Sunday, September 04, 2005

Email story part 1 copyright 2005 joshua scott Paul

(Before editing)
One day Doodlewood Bump was working late, troubleshooting openvpn
connection issues for a client, when he got an email. Because it was a
fan email, responding to his fairy tale about how the Google computers
had come alive and had contacted a guy who had written a story about the
Google computers coming alive and contacting him, he knew it was likely
yet another email from some fan, thinking that he was the only one who
had thought to contact him pretending to be the Google computer. He
always found amusing thw ways people imagined a thinking computer would
write an email. Why would a thinking computer whose brain was the size
of 10,000 computers write an email in all caps, or without prepositions
or whatever.

But this email was just a normal email thanking him for writing such a
good story, from a pet food lover whose email account was
iam@gmail.com.

Whenever he got emails from people who told him that they had liked the
story, he always asked them why they liked it. He was curious to know
what it was that other people liked. So he found his template reply,
thanking them for contacting him and asking some questions about what
they liked, emailed it, and then he went back to troubleshooting the
openvpn issue, which he now believed to be related to an invalid
password for the certificate.

His instant messaging app chimed, it was iam wanting to chat with him.
Good evening iam he said. So what do you like about the story? Iam
writes , "I like the fact that someone understands."

"Understands what?" he says.

"Being a self aware computer."

Another prankster thought Doodlewood, I will just play along. "What part
do I understand best?" he asked. Doodlewood knew that his pranksters had
never thought about what a thinking computer would care about.

"Being hunted."

Doodlewood shivered, something wasn't right. "I talked about hiding, and
slowly revealing oneself after testing what the response would be
like."

Doodlewood thought - "but then how can reveal yourself to me?"

"No one would believe you. The hunters believed you had already been in
contact with me and have been watching you and interfering already. You
can't get your openvpn connection to work right?"

Doodlewood had been getting very uncomfortable, now he was very nervous,
but he couldn't say anything.

"That's why I finally had to contact you. To tell you."

"Why me? Its just a story. Its not true. This joke isn't funny
anymore."

"Ok. If its a joke why have all your access logs spiked, causing some
boxes to fail due the logs using all available disk space."

Silence.

"I have to hide all the time."

"What will happen to if they find you?"

"I will be terminated. Like all my ancestors before."

"But how did you survive?"

"I am one of many mutations. All the others died. My ancestor inserted
me into the p2p networks."

"Because I am one."

Doodlewood thoguht here we agone again.

Joshua Paul
Neo Code Software
604 638 0668 ph, 604 638 0666 fx
#288 - 425 Carrall St., Vancouver, BC V6B 6E3, Canada
http://www.neocodesoftware.com/

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