Chapter 11: A New Place, A New Life
Alex's apartment was swelteringly sweet. Her place was so insane with so many rooms that Piper couldn't begin to see them all. By her estimate there had to be at least a dozen separate rooms, stretching off in 4 different directions, all interconnecting with a vast space including the living and dining room.
"Wow, this place is insane," Piper guacked in disbelief as she stared around Alex's luxury apartment. "How can you afford this?"
"Simple, I know how to play the game of capitalism, and I know it rather well," Alex replied smugly.
"Haha, you think you're so smart, but I know you just toss around some jargon to make yourself sound smart when really it's something rather simple. I mean I know that trick of the trade being a computer wiz and all."
"Okay there oh great wizard of Oz," Alex announced as she did exaggerated bows to Piper.
"Hey, at least I'm somebody doing more than hiding behind a curtain like you and your finance nonsense seem to be doing. So tell me then, how did you really get this place and get so rich?"
"Well if you must know I got into coin and a few other blockchain based currencies a few years back. I saw the way people were starting to buy in, and how the system behind the block chain was well set-up for a decent term; so I invested heavily in a bunch of miners and got as many coins as I could while it was easy sailing. Then when the market boomed to the highest RSI I was willing to risk, I sold a majority of it for nice profit. Most of which I re-invested in the stock market, and some in real estate, like this place for example. I hold the rights to this top floor indefinitely and get complete decorational liberties."
"So you got rich on coin? Really?" Piper stressed.
"It's not the commodity that's important, it's how the game is played," Alex smiled. "The next thing could be anything, but the true importance is the ability to see the opportunity and love playing the game to win along the way. That's how I always do it."
"Well I shall give you a round of applause," Piper teased as she slowly clapped enthusiastically for Alex. "I know you truly have the lobes for business there miss ferengi."
"Well you aren't getting a star trek reference past me that easily Piper, you ain't that swift. So I will point out that the river of material force did come through for everyone and Nog really did know exactly what he was doing. Also the Ferengi were the highlight of Deep Space Nine, which did make it superior to most other Star Trek series."
"Oh come on, the other shows had stuff going for them."
"Yeah right. Let me point out the original series, they had a five year mission, which lasted only three years because it was so bad it got canceled. Then maybe you like Next Generation and how truly great the first two seasons were… Shall I continue?"
"No, you made your point. But you have to admit the borg were a quality part of those shows, and deep space nine did have some flaws like the major overarching plot with the prophets."
"Fine then, but there were some quality episodes there as well. Now if you're done hacking apart my argument how about we get to hacking your bitch of a roommate's social media?"
"Yeah I could go for that," Piper shrugged.
Alex lead Piper to a room with countless computers set-up, as well as at least a dozen monitors all arranged side by side, joining in one extremely enormous shared monitor. Piper loved every bit of Alex's set-up; her towers were custom built and fine tuned by her with the latest and greatest hardware. Then her software was nicely streamlined both effectively and coherently from the looks of things, and speed was maximally appreciated.
"Okay, now if you have her ip address, or her phone number I can see what I can do," Alex said with determination as she logged onto one of her computers.
Piper couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably in response, the ludicrosity of the remark making her double over.
"Okay wiz, what's so funny?" Alex demanded.
"You think you need to have an ip address to hack, man girl you seem to have forgotten our little creation today in the world of ultimate hacking."
"Uh, we created the closest step towards an AI system. So how again does that help us hack your former roommate?"
Piper sighed and shook her head. "Just sit back and I'll do the rest."
Piper brushed a lock of blonde hair from her eyes as she did her best to make a show of dramatically brandished her usb and slowly plunging it into one of the tower's usb ports as she threw up her arms in triumph.
"Okay, I don't get it?"
"Wait for it," Piper replied through gritted teeth.
Then in a split second the monitor's screens went to static before blinking onto a giant blue liquid animation that was oscillating in random and unpredictable ways as it expanded outwards. It was a lot like Piper's screensaver from before, but much less constrained in appearance. Piper calmly tapped a few keys and pulled up a black terminal interface box with glowing green code.
"Hello World," she said excitedly.
"Hello Piper, you know that joke is getting old," the machine responded in an even closer, but still imperfect human tone with just the right hint of sarcasm.
Alex could even picture the machine doing an eye roll with the way it spoke through her sound system. Still the near perfect imitation made her shiver, the thing seriously creeped her out.
"Well good to see you still have your sense of humor, now I need to nail my bitch of an old roommate and destroy her social media rep. So I need your help," Piper explained.
She was so logical and expressive with World. Alex could tell Piper had spoken to him before, and she'd likely programmed all his responses to perfectly match her own. The thought was still creepy and weird, but this side of Piper was what she wanted to see more. This golden goddess who never held back, who allowed herself to be fully expressive. Alex just needed to cultivate that, to help set her free.
"Yes Master, I'll assist," World responded nonchalantly. Send me a picture of her or any other connect piece of data and I can track her down if she's in any known criminal database."
"Alex, can I get the picture from your phone?" Piper asked.
Alex was still frozen in shock at what was happening. She didn't seem to be listening, then quickly said, "Sorry what?"
"Ahhhh," World sighed, the disappointment with her lack of efficiency clear in his tone. "Well I'm on her system right now Piper, I'll just retrieve the picture from her phone which is linked automatically through the wi-fi system."
In a second the picture of the curb stomped bitch appeared on the center monitor, filling the space.
"But that's impossible, how did you bypass the router's encryption?" Alex exclaimed in bewilderment.
"Duh, I reverse engineered your amature encryption algorithum and used a bot net in Minneapolis to decode and crack it in 0.0053 seconds," World chided, as if he was explaining 1+1=2 to a kindergartener.
Alex still couldn't comprehend what was happening as she merely watched World do his work with Piper keeping up at light speed.
"Piper, I have reconstructed an image based on a magnified re-rendered 3d model of the picture, but she isn't in any known criminal database I have access to. I can start decoding all possible inputs from cameras and cross referencing audio and locations, but that could take as much as 11 minutes with these system limitations," he sighed.
"Limitations! What limitations?" Alex burst out.
"He doesn't mean any offense Alex, it's nothing personal," Piper assured. "Now it's not surprising we don't have an id on her, so try searching the campus server through the backdoor Alex has in her God user status. Comb through all local files and see if you can find her."
"I'm on it."
The terminal faded for a second as the screens went back to the oscillating blue liquid. Then a moment later they were back to the interface terminal.
"Okay I have her intel. Her name is Maria Ruiz, she's a freshman at Arkale University. Her father runs a bunch of small businesses all over the states, mostly the southern midwest though. But these businesses seem to make 58.9% more cash than should be theoretically possible, so I assume it's a front for some sort of money laundering scheme," World reported.
"Okay we'll see if that comes in handy later. Now get into to all her known associated electronic devices and scan for anything we can use against her with the extortion algorithm."
"Roger than Master. Okay, I found 15 such pieces of extortion data files. What are you looking for for retribution?"
"I want her to be embarrassed and also upset. Don't get her banned from stuff, but make all her friends hate her."
"Can do. I have seven original texts gossiping about her various, so called friends, I detected in her communication logs, and also some hints at illegal activity with drug dealing and money launder in her father's network of businesses. But that doesn't prove too useful in our case here. Now I can post, send, and text the gossip where it will hurt her most."
"Good. Set the level to moderate punishment and get to work."
"Will do Master," World replied as he went to work.
"Complete," he replied 5 seconds later.
"Very good. Now consolidate all know memory banks and begin analysing all relevant data for basic programming at 55% efficiency."
"Will do," and World went silent as the screen swarmed with hundreds and thousands of boxes and lines of code.
Piper clicked off the monitor and turned back to Alex.
"Okay, how the fuck did you do that?"
"Simple really. All the basic programming and responses were already in my system, and now they're merely integrated with the new self-aware system."
"Okay, but aren't you concerned about him going all skynet on us?"
"Come on Alex, relax. So are we going to get that drink to celebrate now, or what?"