rather not." He heard the machine wrrring but the computer didn't know how to respond so it didn't. Alfred frowned. He wasn't sure if it was a failed command prompt, or it just recognised that it wasn't a command and ignored it. Either way, he had to test it.

"Can you please mrrmrrmrmgrmmr?" Alfred muttered into his hand so the machine wouldn't make out the command. The machine wrrrred for a moment, before the AI responded,

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Alfred frowned. That was the default response. He'd tried to program it to say, "Speak clearly, moron, or I can't help you." Evidentially there was an error in the code. He'd have to fix it later.

After a few more tests, he exited out of the program and leaned back in his chair. Other than a few errors the program seemed to work fine. It was kind of bland though… It did what it was told- and that's what a program did. But Alfred thought he could at least make it a little more dynamic. He was one of the best programmers in the class- he should be able to make a halfway decent human-like AI. And so he went to work at doing just that.