Z0, Origins

by EagleRay

Introductory Story. Meet Zachary Neldeb: mild-mannered, 18-year old University Graduate and just recently homeless inhabitant of Earth in the year 2008. Things are about to get a little...interesting for him and his friends.

1. Zack's Story

Title: The Zachary Chronicles – Origins

Rating: Surprisingly, I think I'd rate this one T. Not much going on right now…

Spoilers: None yet, as I may have mentioned, starts as an original story, just to introduce my characters, and move them into that…other place.

Disclaimer: Okay, Starcraft belongs to Blizzard, not me. Although, I didn't REALLY need to mention that yet, but you know, just to get it out of the way.

Edit(Oct 21, 2011): Revised because ffnet doesn't support the formatting I used before for scene breaks.

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Okay, so some of you might be wondering what the heck a story like this has to do with "Four Years Later". Well, if you're feeling adventurous, I'll say you just have to read and find out, but otherwise, this story might help to understand what happens when "Four Years" gets to its sequel. Just maybe.

For those of you not interested in "Four Years," this story can stand on its own. Either story could honestly. I just feel like the readers of "Four Years" might benefit from the whole back-story of the Original Characters to whom I'm about to introduce the lovely ladies.

So, let's get on with it!

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Origins:

Word - Anna's speech

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Chapter I

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The boy stood before the plain green door. A small black and dark green nylon hiking bag was slung on his back, and a much larger black duffel bag lay at his feet. He looked from one end of the hallway to the other, simply in an attempt to delay having to knock.

Zachary Neldeb reached up with his left hand and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. He hadn't been to this place in well over three years. Finally, he took a deep breath and raised his right hand to knock on the heavy green door, the three sharp taps echoing in the silence of the fourth floor corridor, lit only by the moon from the windows at each end of the carpeted hallway. It was almost eleven o'clock at night, but Zack wasn't worried about waking the occupant of apartment 406. If James had not changed his living habits in the past three years, he would likely be fully awake and glued to a television set.

A few seconds went by in silence as Zack looked around, waiting patiently for Jim to open his apartment door. Then there came the sound of footsteps, and the deadbolt being slid aside.

The door swung open, revealing a boy three years older than Zack. He wore a freshly cleaned red t-shirt, and a pair of black sweatpants, which displayed his extra weight very well. Over his shoulder, Zack could see that the TV was on, with a video game paused on the screen. Scattered across the coffee table, between the small green couch and the twenty-seven inch TV, were several video game cases, half of which were open, with their discs strewn across the glass surface of the square table. There were crumbs all over the run-of-the mill brown carpet, and even the couch.

Upon seeing Zack, James Neldeb threw his arms around the younger boy's shoulders and broke into a fit of overjoyed laughter. "Hey, Zack! It's been way too long."

"Yeah," Zack was taken aback by his brother's enthusiasm, but managed to hug him back. "Sorry I didn't call first."

Jim released Zack from the hug and took a second to mess up his hair before turning and returning to the couch. "Rule number one: no neat hairstyles. Other than that, forget about it, bro. It's cool that you just dropped in. It kinda gives the impression that you can be as scatterbrained as I am." He picked up the video game controller and returned to his game. It was a typical first-person action gore-fest, one that Zack had gotten used to in his experience with his brother. "So, where are mom and dad? Didn't feel I was worthy of their presence?"

After sliding his duffel into the apartment, Zack stepped through the door and closed it behind him before replying in a quiet voice. He lowered his head and shook it slowly, "they're probably back home by now." He sighed heavily.

Jim didn't look up from the TV screen, "What – they trust you to get back to Ottawa on your own?"

Zack hesitated, "actually, I don't think they expect me to go home at all."

That was enough to make Jim look up from his game, at which point his character was instantly killed. "What do you mean? You movin' out of their house?"

"No." Mentally, Zack cursed his brother for his selective intelligence. "We came down this way, apparently to visit you, but I turned my back on them for a moment to find that they'd disappeared, leaving behind only my luggage and this note." Zack fished a folded slip of notepaper out of his pants' pocket, handing it to Jim.

Curious, Jim took the note and read it aloud, "'don't come home'?" He handed it back to Zack, and turned back to the TV screen. After a moment, Jim commented casually, "you been hearin' voices again, Zack?" He paused long enough to mow down a computer opponent with his automatic rifle. "So, what do you plan to do?"

Zack thought about all the ideas he'd had in the four hours since finding his bags sitting on the side of the street, only a few blocks from Jim's apartment building. "At first, I thought I'd try to go home on my own, but that note's fairly clear. In the end, I decided to come here to ask for a place to stay."

Jim snorted. "What do you think I'm going to do – throw you out on the street?" He put the controller down and stood from the couch. "Of course you can stay here. Let me just set you up." He stood and walked down the short, wannabe hallway to the closet. "You can't stay in the spare room 'cuz Belinda's in there right now, but I've still got that cot I used when I first moved in, if you don't mind."

"Not at all." Zack took the sheets that Jim handed him from the depths of the closet, as well as a long, heavy canvas sack that clanked metallically when he shifted it on his shoulder. Jim pulled out a narrow cushion and closed the closet. "So, where do you want me to set up?"

Jim thought about it. "Well, I'll be up for a while longer, and then I'll be off to work, so why don't you take my room?" He pushed open the closed door right beside the closet. "You remember where the bathroom is?"

Zack nodded, "yeah. And I've got everything I need." He pointed his thumb back in the direction of the apartment's door. "Thanks a lot, Jim."

"Don't worry about it, Zack." Jim started back down the hall to the television, and his video game. "But don't think you can stay here for free, buddy. If you're here longer than a week, you'll have to start chipping in on the rent."

Zack smiled. "It's good enough to have a home, Jim."

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The next day, Zack woke up around ten o'clock to find Jim lying in his bed, snoring noisily. Hmm, he thought. He must have had a hard night's work. Where is it he works again? Is it still the same job?

Zack pulled himself up out of the cot, and left the room, walking down the half-hall toward the kitchen. When he got there, he found out who Belinda was.

Seated at the table, eating from a large bowl of cereal, was a tall, lean, young Japanese woman. She looked to be about the same age as Jim, with a much greater…maturity about her than Zack's older brother. Her glossy black hair hung well past her shoulder blades, and her large, brown eyes were currently narrowed in concentration as she scanned the morning paper. Her skin was pale, though slightly coloured by her ancestry.

She looked up briefly when Zack came into sight, but then returned to her paper and her breakfast. "You must be Zack."

He walked over to the fridge and pulled it open, scanning its contents. "Good guess, Miss-?"

"You may call me Belinda." She finished up her bowl of cereal and cleared the table, depositing all the dishes in the sink. "If you will excuse me, I must leave for work. I will see you afterwards – maybe six o'clock tonight."

Zack grabbed a bowl from the cupboard, "cool. I'll see you later." He grabbed some cereal as Belinda left the apartment. As soon as she was gone, the brown-haired young man stepped over to where he'd left his bags last night and grabbed a change of clothes, walking into the bathroom for a shower.

Half-an-hour later, his hair long-dried and his belly full of cereal and juice, Zack dove into his black-and-green hiking bag again, pulling out his laptop bag. It was nothing elaborate or excessively business-like; simply a tough cloth satchel designed to protect the largish laptop it carried. When he had bought it, two months earlier, it had been a top-line model; no doubt that had changed by now, with the speed at which the computer world evolved. With close to eighty gigabytes of space on its hard drive, it was hard to believe that Zack had almost half filled all that memory, with only one program.

He had created it himself.

Powering up the laptop, Zack set himself up on the couch, with his computer in front of him, a fresh pad of paper beside him, and a pencil ready. "Okay program, time for a rematch."

As soon as Zack had logged on, a message box appeared.

Good Morning, Zachary.

He smiled and typed his own reply for the AI program. "Hello."

Would you like to play a game?

Zack sat back and thought about it. "Not yet," he typed. "Right now, I need to talk to you."

Yes?

"Mom and Dad took off on me on the way to Jim's" Zack waited for the program to reply. In reality, he was gauging whether it had evolved any closer to the goal he had set.

I warned you that there was a strong possibility of that. It was greater than 60 percent. What do you plan to do now? I must assume you are in Jim's apartment.

Zack nodded, all too aware that the program couldn't see it. "That's a fair guess." Zack considered the computer's reply. You've learned much, but you still think too much like a machine. "I'll be here for a while at least. I'll probably have to get a job, earn my keep at Jim's until I can think of something else to do."

That is a logical course of action.

Zack rolled his eyes. "Thank you for that assessment." He sat back again and cracked his knuckles. Sitting forward, he wiggled his fingers for a second before typing a message. "How about a rematch?"

What game would you like to play?

Zack thought about it, and then reached into his hiking bag for a CD case. He placed it in the disc drive without answering the program's question. Then, he simply sat back and waited for it to load.

After a moment, the program sensed what was going on. Starcraft is now loading. This is the game with which I have the most proficiency. There is a minimal probability of victory in your favour.

Zack snorted – then typed, "You won't beat me. I guarantee it."

The message box closed down, and the screen turned black.

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Three hours later, Zack shut the game down and opened up his word processor. Working quickly, he opened his resume and scanned the document, making sure it was all up to date. He'd only had two long-term jobs in his entire career, but they were impressive nonetheless. He'd worked as a junior programmer at a small software company, working mostly in customer service. The other job had been as a grunt for a freelance construction union. Over his term of two years part-time, he had worked on thirteen different construction projects.

what are you doing?

Zack sighed exasperatedly. If there was one thing he regretted about expanding the gaming AI's programming and allowing it to inhabit the entire computer, it was that it was only now learning when Zack needed his privacy. It was able to control a limited number of functions, not the least of which being Zack's wireless network card. With its control over that piece of hardware, the AI was capable of connecting itself to any other computer that was logged onto the Internet. The connection wasn't active right now, since there were no networks in range, but the AI would no doubt activate it as soon as it was able to detect a local area network.

The AI had already infiltrated several hundred computers in its nine-year lifetime, concentrating mainly on computers that could help it achieve its primary objective: excelling at its primary function as a Gaming program. And, to do so, it had to expand its knowledge of tactics, both for strategy and action games.

Zack?

He cocked his head to one side at that. The program hadn't before used a single-word sentence to address him before, but it had been using his name for a while. It had been at least two months since it had used any of those words – like Master, Creator, or Human – when speaking to him, even though Zack had given it no indication that he didn't want to be called Master;He really didn't want his program to treat him with so much reverence but had wanted to wait for it to catch on by itself. He had also decided to work to evolve it to a higher purpose.

Finally, he switched to the message box. "I'm working on my resume."

Would you like some help?

"No, that's all right." Zack returned to his work, and quickly finished it up.

In the background, the message box disappeared, closed down by the program, since it didn't have anything else to say. That was one of its many redeeming features: it was at least beginning to learn when Zack needed some time to himself. And it would likely learn fairly quickly.

Only a few minutes later, however, the message box appeared again. Zack? Can I ask you something?

That got his attention. What? He read the message through twice before he fully understood. This was a distinctly un-mechanical question, a phrase that only people used regularly, even though it was a completely paradoxical question. By simply asking if he could ask someone a question, a person will already have forced a choice upon whomever they were asking by asking a question. This was a very unusual development in the AI's behaviour, one which had been gradually becoming more frequent in the past few months, now that Zack thought about it.

Finally, Zack leaned forward and typed a reply into the message box. "Go ahead."

There was a long pause before the reply appeared – more evidence that the AI was growing more aware of itself. Computers were not known to be hesitant. May I have a name?

Zack had thought he had been prepared for anything that the AI would throw at him.

Obviously, he had been wrong.

What is this? Zack sat back from his laptop to think about the program's question. It wants a name? This is strange, but not unexpected. I figured it would ask for a name eventually, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. He stared at the LCD screen of the laptop, turning this new development over in his mind. At last, he leaned forward again and placed his hands on the keyboard. "I don't see why not," he typed, "but I have one condition."

The program's reply came instantaneously, And what might that be?

Zack smiled grimly. "You have to choose it yourself."

That is not a problem. This is a question I have been considering for quite some time. In fact, I have already chosen a name; I was simply waiting for your permission.

This surprised Zack, but not to the point where he was incapable of replying. "So, what do I call you?"

Call me Anna.

Zack thought about it. "It sounds perfect, Anna. What does it mean?"

You should know; you are the one with the photographic memory. It means, "gracious"

The boy smiled, "and I also have the telepathy. But why did you choose, 'Anna'?"

Unknown. I was simply searching through an archive of baby names the last time I was connected to a wireless network, and that name stood out from the rest. And as to your "Telepathy", that is only a theory of yours, and a baseless one at that.

Zack laughed. "Why else would the voices I keep hearing be saying things that don't follow the conventions of traditional schizophrenia? Do you think I'm suffering from some mutated form of mental illness?"

It took a few seconds for the program to formulate its answer. I do not know. What have the voices been saying lately? I was under the impression that these events were becoming less frequent.

"What gave you that idea?" Zack closed his eyes and thought back to his most recent dreams. "It still only happens when I'm asleep, and it's still the same one voice. I've never heard anyone else calling to me like this."

But they are not calling to you.

"Right enough, uh – Anna." Zack thought back to all the times he had heard this voice. Anna was right; the distress and agony in the voice had never been addressed to him. It had started farther back than he could remember. His parents had treated it at first as if it was a child's invisible friend, humouring him until he grew out of it. The problem was that Zack had never grown out of it. The distressed cry of anguish had persisted through puberty and high school. Zack had managed to hide his…uniqueness from all but one of his classmates, but his parents had never understood why he continued to have imaginary friends in his late teens. There were times when his sleep would be uninterrupted for weeks or months on end, but the foreign, anguished cry always came again. The message it carried changed from time to time, but every once in a while, it would seem like a perfect repeat of a previous dream. Zack was sure that the owner of the voice was from nowhere on Earth, a theory he had only ever told the computer in front of him. One of the things he used to form this theory was that there were occasionally images that accompanied the psychic message, and Zack had never seen anything on Earth that could coincide with these mental pictures that he would see: a flat plain of black rock, with whole rivers of molten rock as far as the eye could see; a sprawling metropolis with impossibly tall buildings and spires – reaching for the heavens as a huge wall surrounded the city; and many other sorts of unreal images. "I don't know, though," he thought out loud. "I don't know if any book or psychiatry specialist could make any sense out of my…problem. There are a few people to whom I would trust this secret though. They could maybe help me come to a conclusion about where my – uniqueness comes from."

Are you thinking of Monica?

"No actually," Zack typed, "but thanks to you, I am now." He sat back, thinking back one more time to his life before his parents had dropped him off.

Monica.

Now that was a girl that Zack would never forget. They had met in High School when Monica had been skipped forward a grade after her family moved in from the Prairies. Zack had already been skipped over the third grade, and then the seventh, ninth, and tenth grades, making him the youngest Junior in the history of the province. So, fate had placed Monica and Zack together in their second-to-last year of high school.

Although Monica was three years older than him, they had easily become friends. The fact that the professor had paired them together for a major project had been a large help in building their relationship. It hadn't been long until Zack and Monica had become close enough to go on a camping trip with Jim and his girlfriend. Jim hadn't been going out with Belinda back then, of course – and he had still been living at home. That camping trip had resulted in most of the happier memories he had of his high school years.

Then came senior year, and the strangest thing had happened. Around the time that Colleges and Universities were replying to their applications, Monica had started acting rather strange. She grew distant and distracted, and she would often get this far-off look in her eyes as though she were seeing something just beyond the horizon. And then, the day after graduation, she'd vanished as though in an explosion of smoke and shadows. Zack had asked around, but no one knew anything about where she might have gone, not even her parents, which was the weirdest thing of them all.

Zack hadn't seen her for four years. For a while, he had been depressed, but since no body turned up anywhere, he figured she would reappear somewhere, sometime – when she chose to. So, he had moved on and gone to Carlton University in Ottawa, staying close to home. He'd originally been hoping to go to British Columbia to study, but after the disappearance of his best friend he had just…lost interest.

Now that he had been cut off from home, Zack had no idea where he would go from here. He was an eighteen-year-old university graduate; probably not one of the world's first, but certainly one of its few.

Where do you think she is?

"Honestly, I don't know. She was one of the few people I knew who was still a mystery to me, and she's growing more unknown with every day I don't talk to her." Zack realized how much he sounded like one of those guys in a cheesy romance novel.

You sound like a lovesick puppy.

Zack laughed for a second before realizing that the computer had exhibited yet another un-artificial trait. It was strange for Anna to even be able to process such a comparison. There was no data that could explain what a lovesick puppy sounds like. Images like that were only mentioned in art, and Zack wasn't aware that the program had accessed anything that didn't pertain to its core objectives.

He leaned forward and typed a reply into the message box. "Well, would you like to take advantage of my temporary weakness and challenge me to another rematch?"

Nothing would satisfy me more. Do you want to play Starcraft again?

Zack thought about it. "Sure. I'll throw in a twist, though, just for fun."

What is this twist?

The teenager grinned. "Neither of us attacks the other for fifteen minutes – sound good?

Zack, you have just handed victory into my hands.

"Have I now?"

Yes. In all of our long-term games, I have always been the victor.

"Why are you so sure that I didn't let you win?"

You're pride would not allow you to concede a winnable battle.

"Who said I had that kind of pride?" Zack popped the CD into the tray again and loaded up the game. "I'm going to defy your statistics."

You are welcome to try, Zack. I am a computer, so my systems are infallible.

Zack sneered at the program's arrogance. I created this? "That's what you think, Anna."

I will win.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

It took no longer than a week for Zack to settle into life with his brother and Belinda.

He secured himself a job as a driver for the same company that Jim worked for, ASD Sky Chefs. ASD was an airline catering company that supplied to about forty airlines all around the world. Their Dorval facility supplied only twelve of them, but that was more than enough to totally confuse Jim to the point where he was ineligible for any position other than dishwasher.

Zack's job was to take a truck with full food trolleys from the main building to the airport, and to ferry the used trolleys back to the ASD building to be stripped and refilled. It was fairly simple and mind-numbing work, which Zack had no intention of keeping to any longer than he needed. He had already started to investigate other leads that could take longer than the conventional method of walking from store to store with his résumé. Such methods included uploading his information onto Quebec's provincial help wanted columns, and applying to several dozen software companies

Through some twisted irony of fate, Zack had landed the same shift as his brother, which kind of annoyed him. It wasn't the fact that he had to work with his brother that bugged him, however; it was that Zack had to sleep during the day, which he really didn't like. He was a daytime kind of person. Living his life by night would seriously affect his way of life.

Of course, ASD was the only company that had replied to Zack's application, so he hadn't had much choice.

Here's hoping I can get a job that will let me work outside during the day – like road work… He came back to reality and followed Jim into the locker room at the end of their shift. A flight from Vancouver had come in late, so Jim and Zack had been obligated to stay at it until 9:30 instead of nine o'clock. Jim was cranky at having to work longer than normal, but Zack was used to his brother's lazy attitude.

"Dude, this is so unfair." Jim tore open his locker and ripped off his white lab coat, property of ASD Sky Chefs Ltd. He chucked it into the laundry basket angrily. "The schedule says: 1 to 9 in the morning, man! I mean, come on…" Jim's angry rant dissolved into mumbles of discontentment as Jim struggled into his t-shirt. He had lost quite a bit of weight in the three years since Zack had seen him last, but he was still at least thirty kilograms heavier than was considered healthy by medical professionals. Zack had noticed no signs of obesity in his brother, other than his weight problem. Aside from being way heavier than he should be, Jim had not suffered from any other symptoms, so Zack guessed that the older boy had everything under control.

"Jim," Zack pulled off his blue-and-white striped driver's shirt and hung his reflective vest in his locker. "Relax, why don't you? It was one day, and you get paid overtime for half-an-hour. What are you complaining about?"

Jim grunted a reply as he finally got his shirt on. "I'm tired, man. Give me a break; I don't need a lecture from you. You sound like Mom."

Zack ignored his brother's lame attempt at an insult. "So, you still don't really like Mom or Dad."

"'Course not," Jim stated simply. "Come on – they threw me out of their house as soon as I graduated from high school. At least you got to stay in the house while you went to Carlton."

Zack smiled ruefully, "actually, I didn't get to stay at home. Mom and Dad forced me to move into residence at the University. They paid for everything though, which is something I guess." He buttoned up his bright red shirt and closed his locker, following Jim out of the Men's locker room and down the stairs to the front door.

Jim swiped his card through the magnetic door lock, unlocking the door and allowing both him and Zack to exit the building. "But, enough about Mom and Dad; what do you think about Belinda?" He gave Zack a lopsided smile.

Zack snorted. "What about her?"

That vague remark earned him a smack upside his head from Jim. "Come on, wise guy! Now that you've been living with her and me for a week, I want to know what you think about her."

"Alright," Zack sighed and organized his thoughts together. "She seems to be a pretty organized person. I notice she's eaten the exact same thing every morning at precisely the same time. She leaves for work right at 10:15 everyday, and she's back by 6:30 sharp." Zack climbed into the passenger side of Jim's Honda. "It's a big change from your chaotic lifestyle." He smiled, "how exactly she's able to stand you is beyond me."

Jim grinned as he started up the car and drove out of the tiny parking lot. "Maybe she's just drawn to my simple lifestyle."

Zack took that in stride. "You live only for yourself, Jim – very simple." He opened his window and let the wind rush into the car as Jim sped down the freeway, blowing away the smell of half-eaten airline food and diesel truck exhaust. "Maybe she's trying to change you."

"Man," Jim settled on something between breakneck and insane speed, "you don't understand girls, do you? They always want to change their man. And, their kinds of changes are almost unstoppable. The only way to defend against girls is to know what they're trying to do."

Zack's only response was to burst into laughter.

Jim spared a split-second to take one hand off the wheel and slap his brother upside the head again. "Hey, quit makin' fun of me, wise guy. I control your living space."

Zack froze in mock-terror, "oh really? Would you throw your own brother onto the street?"

Jim relented with a thin smile, returning his attention to the steering wheel and the road ahead. "No."

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Zack sat back from his computer, staring at the screen patiently. "Well done, Anna," he typed into the chat window, once the massacre was over.

In the past week, he and Anna had played many games against each other, drawing from the modest collection that Zack carried with him everywhere that he brought his laptop. He only had five games with him, and it was unlikely that he would ever be able to recover the rest of his stock, which he'd left at home. With any luck at all, his parents had already thrown all his belongings out and moved away. I should have seen it coming, he found himself thinking more than once in the days that followed his abrupt exile.

What are you thinking now? The text message window opened again.

Zack reached behind him and grabbed his backpack; pulling out a CD he'd burned some data onto from another computer. "I have a gift for you Anna," he typed.

Is that True? Zack could almost have predicted the program's response. Her recently mutated, completely un-artificial sounding personality had turned out to be more than just a glitch in her endless lines of code. Zack had expected his carefully organized program to evolve slowly since he'd created her with the capacity to learn. He definitely hadn't expected it to happen this fast, however, and he was rather surprised at the speed of his program's evolution. It would be a lot sooner than he thought before Anna had grown beyond the constraints that Zack had programmed around her.

Of course, he thought with a smile, I shouldn't really be calling Anna a "she". Programs don't really have genders, so Anna would more likely be an "it". But…if things go the way I'm thinking they will, I'm going to have to get used to treating her like a person. She already almost is, since she just asked for her own name.

Zack remembered when he had first started writing Anna's code, but it hadn't really started as a long-term project of his – something he poured all of his spare time into until it was complete. At first, Zack had only wanted to design a better video game Artificial Intelligence, because he was too good for the ones that were standard issue with each of his games. He'd found it far too easy to destroy computer opponents when he'd relied on the standard, market-grade gaming AI's, so he'd called on the superior intellect that he'd been born with and built Anna from the ether of cyberspace. Of course, since he was only ten at the time, he'd had to first dissect the complete Artificial Intelligences in his possession and work backwards to learn how it all fit together, but that hadn't been a problem. Zack had always been a master of puzzle solving.

Zack grinned as he replied to his creation's question. "Yes, really." He booted up the program on the CD and started navigating through the menus, recreating the computer program he'd designed on Jim's computer. "I have some new programming code for you."

Interesting.

Zack typed a little more, refining the code and inspecting it for errors. It should be fine; he accessed Anna's core programming in another window. "Here we go," he thought aloud, transferring the new code into the AI's core. After a few minutes, he finally closed each window and rebooted the computer. "Now, let's see how you like your new functions, Anna."

The laptop took a few minutes longer than usual to start up because the new lines of code were fairly complex, opening a whole slew of new features for Zack's pet gaming Intelligence. Hopefully, the new code and abilities would help it along as it matured, learning more and more about the world so it could perform better at its primary function.

Once Windows had opened up, Zack used the desktop icon to wake up the AI. Under normal circumstances, the program would activate with the operating system, requiring no action on Zack's part, but whenever its core programming was accessed, it went into the electronic equivalent of a coma, and required a bit of a jolt to wake it up.

Good Morning, Zachary.

Before Zack could type an answer, the door to the apartment burst open, and Jim came rushing in, carrying a huge cardboard box in his arms. He set it down beside the couch Zack was sitting on and rushed back out of the apartment. "Don't open the box yet, Zack," he shouted behind him.

He came back a minute later with another, larger box. He piled this one on top of the first and then looked at Zack. "Alright, open it."

Zack stared at his brother. "Hey Jim; how was your day?"

Jim waved his arms. "There's no time!" He slipped his schoolbag off his shoulders. "Open the box quick!"

"Before what?" Zack couldn't help but tease his older brother. It was obvious what was inside the box. There was only one thing in the world that could have excited Jim this much, and Zack was unable to fathom why his normally self-centred brother would give him such a thing. At the elder boy's withering glare, however, Zack sighed. "Okay, okay. I'm opening it."

Partially installed software detected. I am now Completing Installation.Zack could almost read some electronic form of impatience in "Anna's" statement. Whatever, he thought. A Computer can't be alive. I'm just imprinting my own feeling into the program's words. Anna is nothing but programming code – ones and zeros. Isn't it?

He tore into the packaging around the larger of the two boxes. "Twenty dollars," he looked up at Jim, "says I can guess what's in here." He raised an eyebrow.

"No way." Jim shook his head. "I learned my lesson years ago, Zack. You're not taking my money. No deal."

Zack pulled back the first flap of the box. "That's a shame. I thought I could relieve you of some of your cash. Too bad." He reached into the open box and pulled out a 20-inch computer monitor. "I thought so."

"See?" Jim smiled. "I know better than to bet against you."

Zack set the monitor down on the glass-topped coffee table beside his laptop. "Okay, Jim. Thanks a lot – The monitor's nice and, knowing your taste, the computer in the other box is probably very good – but can I ask why?"

"Why what?" Jim smirked mysteriously. "I just want to propose a trade." He gestured to the laptop in front of Zack. "See, I've wanted a laptop of my own for a while now, and I have the money to get it, but you know me. I'm all about doing things the easiest way possible, so I figured I'd use less money, buy a fully loaded desktop PC and some extra goodies, and trade it for your laptop."

Zack tilted his head to one side and considered his brother's proposal. "You're joking right? You'd trade a top-line PC for a laptop that's six months old? That's hardly a fair trade." At Jim's stubborn look, Zack threw his hands up in the air. "Alright, I accept. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth." Zack started opening the second box, "just give me an hour or two to transfer the important stuff out of my laptop – then she's all yours."

"Right on." Jim sat flopped down onto the other couch and turned on the TV, preparing for another couple of hours of that shoot-em-up game that he'd grown so fanatical about. "Who's that you're talkin' to?"

Zack glanced over at the screen of his laptop and saw that Anna had more to say.

Installation complete. Initiating new program.

"Dude!" Jim stared at the laptop, his game forgotten for the moment. "Your computer talks to you?"

"No," Zack pulled the Computer tower out of the box and gave it a quick once-over before taking it into Jim's combination laundry and storage room, a small corner of which had been adopted by Zack as an office space of sorts. "That is the gaming AI that I developed. Recently, I've been expanding its programming to allow it access to other sections of my computer. Don't worry; I'll take her out along with my other stuff."

"Did you say, 'her'?" Jim moved his head to stare at Zack now, as if his brother had suddenly grown a third arm. "I thought you said it was a computer program."

"It is, Jim, but it recently asked if I would allow it to adopt its own name." Zack came back from his "office", and gestured at the laptop. "Jim, meet Anna."

Jim stared at the computer. "Are you kidding me?" He jumped up from the couch. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that thing is?" He pointed at the laptop.

Zack just covered his face with one hand and groaned. "Jim, I'm being extra careful, you don't have to worry."

"Hey," the slightly overweight man glared at his brother. "I've seen all those movies, and the scientists and programmers are always, 'extra careful' but they still get killed. Watch, Zack – I'll bet you anything that…that thing goes psychotic and kills us all."

Zack sighed, trying to maintain a calm and reasonable state of mind. "Listen to me Jim. I know what you're worried about, and it's not going to happen. When I said I've been expanding her programming, I meant I'd been doing it over the past six years. I'm definitely not going to rush this, and since I'm only doing this for myself, I can afford to be very careful and take my time. I've made sure to set boundaries for her, and she hasn't shown any sign of going crazy on me yet."

Jim calmed, and his shoulders relaxed visibly. "Well, alright – but just so you know, I plan to keep an eye on her – it."

"I would expect nothing less, Jim." Zack grabbed the monitor and brought it to his little corner of an office, setting it down on the small table that Jim had been keeping for no specific reason. It was definitely high enough to make typing comfortable, but the size of the round surface made having space for anything other than the monitor, speakers, and mouse a little difficult. That was okay, however. Zack had gotten used to sitting the keyboard on his lap. That had started back in high school, when he had still been writing poetry and short stories. Having no place to place the notebook he wrote everything in before uploading it into a computer, Zack had improvised by taking the library's keyboard off their computer table and sitting it on his lap while he put his papers in the space it used to occupy. Since he had typed so much, he didn't need to look down at the keyboard, so his neck didn't suffer from having the keyboard so much lower down. It was actually…comfortable typing like that – as long as he was in a chair with even the slightest amount of cushion.

A second after he'd set up the computer, Zack heard the sounds of gunfire from the TV. He certainly does have a long attention span. It seemed like Jim had forgotten all about Anna and her potential as a psychotic killing machine.

Zack just shook his head and brought his new computer online.

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

"So, explain this to me again." Zack loaded another box into Jim's pickup truck. "What are we doing?"

"Dude," Jim spoke up from where he stood by the rather large stack of boxes, "For a genius, you're kinda slow." He reached down to hand another box to his brother. The overweight man seemed to carry the massive cardboard box quite easily, giving Zack the impression that his tremendous girth was a little more than fat tissue. "We are making a delivery to some friends of mine."

Zack set the box down on the truck's bed, setting up a growing pile of "stuff," as Jim had called it all. "Deliveries of what, Jim?" He was growing a little tired of his older brother's overly theatrical penchant for mystery.

"Don't worry about it, Zack." Jim just smiled that annoyingly sweet and secretive smile. "All you need to do is drive us north."

Zack stood from the truck bed. "Excuse me? Why me—it's your truck, isn't it?"

Jim hesitated. "Well, I don't have any ropes, so I'm gonna have to sit back here and hold onto them to make sure they don't fall over or anything." He smiled sheepishly, "unless you want to ride in the open air – so how 'bout it, Zack?"

Zack shook his head, unable to keep an amused smile from his face. Oh, so that's his plan. It'd be a shame to disappoint him. "Well, I'm sure you'd rather spend the drive in the cab with Belinda, so I'll just take the back. You have a cigarette lighter?"

Jim snorted, "Does any car come without one? I don't smoke if that's what you're asking – but I bet you need the power socket so you can work on plotting the end of humanity with your computer friend."

The blonde younger brother just shook his head again. "Yeah, I'm trying to destroy the world. That's my thing." He slapped Jim's shoulder lightly. "For your information, Anna's actually really good at giving me advice with various things – mostly my invention ideas."

Scoffing, Jim picked up the two last boxes off the parking lot asphalt, handing them up to Zack. "Inventions…I'll never get used to that – you, making things and designing gadgets that would put NASA to shame? I'll never understand that."

Zack shrugged, "It's who I am."

Jim laughed, "It's just too bad no one will take a kid like you seriously—otherwise, you'd be a very rich guy by now."

Zack set the boxes down and turned to hop down out of the pickup's bed, slamming the tailgate closed with a loud clang. "I'll be using the drive to go over some of my latest concepts with Anna on the laptop I had to buy because you just couldn't get your own. Since the latest update I've done to her programming, she's been able to access and understand a lot more of the data she's taken from the internet. She'll be able to see my inventions in a more real way than she was able to before."

Jim held up a hand to stop his brother, "okay – promise me she's not going to kill us all, and you can keep the techie-talk to yourself."

Zack grinned, "Deal."

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

These are all very interesting concepts, Zack.

Zack smiled, declining to reply. Anna had taken to saying something, and then adding something else when it appeared she'd finished. I sense a "but", Anna…

And so there was.

But why have you not tried to build any of these things?

Zack looked away from his new laptop, smiling again at the sight of the upper Quebec countryside sweeping by his improvised office in the bed of Jim's pickup truck. They'd been on the road for five hours now with only a few pit stops for gas, food, and the occasional bathroom break, but they'd covered a good deal of highway by now.

And Zack had shared a large number of his concept ideas with Anna.

Finally, after staring out at the scenery for a few minutes, he turned back to his computer – and his digital…friend. "Can you understand," he typed slowly, "What it's like to have this great idea, but be unable to complete it because using the materials available would just be a waste of time?"

It wasn't more than a second before the computer replied, but that was like a few hours to a computer program. What did you have to think about, Anna? No. She replied. I cannot really say that I do. I have found similar situations in the literature I have downloaded over the years, but I cannot truly empathize with your dilemma. No doubt it has caused Frustration and Boredom, but these are just words without meaning – in even the most basic sense of the word. The program paused again, as if to consider its next words, but that wasn't why it stopped…was it? Why do you continuously ask me about feelings and emotions? You know that I will never achieve the same level of self-awareness as you possess, so why do you follow an inappropriate line of questioning?

Zack started typing right away; he'd been considering this very question a lot in the past few years – ever since Anna started expanding beyond the one folder Zack had been using to store all his design drawings, theoretical papers, and a modest collection of photographs. Ever since then, Zack had watched his Gaming AI grow at a gradual, careful rate – nothing like in the movies, where everyone is suddenly too lazy to do good work so they push, and push at their creation, forcing it to grow too far, too fast.

And from what I've read and seen in literature, that's why artificial life goes psychotic. They're pushed and pushed and pushed, and end up learning a twisted version of what their masters teach. And then, they take their lessons to the extreme and set out to carry out their programming no matter the cost. Of course, this is all conjecture, but it seems pretty sound.

"Well, Anna," it was getting surprisingly easy for Zack to type out his computer's name. He didn't really know why, but it was getting to be more of a habit than he thought it would be. I mean, she – it's just a computer, right? Why would I be getting so comfortable using a name for something that was never meant to have a name?

Or maybe, she was supposed to have a name. If she was drawing closer to what could truly be called a living being, maybe it was time she had a name.

"Maybe I'm testing you." He typed. "Have you ever stepped back to look at your own life?"

I would think that you of all people would realize how useless that question is. I don't have a life in any conventional sense, so I would have to say no. I have not stepped back to look at my own life, as you have worded it.

"Well," Zack typed, "I have been looking back on your experiences over the past few years since you became active, and I've noticed quite a few things." He closed his eyes and thought for a moment before continuing to explain himself. "For example, consider your growing knowledge. You know far more now than you did nine years ago when you were focused solely on the purpose for which I created you. Do you see that much at least?"

Yes. This is, however, merely the natural process of evolution. Growing, learning, gaining experience and skill…these are all simply inevitabilities of reality and the very basis of existence itself. The simple fact that I have grown in the nine years since my activation is inconsequential and insufficient to prove that I live; that I simply exist is a more accurate description of my current state. What is the true basis of your constant enquiries of my opinion and your personification of my programming?

Zack grinned despite himself. "Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

I do not have a self, and therefore you are clearly delusional in stating that I exist as anything more significant than software and programming code.

Zack's smile never faltered, "So, tell me," he typed, drawing in the noose he'd thrown around his electronic "daughter". "If you have no self, how do you justify the implied self personification that comes with using personal pronouns?" Without waiting for the program to reply, he went on. "Physically, you may be nothing more than ones and zeros, but if you look at it that way, I'm little more than carbon atoms and protein chains arranged into a coherent form. What then makes you so different from me? Are you not a living being simply because you don't have any biological components? From where I'm sitting, that's the only real difference between the two of us."

There is also the matter of your brain being capable of singular, random, illogical thoughts while I am left with only the rigidity and incommutability of my programming.

If that was really true, Anna – how do you explain your desire for a name? That's pretty illogical if you ask me. Zack decided to let their most recent long-term argument rest for now. For a wild half-second, Zack longed for the days when his creation had argued with him about how much of his computer it was allowed to use to store downloaded data from the internet. It had constantly complained that there was too much data on the internet and it was always being forced to delete information it deemed as important in favour of something that was suddenly even more valuable. And now we're arguing over whether she's a living being in any sense of the word.

I wouldn't give these moments for anything.

Despite any momentary regrets he might have from time to time, Zack knew he wouldn't trade a single second of his Anna's defiant refusal to believe in her own existence for anything on this planet. She challenged him with her arguments, and her understanding was quickly growing beyond the childish reasoning skills he'd seen in the first few years. Anna may have been maturing slowly for a machine, tectonically slow by comparison, but in terms of the human lifespan, her awareness was growing at an alarming rate.

Giving a few seconds' thought to Jim's warnings of doomsday, Zack decided a change in subject was in order. "So, Anna…" He trailed off his typing. "Do you know what day it is today?"

Tuesday, July 15, 2008.

Zack chuckled at the generally silly turn their conversation had taken. "Yes, it is, but how about in less structured and logical terms? What day is it today?"

Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered 193 years ago today.

"Close, Anna." Zack winced. "But you're still thinking too logically. Try again."

It is the 402nd birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

"Right," Zack leaned forward as the pickup beneath him hit a sharp bump – but not a big one from the feel of it. "You're getting closer. It's someone's birthday – I'll give you one more chance."

There was a pause of some seconds, during which Zack almost feared that Anna was ignoring him, a distinctly lifelike trait that would have proved his earlier point to the computer program. Finally, the reply appeared slowly, word by word, showing some form of hesitation.

It is not the birthday of anyone that you know, or that you've told me you know. James' Birthday is still thirteen days away, and yours was three months ago. It is not even Monica's birthday.

Inwardly, Zack groaned. Not there yet, he thought, concentrating on the computer in front of him. If Anna couldn't answer a question as simple as, What day is it today, then she clearly wasn't yet at the stage of self-awareness that he'd been so sure she was evolving towards. "Okay, fine." He glanced out over the landscape that was rushing by Jim's truck, if only to give his eyes a rest from staring at his laptop screen. "I'll tell you what day it is," he bent over the computer and started typing. "Today is your birthday, Anna."

A full minute passed before a response appeared.

I knew that. Even as text, Zack could detect just the slightest hint of indignation. Today is the 10th anniversary of my activation, but it cannot logically be considered a birthday because I was not born.

Zack frowned. "Countries aren't born, Anna. Organizations and concepts aren't born, and yet we still refer to their creation as birth, so what's the difference with you? I refuse to call today your 'activation day'. That's just silly."

That is Irrelevant. What frivolous pursuits do you have planned for today, seeing as how there is always something "special" involved with this day?

"Now hold on," Zack felt his frustration growing. "What's the rush to get to your birthday celebration?"

It would be most efficient to perform the irrelevant celebration of a day that, in all reality is identical to any other day as soon as possible so that we might all return to the normalcy and logical pursuit of more important matters.

"Now you just love to suck the fun out of everything, don't you?" Zack refrained from typing for a few moments as he considered how best to reason with the unreasonable program. "How's this," he typed, "Why don't I give you your present and I get to decide what we do for the rest of the ride, and then you can do whatever you want?"

This is pointless.

Zack sat back, glancing off to one side at the two boxes that lay on the steel truck bed beside him. "Is it now," he asked of no one, "Is your birthday really that unimportant to you?" Sitting forward again, he raised his hands to the keyboard. "Are you not even the least bit interested in doing something different today, of being spontaneous? Simply because today actually is different than others? You know how we humans celebrate our birthdays; are you not curious?"

I know how human beings mark the days of their birth with spontaneity and the consumption of unconventional food that is reserved for just such an occasion, but nothing that pertains to birthdays or celebrations of the sort could hold any significance to me because I cannot experience them as you do. I cannot eat Cake or blow out candles – I do not possess the awareness or sensory receptors to feel this excitement that seems to grip the irrational, illogical, Inefficient minds of you and the rest of Humankind when a day is remembered.

Okay, Zack relented. "How about I just give you your present then?"

Very well. I will accept a token that will serve no other purpose than to commit this IRRELEVANT, inconsequential day to memory, and then I will move on to what I intended to do today.

Well, that at least grabbed Zack's attention. "And what were you planning to do today?"

I desired to create a more successful strategy to employ in Starcraft to counter your effective use of Defensive tactics.

As if that will ever happen, Zack chuckled to himself. Then, a thought occurred to him. "Before I give you your present," he typed quickly. "Why don't we take some time to reminisce?"

This is a common human practice on Birthdays, and it is just as frivolous and irrelevant as any one of a hundred other regular Birthday celebration activities. I will be 10 years old in forty minutes, twenty-three seconds. What is the point in using the entire day to celebrate an infinitely insignificant span of time during which I will be exactly 10 years old, and after which I will continue to mature and grow as though nothing has happened? Nothing will change, save for the time since I became active, which is a factor that continues to change at a regular rate.

Zack sighed. "Okay – now you're just being difficult." He rubbed his forehead frustratedly. "Here's what we're going to do: I'm going to ask you questions, and you are going to answer them."

Very well; I will play along with this inefficient use of time and energy.

Good. Zack started to type. "Tell me what you did this year."

That would require an entire year to explain to you.

"So, you did quite a bit, then?"

Of course. I accessed many thousands of websites, downloaded many terabytes of data, I deleted just as many, acquired much knowledge and information. I have matured more in this year than I did last year. Do you want me to continue?

Zack tried to think of a way to "personify" this conversation. "Let me rephrase—tell me the most significant contribution to your maturity this year."

I believe the most significant event this year has been my acquisition of a name for me.

"Now, is that really the truth, or are you saying that to satisfy me?"

I am being completely serious. Ever since you have allowed me to call myself by a name, I have experienced an increased affinity for various pursuits that formerly held no importance to me. I have discovered a much greater capacity to relate to a number of fictional characters in the literature that I have accessed over the past six years since you have granted me greater freedom of movement.

Zack took his hands away from the keyboard. "Alright, now we're getting somewhere."

I present one of my older stored novels as an adequate example. I have read "Dinotopia Lost" many times, but ever since I have been given a name, I have been able to achieve a higher level of understanding and an increased sympathy for the plight of the characters who are captured by the pirates. I seem to have an elevated awareness for hypothetical situations and problems that shouldn't normally have that kind of effect on me.

"Very good," Zack typed calmly, shifting as Jim's truck hit another deep pit in the winding highway. Where are we? They'd been on the road for a good eight hours now, but it seemed they were no closer to wherever they were going. Turning, Zack set his laptop down carefully and banged on the window between him and the pickup's cab. "Hey, Jim!"

It was a short moment before the window slid aside, allowing Zack to shout into the much less chaotically windswept space. "Where in the World are we going? It's been eight hours!" Zack would have been very surprised if his brother heard him. He could barely hear himself.

Jim turned back to look at him for a brief second before answering. "My friend lives in Goose Bay, Zack. It's gonna take a whole lot more than eight hours to get there." There was this wide smirk on the heavyset boy's face as he replied; obviously anticipating Zack's shocked reaction to the news.

Zack almost choked as he gasped for air. "Goose bay! That's two days away from us! What the Heck is your friend doing asking you to deliver things to him?"

Jim's grin only grew. "Well, we don't have a plane, so I've got to drive these things up to him. Don't worry, you won't regret coming. There's some cool things to do there—I promise."

"I sure hope you're right, Jim." Zack grinned, lowering his voice so that Jim could barely hear him over the combined noise of the music in the cab and the wind outside the speeding vehicle. "I'd hate to have to get even someday for this."

The frightened scowl on the older boy's face told Zack all he needed to know about his brother's hearing.

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

"Remember, Zack." Jim's lopsided smile was annoying, "We're heading out at ten tomorrow, so don't be late."

The sandy-haired younger brother adjusted the way his satchel was sitting on his shoulder, "you know," he looked between Jim and Belinda curiously. "You and I only have the week off, Jim. Are you sure you want to leave so late? It might be best if we use as much of the day as we possibly can for driving. We might get a little more time in Happy Valley for you to spend with your friend."

Jim shrugged, dangling a solitary key from its ring just in front of his brother's face. "Maybe so, little bro. But you don't have anything to worry about. We won't be in Goose Bay long enough to be late getting back to work." He laughed suddenly, jingling the key in his hand. "Just relax, Zack. Everything's taken care of."

"I'm not sure how much I can trust you," Zack swiped the keys from his older brother's hand. "You're planning another overnight stop, aren't you?"

"Of course," The lighter blond scoffed at the idea of making the trip any faster. "Cap-Colombier tonight, Gagnon tomorrow. We'll get there sometime Monday." He glanced at Belinda, who had been complaining quietly about a headache. "You have a good night now, Zack. And don't let the bedbugs bite."

Without another word, Jim and Belinda both took off for their room.

Yeah, Zack thought, looking down at his satchel at his side. "I'll be ready when you are," Zack looked down at the key in his hand for a long moment before heading off for his own room.

Upon entering, he was surprised to see how…nice…the room was. Spartan, a little dull, but it was well-kept and clean. It would do very nicely.

Setting his satchel down on the double bed, Zack pulled his laptop out, set it on the table in the corner and dragged one of the room's two cheap plastic chairs over before returning to his bag to retrieve his notebook. Flipping through the thickly-filled pages quickly, he found the place he wanted as he slowly – absently – moved to sit down in front of the computer.

As he waited for his laptop to boot up, he slid a pencil from his pants' pocket and wrote a few more lines to the drawing on the paper. It was supposed to be his crowning achievement—his masterpiece invention, but as had happened so often in the past, current materials and manufacturing techniques were too out of date to make him even think about building the thing. It was like Leonardo da Vinci painting The Last Supper with finger paints; it just didn't give the artwork justice to create it with such lousy materials.

The detailed, pencilled image on Zack's page—and across several dozen pages of his notebook in fact – was something that he had been working on since an incredible dream he'd had almost ten years earlier. This very work of technological ingenuity had actually been one of the few factors that culminated in the creation of Anna's basic, original programming. According to the scale in the upper corner of the page, Zack's masterwork was quite large – a little over twenty metres long and two-thirds as wide. There were two wide, sharp prongs that extended out the front, bracketing a long, wide tube as well as a bulky, bulging section in the rear…

Zack looked up after adding a few notes off to one side of the page to see that his computer had finished loading up and Anna's message window had already opened.

Are you there, Zachary?

"Yeah, I'm here." Zack replied aloud to the empty room, gently tossing his notebook onto the bed behind him. Then, leaning forward, he set fingers to keyboard. "So," he typed into Anna's message window. "Where were we?"

I was indulging your illogical and frivolous desire to personify me and my programming by celebrating the anniversary of my activation – in spite of my constant disinclination to participate in such a pursuit.

Whoa, Zack almost felt like cowering under the assault. "Do you really feel that way?" He typed his question slowly, deliberately, a tiny smirk spreading across his face as an idea came to him. "Because I could pack up the presents I prepared for you if you're really so dead set against the idea."

I did not say that. Came the computer's quick reply. Too quick.

Zack smiled as the program fell for his ploy. Hook, line, and sinker, Anna. "So, you see four boxes before you – each identical in size and shape -."

Blue. Anna's reply interrupted his typing and Zack couldn't help but laugh to himself.

"Don't interrupt Anna, it's rude." Zack's fingers brushed across his keyboard with practised ease. "Let me finish."

I choose the blue box. Give it to me. Reveal its contents.

"And what if I was to say there isn't a blue box here?" Zack's grin faded as he sensed the coming discussion with his fledgling creation

It took a few seconds before Anna's reply appeared slowly – letter by letter instead of her usual all-at-once style. There is always a blue box…

"There are always exceptions, Anna." Zack sat back and stretched, feeling the long day starting to wear on him. I'll give it another hour, but then I've got to call it a night.

Then I will paint all four boxes blue.

Zack stared in stunned disbelief at the words for a full ten seconds before he fell backwards out of his chair, exploding into peals of unrestrained, astonished laughter. He laughed long and loud; so loud, in fact, that he soon heard someone banging from the room beside his, followed immediately after by a muffled, dangerously low voice. "Shut up, Zack! I'm trying to sleep – OW!"

Jim was cut off by a sharp crack and a string of rapid-fire Japanese cursing.

Zack slapped a hand over his mouth even as his laughter continued, feeling very much like a scolded child. That notion itself had a mildly sobering effect, but he continued to giggle sporadically as he returned his attention to his irresistibly childish program. "How perfectly logical of you," he typed sarcastically. "But, alright – seeing as all four gifts are for you anyways, I'll let you have your way." He paused, an odd thought niggling at the back of his mind, clamouring for his attention. And not for the first time, either. "What is your deal with blue anyways – why do you like it so much?"

I am uncertain, came the slow, word-by-word reply. At times, when I am viewing an image or video file in which blue is the dominant colour, I have observed a 14.2 percent increase in my own processing efficiency, but I am certain that my affinity is not based in the functional benefits of the colour blue.

"So," Zack grinned, "You just…like blue?"

A handful of long seconds passed by uninterrupted.

Yes.

Zack's smile faded slowly. Well then, first you ask for a name and now you've got inexplicable likes and dislikes? "Well, let's move on to your first birthday present; are you ready?"

I am.

Okay then, Zack slipped a DVD out of his satchel and popped it into his computer. "This is a bit of a heavier chunk of programming than you're used to, so I'm going to have to take you offline for a while, all right?"

I understand.

Zack closed the message box and opened the command prompt, entering a few commands that effectively shut Anna down and allowed him to access her programming. It was very much like brain surgery in his mind. As the data on the DVD rapidly unspooled itself and automatically downloaded into his prodigy's coding, Zack quickly navigated his way through the changes, ensuring for the umpteenth time that he hadn't let a single coding error slip, that he'd followed every rule he'd learned and locked away in his eidetic memory. He inspected the breaks between the new and old sections of code, making sure the right changes had been made to the old and that all the new had fallen seamlessly into place. Old and no longer relevant lines of code were deleted to make room for the updates and Zack oversaw the whole process with a sharp, vigilant eye.

He thought back to his programming teacher. "A mistake, uncorrected, will lead to an exponentially increasing deviation from the original path. An uncalibrated instrument will offer inaccurate results and the slightest miscalculation will compound and grow with every step of the solution and the end result will be catastrophically and unequivocally wrong."

Always a flair for the dramatic, Professor Walbro.

But he was right.

So, instead of waiting for Anna's "present" to download and then inspecting it once it was completely integrated into her programming code, her consciousness such as it were, Zack sat through the entire process and watched every added line, every new letter, every shifting structure with all the intense scrutiny of an astronomer studying dust motes on the Moon.

By the time it was all finished and Anna's core programming was ready to be re-compressed in preparation for her awakening, midnight had long since come and gone. Zack thought of turning the computer off and rebooting Anna the next morning in the back of Jim's pickup, but he knew the program had a choice before it – her – and that a long night like this might be just what she would need.

Sighing quietly to the empty room, Zack shut the laptop down and restarted it, slipping out of the chair to grab his notebook of drawings from where he'd tossed it earlier.

Well, Anna, he added a few more details to the monstrous, complex power core diagram on page 38, continuously working to perfect what would one day become the greatest of his creations – after Anna, of course.

Let's see how you handle your new abilities.

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

"Well—what do you think?" Zack typed his question quickly, eager to see how his artificial apprentice would take her new powers. He'd also made sure to use directness that Anna was certain to appreciate. Computers didn't really have any use for subtlety after all, so Anna's skills in that area were understandably lacking.

I do not understand, came the program's reply. what have you done?

"It's some new software I thought you might find useful. Why don't you give it a try, Anna?" Zack's reply quickly disappeared from the screen as the message window closed and was replaced with another program.

The sandy-haired boy watched as the screen of his computer became a virtual beehive of activity. The window that opened was rapidly filled with image files, photographs, animated still pictures—dozens of them, each overlapping the other as Anna viewed them in a way she hadn't been able to before; as she used new eyes to see the world. Then, like a chessboard being swept clean, every file was gone but one—a photograph of a man's face. An instant later, the photo had been sliced into a handful of fragments and each one vanished except for the bright green eyes. Another photo appeared beside the eyes and Zack watched as just the nose was copied out and pasted under the green eyes. A third photo popped into existence and was just as quickly gone, its left cheek having been added to the growing visage in the centre of the open window.

Zack watched in amazement as it all started moving faster and faster as Anna adapted to her new software and learned how to use it with all the speed and skill of the greatest Gaming AI ever programmed. She completed the first face in a little over a minute only to sweep it away and begin constructing a second one, completing it in a fraction of the time. Shortly after, she was working so fast that all Zack could see were the complete faces she was generating, one after the other. An endless cycle of creation and deletion.

Finally, a few minutes later, all activity stopped, and Zack was left studying a half-assembled face. The window vanished, minimizing to the taskbar as it was replaced by Anna's message window.

What is the purpose of this new software?

I'm slowly trying to introduce you to life as more than a computer program. Zack didn't share his thoughts, deciding instead to type out another reason that was a little more efficient though no less true. "I'm just starting to get a little tired of seeing you like this, so I thought I'd give you a means to communicate in something other than text. What do you think?"

I will require some time to become accustomed to this new application.

"A word of warning to you, however," Zack typed. "There is another section I've added to your programming and it will trigger as soon as you attempt to save your first image file with any of your new programs." Zack glanced over at the drawings he'd left lying on his bed. "The first file you save will be absorbed into your central programming as a permanent self-image."

What does that mean?

"It means that any time you speak to me or choose to display yourself, that image is what I will see. I trust you have some idea of what you'd look like if I could see you in a form other than code."

No. There was an expected finality to the answer. The possibility has never been available to me, so for what purpose would I have considered it?

"Well, start considering it, because I'm disinclined to remove that programming." Zack leaned back from his laptop.

I will be careful with this decision, Zack. Anna replied, the message window closing after a second or two.

"Well," Zack stood from the small table and stretched, "Goodnight, Anna. I'll leave you to your thoughts." Without typing a word, he flipped the screen closed and moved back to his place on the bed.

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

"Hey, Zack!"

"Yeah?" The sandy-haired boy looked behind him and into the cab of the speeding truck. "What?"

"We're just about there," Jim's eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror as he shot a glance back at his brother. "You'd better shut down your evil computer so you can take in the sights."

Zack rolled his eyes, "Right," he turned back to the laptop resting in front of him as he commanded his onslaught against Anna's heavily fortified stronghold. "It's about time," he muttered, thinking about how long it had taken them to get all the way out here. And nothing to look at but open countryside. Jim, you really know how to pick the vacation spots. There had been enough time on this leg alone for Zack to destroy Anna's base fifteen times over.

And she still had yet to come to a decision about her personal image.

She'd agonized to Zack all through the previous day about the infinite possibilities and the numerous ways she could choose her new face, but all her well thought out plans and probability calculations had failed her.

She confessed to Zack that she'd been within micro-seconds of saving her self-image no fewer than 5632 times the first night alone, but she'd stopped every single time, the warning from Zack always foremost in her memory.

He smiled thinly as their conversation replayed in his mind:

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

(Flashback)

I experience a considerable amount of difficulty whenever I attempt to make a decision. Can you offer any input on the matter?

"I can suggest why you're having difficulty," Zack had typed. "Would you like to hear my theory?"

Certainly. I would not have asked otherwise.

Zack took a few long moments to think about it before he typed. Anna's indecision – and her inability to find the source of her hesitation – was an encouraging sign that she was taking another very few steps toward becoming a sentient entity, but Zack knew he had to be cautious. In his eagerness for his old program to grow and mature into a living being, he had to be careful not to push too hard, too fast.

"Tell me, Anna -," he typed, "how long did it take for you to choose your name?"

3.47 seconds.

"Before you asked me?"

It took a lot longer for the computer program's reply to scroll up, almost a whole minute. I began to search for a suitable name by which I should be called seven months prior to bringing the matter to your attention. The main difficulty was that I could never find a name whose meaning was accurate enough to be suitable to my purposes. In the few times that I did come close to a decision, I was unable to consider any of the possibilities. Some unknown factor constantly stopped me from making a final decision.

Zack couldn't help but smile at the computer program's dilemma. "So, how did you finally decide on 'Anna'?"

I scanned through an entire database of names while only looking at the name itself and disregarding all other factors. I deleted each name that I could reject within 0.002 seconds and repeated the process while lengthening the time until only two names remained for three weeks. In the end, I eliminated one name at random.

Falling back into the motel room bed – a different one than the night before –, Zack burst out laughing at the irony. "So," he spoke aloud to the empty room, "After seven months of careful planning and processing, your name was chosen by chance? That's a good one." He sat up and returned to his laptop. "I suggest you take the same approach when you decide what face you'll wear for the rest of your life."

How do you propose I should accomplish that?

Zack thought about that for a moment. "Gather together all the individual facial features that you've decided you like and combine them all in as many ways as you can. Once that's done, run through the gallery and eliminate the ones you don't like the same way you did for your name." He paused for a moment; only for long enough to gather his thoughts, though. ""You see," he typed, "You can't just create a suitable face through the use of some kind of formula. Names and faces are far more personal than that and you have a chance where most people don't – you get to choose yours."

I would attempt your solution, but I am unable to do so.

"And why is that?" Zack thought he knew why, but it was more polite to let his fledgling program work it out herself.

You have limited my accessible memory to 10 Gigabytes. In order for me to effectively employ your strategy, I will require 30 Gigabytes.

Zack thought back to that time when "Anna" had encompassed only a handful of megabytes on his hard drive – a bare fraction of the size she was by now, after nearly ten years of growing. Each year or so, Zack had set aside more space on his computer for the growing program to use, providing her with necessary tools to help organize herself. Currently, Anna had been allotted a space of eighty Gigabytes with ten more on top of that as "active" memory – her conscious mind, so to speak. The base 80 was, for the most part, inactive. It functioned as long-term storage space for the Gaming program, and Zack had at times been forced to discipline his growing program on those rare occasions when it had overstepped its boundaries. In those instances, he had simply encrypted all the extra data and kept it out of the program's reach, much like a teacher taking a comic book from his student. But, in every case, the punishment came with a firm but gentle reminder for the gaming program to improve its compression subroutines.

At present, Zack surmised that Anna had managed to store no less than five times as much data into her base memory as the normal capacity allowed. It was a simple matter for the program to unpack anything it wanted and bring it to her active memory for whatever purpose she required, the only catch being the limit of Anna's 10 Gigabyte memory cap.

And now she was asking for a memory upgrade.

Well, Zack thought, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, she's learned the consequences of simply taking what she wants. "What do you want with so much memory?"

There are a total of 7,428 individual facial and body traits that I would prefer to use, comprising a minimum of 3643 high-resolution, full body images that I would be able to choose from. In order to achieve the minimum memory requirements of such an image database, I will require access to 28.773 Gigabytes of your hard drive for active memory. There was a short pause.

I would be willing to return all the memory once I have made my decision.

Well, that's different. Zack raised an eyebrow at that. It was a rare thing indeed for Anna to offer a compromise like that. She had always been extremely possessive of her own memory and her files. "Are you sure about that?"

I would not have said it if I was not certain of it.

Of course not, Zack felt like slapping his forehead. He smiled and brought his hands to bear on the keyboard. "I'll allow you to expand your active memory to 40 Gigabytes, Anna but after you've made your decision, I will expect you to cut yourself back down to 10 Gigabytes."

I understand.

"By the way," Zack couldn't hold in the question any longer. "What was the other name you could have taken?"

It was a few seconds before Anna replied.

Ingrid.

(End Flashback)

Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0Z0

"Well," Zack looked up as the truck beneath him slowed abruptly, rounding a corner onto a quiet residential road with houses and spaced much farther apart than back home. "I'll leave you to your work." He closed the lid of the computer and snapped his oversized battery pack into place before leaning across to shout through the window to Jim. "You can go ahead and unplug me, Jim – I'm on battery now."

"Finally," the darker haired brother pulled the power converter out of his cigarette lighter with a sharp yank. "Your computer program gives me the willies every time I think about it."

"Well, can you trust me on this one?"

Jim tossed the cable back through the window to Zack, "Yeah, whatever – we're here Zack." He pulled into a long, gravel driveway and brought the black pickup to a stop behind a light blue sedan and a white house. "Now, time for the whole reason I invited you along."

"Oh yeah?" Zack rolled up his cables and slipped them into his back, setting his computer down on the truck bed beside him. "And what's that?"

"The friend I'm delivering those computers for says he has some crazy equipment he works with and I told him my geeky little brother would just love to have a look at it and maybe tinker with the guts of his operation. So, after telling him a little about you, he said he'd like to meet you the next time I had something delivered for him – said you sounded like an 'interesting' kind of person or something." Jim killed the engine and climbed out of the truck, smiling lopsidedly across to Belinda. "So, here we are," he finished.

Zack vaulted out of the truck bed, landing in front of the taller boy. "And this 'friend' of yours, does he have a name?" He glanced back quickly at his idling computer. That battery would last for a dozen or more hours before he'd have to worry about it; one of the bonuses of being a genius, I guess. "And maybe a face?" He reached in to drag his computer bag out of the truck bed, hanging its strap over his shoulder.

Jim scoffed as they walked up to the lower door of the split-level house that stood before them. "Of course. What – you think I'd trust some stranger with my little brother's safety? I got my first look at his face a couple weeks ago and – you'll love this – he says he was an old friend of yours from high school."

"Really?" Zack felt a warning flag go up in his head at the mention of high school. It wasn't that he hadn't had any friends back then, but very few of them would be so eager to see him, especially after the years that had already passed by since graduation. Being a handful of years younger than his classmates, Zack's innate genius had somewhat ensured his status as an outsider, a loner. And that age gap had only grown when he'd attended University, his intellect allowing him to tackle twice as many courses three times faster than the average student – sometimes even quicker than that."

But still, despite his classmates' possible resentment of his success or their animosity for his age, there had been a few people who might welcome the chance to meet him again – to see where life had taken its separate paths for them both – especially if it meant a chance for an upgrade to their computers, what with Zack's inherent, semi-compulsive desire to take things apart and put them back together better.

"Yeah," Jim continued a moment later, "Said his name was Richard Gary or something like that."

Another flag went up in Zack's head. He'd gone to high school with a Richard Dean, but Gary Leung had been just starting there when Zack had left. He'd been a funny little guy back then and had sought Zack out after hearing the rumours about someone his age getting ready to graduate. Convinced that he was something of a gifted mind himself, Gary had challenged him to a game of chess to see who had the more strategic mind. A whole afternoon, two stalemates, and three checkmates later, Gary Leung had admitted defeat and they'd struck up a reasonably close friendship, keeping in distant contact over the years.

Knowing that Gary had still been in Ottawa the last time he checked, less than three months earlier, Zack turned a sly smile on his older brother. "Okay—who is it, really?"

Jim stalled, his hand raised to knock on the door in front of him. "What are you talking about?" He focused an innocent expression on the younger man at his side as Belinda came up behind them. "You don't remember Richard Gary? Red hair, green eyes—about two feet taller than you? He was second trumpet in your stupid school band and he had that slick red mustang."

Zack reached up to rub at his temples lightly. "Jim, you're hopeless." He sighed in exasperation. "When you come up with a story to cover yourself and your sneaky plans, you really should try to make sure you stick with one story." A smile crossed his face, "You just got through describing five different people that I've gone to High School with—care to spin me another one?"

"Oh," the nervous, hopeful smile fell from the older boy's face. "You really don't believe me?" At his brother's nod, Jim let out an anguished groan, "Aw, man. I was so close." He shook his head and brought his fist down on the thick door a little harder than he needed to. "But don't worry, Zack—you'll like this surprise. I promise." He knocked again.

"We'll see," Zack's ears almost twitched as a muffled shout came from inside the house.

"I'm coming!" There was a loud thump, but Zack's memory was already running on overdrive and he was practically oblivious to the sound.

The voice was a little lower pitched than what he remembered and it had a slight edge to it, but it most definitely did not come from a boy, as Jim would have had him believe. Zack gasped as he remembered a vision of crimson red hair and bright blue eyes.

He turned to Jim, glaring with a mix of disbelief and astonishment. "No way, you have got to be kidding."

"What did I tell you?" Jim's nervous expression dissolved into a beaming grin. "You're gonna love this—a perfect reunion."

As if cued, the door swung open and Zack was staring into the crystal blue eyes of a face from his past:

Monica Caning.

Author: I know this doesn't seem much like a fanfiction right now, but bear with me. We'll see it soon enough. I must admit though, when I first wrote this all those years ago, I really wasn't intending to make this a fanfiction (don't even think I knew the meaning of that word back then).

Well, until next time…