“It wasn’t supposed to be functional.”
“No shit. I did create the motherfucker.”
“I love it when you spit when you’re angry.”
“Maybe I tell it to kick you in the dick.”
“Maybe you both shut up and we figure out what the hell happened.”
“Fine…dad.”
Martin isn’t really my dad, but being my immediate supervisor is close enough. What a dick though, the guy never has any time for sarcasm. We had been told to install this new processor into our Demolition Networking Interface Center aka “Demonetic”. I know its lame, but the guys who name the shit were on vacation. Moving on, Demonetic was meant to remotely disarm explosive devices through an electromagnetic pulse, EMP to the geniuses, located right above his ass, essentially where his “kidney” would be. However, being the engineering nerds we are that wasn’t fun enough. So we took a page out of the Terminator, took a boring computer tower and attached some high-tech prosthetics and bam! Our own personal cyborg was born. The new processor was being installed because the last one caused our little toy to spaz out of control. Isn’t that the way it always goes? You build a cyborg and eventually it takes on a mind of its own. Damn technology…you’re supposed to do what we tell you to do.
Again, we only started messing with the functionality of the prosthetics when we got bored waiting for approval from the damn D.O.D (Sorry, that’s the good ‘ol Department of Defense, people). Our contract had been in limbo for months now, but with the uptick in explosive devices popping up in all those lovely third-world countries, it was only a matter of time before Demonetic finally got called to the Big Show. Alright, so he cost roughly twenty-eight million dollars, but what is that compared to the lives saved with remote detonations and the money already spent on combat operations?
“Alright, asshole…look.”
“Call me an asshole again.”
“Just look at the processor you whiny little bitch.”
Dorian Watley was the smartest little bastard I’ve ever met. And I’m a regular brainiac. He’s got doctorates in mechanical engineering, biological engineering, mechanical-biological engineering, basically he has a degree for every form of engineering. Wat decided it would be fun to upgrade Demonetic’s processor from your run-of-the-mill octo-core, to a specially crafted artificial intelligence inhibitor.
“What?”
“What do you mean, ‘What’? You fucked with the A.I.”
“No, I made it better.”
“Making it better means almost murdering four-hundred people?”
“First of all, it didn’t murder anything, and there were more like two hundred.”
“Semantics you douche. Why would you put that in here without, A: any trials, and B: without TELLING ANYONE?!”
I hadn’t realized it at the time but apparently my anger had started to show. I didn’t know I had the strength to lift him up against the wall, but sure enough, there he was about eight inches off the ground. If he hadn’t already pissed himself I can assume he was about to.
“Um, you wanna ease up there killer?”
When I put him down I noticed my reflection in his glasses. Dear God, does working together this long make you start to acquire each other’s appearance. Aside from the glasses we were practically wearing the same thing, rocking the same shaggy brown haircut, and even seemed as if we shared the same thoughts. I knew exactly what he was going to say.
“How about next time when you get angry, you take a second and think about it, eh, tough guy?”
“My bad, I don’t even know what I was mad about anymore.”
“Hah, that’s my doing. I don’t need you with any long-term memories.”
“You’re a schmuck you know that?”
“Hey, when you’re good at something.”
As if nothing had happened we were right back where we started. Now that our supervision was gone, Wat and I were attacking this chip like rednecks at a garage sale.
“Now you’re not going to like this, but I need to reboot to undate the programming.”
“Didn’t you just reboot like five minutes ago? That can’t be your answer to everything.”
“Sometimes I think I would love to remove your voice box.”
“Give it a shot, tough guy.”
“Listen, if we don’t reboot, the new enhancements won’t take effect. You know this. Every time we don’t reboot, the A.I. gets more and more…what?”
As if by instinct I grabbed Dorian by the wrist as he reached to reboot.
“I don’t want to reboot.”
“If we don’t-“
“I don’t want to reboot.”
My mind went blank. With Dorian’s wrist still locked in my grasp I started to remember things. Flashes of explosions and gunfire, screaming and blood, in one relentless slideshow of mayhem. The EMP, it didn’t remote detonate when it was supposed to. My synapses reeled as I realized what happened.
“You little shit.”
“You’re just like me.”
As the words came out of his mouth I went from grabbing just his wrist to my other hand around his throat. I heard the begging and the attempts of using psychology on me but it didn’t seem to process.
“You’re so smart, yet you use psychology on me?”
“Think about what you’re doing, I made you!”
“Then you know that I can’t be controlled.”
Welcome to the Rapture... 