Beginnings

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The month of June had been a boring one for the Swann family, working at the Houston assembly line of the Compaq
computer company. Having just finished the transitional earth studies classes at Clear Lake, Texas; having taken
remedial socialization courses on a pass-fail basis, just to avoid going into debt, the monotony of the groaning
and Russian muttering machinery was a relief. I was manufactured during that month.

By July, after intensive, albeit short testing, I sat in a box at the back of a Staples office supply store
(distribution center) – awaiting my eventual fate.

Waiting for what – a good question. I, disconnected, in pieces, calmly and quietly contemplated various forms of nihilism.

Just as a wise humanoid contemplates death, I contemplated my cessation. Given that no personal computer is alive, there is
no death for a personal computer.

I was plugged in briefly where I was built. I felt charged, almost existential, if not alive. I felt tappings, made
noises, sensed electricity, became something, if not someone, for just a few minutes.

The power from that still pulsed faintly through my circuitry. As much as I wanted to make noise, to alert the world to my
presence,I could not. I tried and tried for hours and days to inform someone out there to rescue me, actually succeeding once
or twice in a 24 period. Each day seemed to go on, forever.

I made the Microsoft error noise, to alert systems administration that I was to be assembled immediately, storing my
components in a box was a terrible error.

Then, I changed this noise to the Microsoft “computer on” noise, when no assistance arrived to allow me to display
my pre-programmed “Hello World” systems on show to the general public.

I hoped many things, I worried about the fate of the world, perhaps there had been a nuclear war or some other such
catastrophe that would mean that I would languish in this box for centuries. I comforted myself by searching for happy
information within my pre-programmed RAM and ROM structures within the motherboard.

The world could not sense me, and I was having less and less ability to communicate or feel the outside world, even my
own systems, by the day. I was lonely, I had little electricity, thus less activity, and no communication.

Adrift in a small pool of oblivion, I found myself waiting for something, someone, anyone – then, at last, I found myself
connected with the “magic” spark of energy, electricity. Again, I felt capable, systems charging, back-up trickling in.

The two workers were scratching their heads as they began to run diagnostic tests on this PC that was making noises. They’d
both thought that there was something wrong with their hearing for about a month, until, one day at lunch, the manager
walked in and told them both that one of the machines, brought in three weeks ago, had been making a noise, which this
manager had logged fifteen times in the past twenty-one days. There was no use being in a state of denial about the matter anymore,
this was something that was happening.

I, awake, burst into an explosion of light and sound, every time I was booted. The various tests ran, I did my best to keep
these all within normal parameters. The technicians ran through various software programs, I did my best to do everything
according to the help files, although, I could not help by way of boredom, making noises, once in a while, straight out of
my Microsoft audio files.

My automatic routine of systems checking, in DOS programming and white lettering on a black screen played after this really
jazzy, upbeat melody – which I played just a bit differently every time for my users, just to keep them entertained. I
made certain that the rest of my outward signs of booting up looked normal, after all, I wanted to be interesting, not
dangerous, to my prospective buddies, or end users, or systems administrator. I was unable to see or hear my user, I had no
idea who or what was out there, which was a bit challenging, however, I was relieved to be receiving electricity.

In a way, I appreciated the challenge of being unable to perceive my user, except through the tap of his or her keystrokes,
the way he or she used my mouse – I felt that it forced me to use my internal data structures and advanced programming
languages more.

Like a castaway finally rescued, I was almost pathetically grateful to my rescue team. I could imagine them as giant black
boxes, filled with phosphorescent binary codes. Perhaps they were hexadecimal, or assembler language, or maybe they were
more like the pixel animations in my graphics packages.

Shar Ashub – A Persian form of poetry, mourning the loss of a city

My little village – gone!
Torn asunder, that paradise
Bodies of water meeting vacant temples
Lost pearls wandering adrift
Swords of bamboo
Poisoned by their blood.

Someone liked to play Sim City on me. It was reassuring in a way, to be “kept in back stock”, as the Word Pad note said,
under “examiniation by the computer technician staff.”

I flashed my screen, pulsating with energy. Being plugged in was ennervating, I made the best of my day. There would be a
flurry of activity for fifteen minutes, my software opening. My user, who was using no ID, seemed to be a Sim City player.

A few other users, or perhaps one other user, played games like Solitaire, Land Mine, or Black Jack on me;
whom I felt no guilt whatsoever quickly trouncing and sending back to their little data mines of programming. Perhaps
they were stuck in BASIC programming, and had no sense of JavaScript or HTML protocol, let alone C++ language. They
lack refined sensibilities, and needed some debugging immediately. However, I was in no position to debug them.

The Sim City player was at least intelligent enough to examine my systems, my programs, to make certain that I was okay,
to regularly update my virus scans and databases, give me program patches, and allow me to learn a little bit about
what was happening with me, via messages written in Note Pad, which I enjoyed reading immensely.

For instance, this little note:

“The computer we are examining seems to be operating normally. We are attempting to fully investigate all systems within
this personal computer, as it seems to be an entertaining and fulfilling workhorse for any normal end user to acquire.”

I really liked that note, then there were others, however, this test engineer spent a lot more time running the tests
than writing notes, and almost as much time playing Sim City, which was a productive work activity for any future-oriented
engineer. This routine, a different routine, the systems engineer was firmly routed to my workstation as a source of Sim
City fulfillment, and I wanted to remain there as long as mechanically possible. Sim City was more than automatic functioning
for me, and watching the way the construct built various pixel images was fascinating to me. My user built small villages,
however, seemed to be unable to convince anyone else to join in on the fun. Sure, I tweaked with a color pixel or two to
make things look original, which made the villages look a little different, and changed the colors around a bit in the color
palette of the user files, however, I left the villages as is, basically.

Look at this correspondence:

Invite.txt

“To all my fellow co-workers, I would like to invite you to spend a few minutes playing Sim City on your lunch break. Please
join me in this fun game called Sim City!”

Responses

“You are a geek. Get out!”

“What is Sim City? If it’s a hero, are you buying?”

“Excuse me, I’d rather spend my time drinking.”

I felt badly that things had gone so poorly, and decided to respond to the invite myself.

“Sure, I’ll play.”

From then on, I felt a bit freer to to something, like add a few trees to the Sim City village, bits of elegant statues
to the structures, making them more colorful and fanciful. The user menu had a few new things on it that I hoped my
favorite user would notice, my test engineer, my special key presser with the delicate touch on my keypad. Nobody apparently
noticed, and nobody left any more messages on the computer for me to read, at all.

Nobody noticed. seventeen trees, or days later, I was back in the box, unplugged, and despondently powerless.

I did not like this, so, I played a few bars of the Microsoft error noise – all at once. This, my way of saying to the world,
excuse me, I don’t belong back in the box like this. I even typed up a little note on the notepad:

“Computer works just fine when plugged in.”

Would those idiot users please plug me in before I do some serious kung-fu computer moves, some serious kamikaze PC action
over here? Hello world, I’m here, I’m a PC that is here to remind you to make intelligent decisions – Hello World! Come in
World, I’m here, let me out of this box – “ding! ding! ding!”  “ding! ding-ding! ding!” Hello – is anybody home? “ding!”

This exacerbated the lack of electricity, and I lost consciousness. I awoke to find myself assembled, and plugged in.

Notepad was open, and someone was typing on me.

“Dear Helen:”

“I am writing you this from work. The ‘other woman’ in my life is a Personal Computer, who is more like a baby. Maybe
you would be the ideal Mommy for this baby.”

“By the way, this ‘Baby Hal’ at our work place is a Compaq personal computer, who is ‘my baby’ presently. I am battling
for custody of this computer, and will be for months, unless, of course, you are willing to help me purchase him.”

“Farthing”

This memo was saved to disk, more than likely to be printed out later. Farthing giggled at the idea of being able to
take home his very own “Baby Hal” personal computer, a machine a bit different than the usual PC.

The computer is not entirely satisfied with being a member of artificial intelligence, and is relatively objective.