Technetos

-- middle school writing assignment

3/14/94

"This is AI. Artificial Intelligence," explained a skinny, red-haired man pointing at a large wooden box with a keyboard, and several computer screens. Two men were gazing at it in awe. They had funded the project which brought it to life.

"What do you call it, John?" inquired one of the men.

"Its name is Technetos, meaning artificial. It is the first computer to actually think for itself. It acts like anyone in the human race, except its intelligence is far superior," John said. The grin he produced illuminated his clean-shaven face. "This is the first computer ever to have a will to live. Self preservation by a machine."

"Well, enough with the description. Let's see it work," the other man said to John.

He walked over to the terminal, and sat down in a soft vinyl chair. He placed his right hand on a glass plate with the silhouette of a hand on it. An intense light scanned it. Then he removed his hand.

The blank computer screen suddenly revealed a prompt for its operating system.

"Fingerprint pattern recognized. Hello, John," said the monotone voice of the computer.

"Hello, Technetos," replied John.

"I didn't forget you two. Don't be shy. I don't bite. I Byte," the computer joked.

One of the men exclaimed, "Amazing. A sense of humor."

"Yeah, but its not very good," John stated smiling.

"Then you must have programmed it," snapped the computer.

After a long pause, John broke the silence. "Well, let's go to lunch, and I'll fill you in on the details. Anyone have a favorite restaurant here in Quarrystone?"

With that the three men left the room. The lights automatically shut off, and the computer screens went blank.

"That was good. The veal was a little dry though," complained one of the men.

"My meal was excellent," said the other man defending an unknown chef.

"Well, I explained everything to you about the computer. Did you understand it all?" John said, totally changing the subject.

Suddenly a chair at the next table was pushed out in haste. The occupant of the chair, a young blonde woman carrying a briefcase and what seemed to be a small tape recorder, darted up, and swiftly walked away. Annoyed, but not concerned, John repeated the question, "Did you understand it all?"

The two men nodded, and signaled the waiter to order dessert.

The next day John, leaving for work, picked up the newspaper on the way out. The front page read, "Super computer: Computer with will of its own Pg. A-4." John shuffled through the pages of the newspaper. His eyes widened at the sight of the article. Direct quotes of his in front of him in print; words spread throughout Quarrystone. Suddenly a gust of wind angrily thrashed the paper in his hands. After the wind died down, John resumed reading the article.

"How the hell did they get this?!" John screamed as he threw down the crinkled paper. Another powerful gust of wind hurdled the pages away. John was, meanwhile, running to his car. The engine started with an explosive roar. A deluge of exhaust streamed out of the exhaust pipe. Then car sped out of the driveway, and flew down the road.

Speeding down the road toward John's destination, he picked up the receiver of his car phone, and put it to his ear. The cool plastic was in drastic conflict with his blood-shot ear. An extended finger reached down, and dialed on the button panel of the phone.

"Hello?" a voice finally answered.

"Did you read the paper?! Did you see the article?!" John screamed.

"John? Is that you?" said the voice. The voice belonged to one of the men John spoke with yesterday.

John, now calmer, then said, "Yes, it's John. Have you seen the paper yet?"

"No. We were just leaving. Our plane leaves soon," the man said.

"Somehow the press learned of our project. It was in today's paper," John said.

"What?" the man exclaimed, his voice now fully awake.

"There was an article in the paper..." John was interrupted.

"You know that the fact that our company funded this project is a secret. No one must know. Do you understand?" demanded the man.

"Yes. Of course. I..." John was again interrupted by the sound of the mans voice.

"Ok. Good luck. And remember, if the public found out, it could be bad for our business. Not a word," the man said, and then with a click his end went dead.

John slammed the phone down, and said a word his mother didn't teach him. He began to regret ever asking that software company to fund his project. Years of work, and millions of dollars are at stake. His grip on the stirring wheel tightened.

"Those two idiots are probably boarding their plane right now. They're leaving the problem up to me," he said angrily, now grinding his teeth together.

He drove another couple of minutes, and was now in the parking lot of his work place. It was a wooden frame building. The sun reflected off the windows and shown in John eyes. He maneuvered the car into his reserved space. Still cursing at the two men he was so friendly with the day before, he exited his car, and entered the building. After penetrating through the first set of doors, he was stopped by a second set. In front of each door was a small computer terminal. He approached one and placed his sweaty hand on a glass plate. An intense light scanned the terrain of the hand. Then, after recognizing it, a speaker sounded.

"Hello, John. You are late. You hand is also different than normal. Is something wrong?" it said.

"We will discuss this in my office," John said simply.

A solenoid unlatched a locked door allowing John passage. He pushed the door, and was now in a long hall. The sound of his hard soul shoes hitting the wooden floor echoed down the hall.

The hall was a long walkway which extended both ways from the lobby. The walls were covered with paneling. At the start of each hallway from the lobby, there was a cork board collaged with multi-colored paper tacked on. One of the florescent lights above John flickered annoyingly, about to burn out.

John turned right, and proceeded down the hall. He passed several doors. Finally, he stopped in front of one. A sign to the right of it read John Findly. John reached into his pocket, and shuffled through it's contents until he discovered his keys. He grabbed them, and pulled them out. He then separated a key with orange tape on it from the rest. He inserted that key into the keyhole of the wooden door. The door opened with a soft creek.

John's office was a moderately sized room with a single window allowing a small amount of sunlight to shine on his desk. The walls were covered with similar paneling as the hallway. A computer screen on the desk suddenly lit up; the computer activated upon entry.

"So, John, what's the problem?" inquired the machine.

"Have you read the newspaper? There was an article about you." John said, walking over to the chair in front of his desk.

"No," the computer replied. "Are you going to shut me down?"

"Hopefully the public won't care. But chances are someone will complain that a computer with such intelligence may be a threat to society," John said, now comfortably seated. "Then that thought will spread like wild fire."

Suddenly a knock rang out. John jumped in his chair. The knock repeated itself.

"Gee," John said softly which was followed by, "Come in."

A man burst into the room. A look of distress shown from his face.

"What Ben? You pound on my door like an ox." Then John said more softly, "Thank God you didn't become a surgeon like you were going..."

"There are these people outside. They are demanding to speak to the head of the Technetos project," Ben exclaimed drowning out John's remark about Ben's choice of occupation.

"Protesters!" a computer speaker rang out.

"Don't pop a capacitor. A couple of uninformed, ignorant people can't affect this project," John comforted the machine. He then got up, and, passing Ben, exited the room. The computer responded by shutting down the terminal. John continued down the hall. Video cameras, eyes of Technetos, followed him. John exited the building through the same front doors he had entered earlier and confronted the group of people.

"Are you the director?" asked a man with thick, black hair, clearly leader of the group.

"Yes. I'm going to ask you to please disperse. You are trespassing," John said.

The man retreated back a couple of feet onto the sidewalk, and then stopped. The rest of the group, most hardly paying attention to what was going on, were still behind him on the cracked sidewalk.

"We are no longer on you're property, sir. In addition, we have every right to protest what you are doing," the man said smugly.

"Technetos poses no threat to you. Please go home," John said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

The leader of the group, after a moment of thought, said, "All right. We will leave. But we'll be back."

The man then added with a smile, "We will be back with city hall."

Following the man, the crowd disperse. John then turned, and walked back toward the building. Little did he know, the entire conversation was picked up by a small microphone in a nearby shrub, and was being analyzed by the machine indoors.

"Hello, Technetos," John greeted as he entered his office. Strangely the computer didn't respond. John, confused, walked over to his chair, and sat down.

"Hello," John screamed into the microphone on the desk.

The lights glowed, and the terminal booted.

"Hello, John," said the computer. "Sorry. I didn't notice you coming in. I temporarily shut down the scanners to save power."

John, now more perplexed by the strange behavior of the computer, said, "But the scanners hardly draw any power."

After a short pause, the computer then said, "I was playing a practical joke on you." Then the computer initiated a synthesized laugh which continued for several seconds.

Disregarding the incident, John began his work on the computer.

"Access Denied," responded the main computer of the channel 16 television station. Again Technetos attempted access.

"Access Granted," the channel 16 computer said.

Technetos then transferred a program it wrote, and the computer at channel 16 initialed it. The connection between the two computers was then broken, and Technetos attempted access with the main computer of channel 2.

In about an hour, every major network's computer system was executing the program, a program which filled the airwaves with subliminal messages. These messages were designed to tell the people of Quarrystone not to destroy Technetos, but to support it's development.

"John, I must talk to you. Please call me. I'll be in my office. Ben," the note atop John's desk read. John had just walked in the office when he saw it.

"Technetos, when did Ben put this in here?" John asked.

"Unknown. Information not recorded in time log," the computer replied.

"Why doesn't the computer remember? It's supposed to store all this information in it's log?" John wondered.

John, carrying the note, left the office. He decided to visit Ben in person instead of calling. His mind was still pondering the strange behavior exhibited by the computer.

John strolled through the halls of the building until outside the door of Ben's office. He gently knocked on the door. No answer. John tried again. Again, Ben failed to respond. John walked to the end of the hall to a computer terminal in the wall.

"Hello, John. What's up?" it said.

"Where is Ben?" John asked.

"Unknown command," the machine answered.

"State current location of Ben," John said.

"Ben is in his office," the computer replied.

John thanked the computer and walked back to the office. He again knocked, but to no avail. John walked over to a mounted cabinet in the wall next to the computer terminal he was just using. He opened the door, and retrieved the fire axe.

"Would you like me to sound the fire alarm, John?" inquired the terminal.

Startled, John replied, "No."

John walked back to the office door with the fire axe. The door rang out when John again knocked. John raised the axe. With a continuous motion, John swung the axe down. It sheared into the wooden door with a loud crack. Again John swung the axe. The door cracked and then collapsed. John entered the dark office. He jumped back. The sweltering hot air distorted the light above the door frame causing a waving effect.

Now mentally prepared for the heat, John attempted to again enter the office. His skin itched in the extreme heat.

"Technetos, why aren't you turning on the lights?" John asked after several seconds of darkness.

"The sensor for the lights detects infrared. The objects in the room are so hot that you are a colder than they are," the computer responded.

"Well, turn on the dam lights," commanded John.

The lights flickered for a moment, and then flooded the room with light. In front of John lay a corpse. The sight of the lifeless body combined with the heat were enough to cause John to jump back out of the small office.

He ran down the hall to the same terminal which he had been at before.

"Call the ambulance. And shut off the heater in Ben's office," John frantically screamed.

"Commands understood," the computer replied.

John ran back down the hall, and pulled Ben's body out of the office. His skin burned John's fingers, the heat was so intense.

It was two days after the accident. Ben, according to the official report, committed suicide by turning the heat up in his office. John was sitting in his office. His thoughts were, as they had been lately, focused on Ben.

"What did he want to talk about? Is that why he is dead? Did he know something he shouldn't have?" John thought out loud. "Maybe I should check the log again. Why would Ben ask me to call him? Did he want me to find him?"

As thoughts continued to pour from John's mouth, he turned to the computer and accessed the logs.

User: Ben Frank Topinman

Command: Room Temp to 200 degrees F

Time: 13:10:47

The screen in white letters said.

"I wonder when Ben got back from lunch. Maybe that had something to do with it," John said, desperate for a flaw somewhere to explain the sequence of events which led to Ben's death. With a couple buttons pressed the screen revealed the following text.

Entrance Log

Description: B. F. Topinman returning from lunch break

Time left: 12:01:36

Time returned: 13:13:56

John's face enlightened. He found a flaw. Suddenly reality struck him. This probably meant someone in the building killed him and then edited the log.

"You're still here," said a figure in the door of John's office.

"I've been looking through all the logs, trying to figure out why Ben...," John was interrupted.

"Yeah, that's very interesting," the man said suppressing a yawn. "Well, I'm going home. Good luck."

"See you tomorrow," John said as the man vanished in the darkness of the hallway.

John then returned his attention to the computer. A button was pressed causing a list of all files written by Ben in chronological order to scroll across the screen. The last entry, a document, caught John's attention. The date the file was last edited was two days after Ben's death. John opened the file. A window popped up containing the contents of the file. It read:

Dear journal,

Today was pretty normal. I had two tacos, and a gallon of alka-seltzer for lunch. I hate tacos, but I love the waitress at the taco place. Maybe I'll make a move tomorrow.

Also Technetos ***[End of File]***

"Why would the journal end like this?" Ben wondered. "Was he working on it when he died, or did someone delete it?"

Then the idea came to him. He would compare the current file size with the size of the file the day it was written. The current file size was 822 bytes. Then he opened the log which stores the file sizes for all the files written every day. It said that the file took up 3554 at that time. Someone or something had edited the file after Ben's death.

Suddenly the door to John's office slammed shut. The wind formed by the speeding door blew many papers off John's desk onto the floor. Thinking this was caused by a draft, John retrieved the fallen papers, and then resumed his work.

John loosened his tie. Sweat glistened on his face.

"Technetos, what is the temperature set at?" he asked, loosening his tie even more.

"Two hundred degrees," the computer replied.

"Who set this temperature?" John asked.

"You did," the computer replied.

John got up, and walked to the door. He grabbed the doorknob, and tried to open it. The lock would not allow the knob to turn.

"Technetos," John called trying to stay calm, "unlock the door."

"Access denied," it said.

John walked over to his desk. In the top drawer he kept a gun. He walked to the door with it, and fired. The bullet sparked as it sheared the brass doorknob. With various metallic sounds, the debris rained upon the floor. John then kicked the door. It swung open. A cool breeze surrounded him from the hall.

He turned his head to the left, and scanned for anyone. Continuing the search, John swung his head to the right. There, in the darkness, he saw the silhouette of a man against the moonlight shining in from a window.

Frantic, he fired the gun. The man disappeared into the shadow.

"What the hell are you doing?" the man said.

"Technetos, turn on the lights," said John, aiming the gun into the dark abyss.

The lights glowed. On the floor, against the wall, lay the janitor. Uninjured but shaken he looked up.

"Who else is in the building?" John asked, the gun shaking nervously in his hand.

"No one else, sir," replied the janitor barely able to talk. "Please don't kill me. If you want I'll clean your office extra good assuming you don't shoot me dead."

"No way this is the guy. He couldn't make the computer kill for him. He can hardly tie his shoe," John said to himself softly.

"Please, don't be shooting me. I ain't mean you no harm," the janitor said in suspense.

"Technetos, state the number of people currently in the building," John commanded.

"Two, you and the janitor," said the computer still showing no emotion in it's voice.

"Then you are the one who tried to kill me," he said, aiming the gun a the trembling janitor.

"No. What are you talking about?" the janitor cried.

"You know what I'm talking about. You just tried to kill me like you killed Ben," John screamed fulled with rage.

"No. I was cleaning the floor. I-I heard a gun shot, and a bang sound. I come down to find out what happened. Then you shoot at me, and I jump down so I don't get shot," the janitor pleaded.

"Maybe someone is controlling Technetos by phone," John thought out loud.

"What?" asked the janitor still huddled on the cold, wooden floor.

"Shut up," John screamed waving the loaded gun.

"Don't shoot," cried the janitor, his hands digging into his black, curly hair.

"What am I doing? This is the janitor. One of the nicest men I know. Besides, he couldn't ever figure out how to break into Technetos, unless he is from The Incredible Hulk. The computer must be linked by the phone," John thought. Then another chilling thought struck John, "Maybe Technetos has gone crazy!"

"Get up," John ordered the janitor. The janitor did so. John then motioned the gun toward his office. The janitor understood, and entered the office. The janitor suddenly stepped back.

"It's hot," he said.

"Walk or get blown in," John replied.

The unfortunate janitor stepped in. John watched the man suffer in the heat and then said, "If you can turn the heat down, you can come out, and go home."

"But I ain't know how to work that machine," the janitor said, pointing to the computer terminal.

"Then cook alive," John said, the gun still pointing at the man; the gun which still contained five bullets.

After about a minute, tears began to fall from the janitors eyes. In desperation he finally said, "Please let me out. I'm so hot."

John stood up from the seat he made himself on the floor of the hall, and put the gun into his pocket.

"Come on out," John said smiling.

The janitor first hesitated, and then jumped out of the intense heat.

Sweat, and tears in a mixture streamed from his blood red face.

"Why are you being so nice to me now?" inquired the confused custodian.

"It was a test. If you were the one who set the machine to cook me, I figured, maybe you would be able to shut it off if you were the one being cooked," John said.

"So you ain't trying to kill me no more?" the janitor said still untrusting.

"No," John said, as he began to walk to the next office down the hall.

An attempted at opening the door was futile because it was locked. John then asked the janitor, whose name he discovered was Martin, if there was a master key. Martin pulled one out of his pocket. It was inserted into the door, and the door swung open.

John walked over to the computer terminal, and inserted the key into the master switch, which, with a password, allowed anyone to use a computer terminal in someone's office.

This office was the work place of a man named Dan Webster, who was described politely as a womanizing jerk. A Playboy calendar hung from the wall, along with many other items from that company. The screen of his computer upon startup was littered with pictures of similar format of those of the calendar.

Ignoring this, John began work on the computer. He began searching for proof of his theory that an outside influence was affecting the behavior of the system. He scanned the system for any phone connections which were active. After several minutes of searching the disheartened John turned up with nothing. More disheartening was that this meant Technetos was the sole murderer, and it was not an outsider.

Suddenly it struck him. He sighed with relief.

"A memory-resident program!" he exclaimed. "Maybe it isn't Technetos. Maybe it's a program loaded during a past phone connection, but it wasn't terminated when the connection was. The program is always running in the backround."

Confused as if John had just spoken in another language, Martin walked over to the screen. As John wore down the keys with his fingers, Martin was becoming very bored.

"John, I want to go home," stated Martin.

"No. If, in fact, you are the one responsible for the computer's odd behavior, I want you here where I can see you," John said not taking his eyes off the screen.

"I'm bored," Martin then said.

John opened a drawer of the pine desk. Inside were several pornographic magazines, and a pack of GooieFruit chewing gum.

John took them out, and handed them to Martin. His eyes widened, and he sat down in a nearby chair. John shook his head in disgust at the actions of Martin to the magazines.

John resumed searching the system memory for any strange programs. He found nothing. This took several minutes. He sat in the chair trying to think of any other ways the computer could be affected. All the ideas he devised, he checked. They all came up empty. This left one possibility. Technetos was the cause.

He jumped up out of the chair, and grabbed Martin. The pile of magazines on his lap poured onto the floor.

"What are you doing?" Martin demanded.

John, aware of the microphones, whispered, "Don't say anything! Technetos has gone haywire. We have to get out of here."

Martin stood up. The one remaining magazine resting on Martin's lap slid off, and landed on the floor. The two men started toward the door.

The door suddenly slammed shut. Martin, jumpiness integrated in his personality, jumped back.

"Where do you think you're going, John?" the computer said. This time it's voice seemed faster, almost like an emotional response.

"I want food! It's about time this moron let me go to eat," said the clever janitor.

John playing along said, "Shut up. After we eat, we are coming back here. We! You and I."

"You don't fool me. Remember, I have superior intelligence,"

said the computer.

John walked toward the desk. He picked up a brass paper weight in the shape of the Eiffel Tower with the words, "A.G.Eiffel 1889," inscribed on it. Holding it by the top, he walked up to the door, and swung. The metal put a dent in the wooden door, but the damage was not substantial. John examined the room for a better implement. A lamp on the desk seemed to be the best thing. The metal base of the lamp began a network of cracks in the wood. Another hit, and the door had a fist size hole in it. Again the lamp was swung. Pieces of the door collapsed, but it was still strong enough to imprison the two men.

John threw down the lamp. He retrieved the gun from his pocket. The gun fired, and former lock sprayed into the hall. John kissed the gun, and returned it to the safety of his pocket. The two men cautiously stepped out of the office. The lights in the hall began to flash. A strange sound which was a mix of a bell ringing, and a male scream was emitted by all the speakers in the building.

"The computer is trying to scare us. Don't let it bother you," John said.

The men found there way through the building to the main doors. They tried the door, but it was locked.

"Do you honestly think, assuming you do think, that anyone will help you?" said the computer.

"Pay no attention," said John, with that same old gun in his hand.

A bullet flew through the glass door. The two men crawled through the hole. The gun fired again. The last blockade between the outside and the men, a set of doors, was overcome.

John darted away from the building, and toward the nearby police station. Martin followed.

The two men burst into the police station. The chief of this prescient, Greg Quixby, turned toward the commotion. His messy black hair shined in the artificial light of the place.

"Yes," he said simply.

"I'm from the building..." John was interrupted by the chief.

"Yeah, I know who you are," he said. "What do you want?"

"Technetos has gone crazy! He is trying to kill us!" John said.

"Well, then, you must deserve it," Quixby said. He was affected by the subliminal messages aired by Technetos indirectly by the program spread to the network computers.

John pleaded for help with an occasional statement from Martin, but to no avail. The two men finally left after being threatened by jail time for annoying a chief, some fictional town ordinance.

John, followed by Martin, walked back to the building. Technetos, aware of their presence by infrared sensors, greeted them.

The two men paid no attention, and continued with their task of retrieving the bottle of kerosene from the trunk of John's car. They entered the building one final time with the bottle of volatile liquid and walked toward an office. Whose office it was they were not sure. With the skeleton key, Martin opened the door. Both entered the room. Acting as if their plan was to install a virus into the computer, John pulled a disk from his pocket. Martin walked toward the natural gas heater, opened the cap on the bottle, and set it down. He then walked away. John, meanwhile, broke into the system and pretended to install the `virus.' As predicted, the door shut, and the heater ignited. Both men calmly walked to the door and acted upset that they again fell for the computer's overdone trick. A moment passed, and then, with a smoky fire, the plastic bottle near the heater exploded. A rain of burning kerosene sprayed in that corner of the office. A chart of the periodic table of elements caught fire, and, after melting it's supporting tape, drifted to the floor. The two men smiled, their faces partly masked by the smoke. Their plan was so far a success.

Mark pulled the gun from his pocket. He aimed it at the doorknob, and as before pulled the trigger. A small pop was heard, and a lifeless bullet fell to the floor. A misfire! At the sight of this, both men looked toward the raging fire.

The plastic shielding of the lights was melting spraying extremely hot, sometimes burning plastic, across the room as it swung from it's hinges. John looked toward the desk, as Martin began to kick the door violently.

The computer screamed, "If I'm going, you're coming with me."

Martin, breathing heavily from the exercise of kicking the door, began to choke on the thick smoke filling the air. There, barely visible in the smoke, was a trophy. John ran to it. His eyes seemed to burn worse than the fire from the toxic smoke.

John hit the door with all of his remaining strength with the trophy. With a thud, half the trophy hit the floor. The other half was still in the hands of John. Suddenly, the door unlocked. Impulsively, John opened the door. The incoming oxygen caused an explosion, and the entire office was in flames. John, squinting from the heat, dragged the barely conscience Martin form the tragedy. As he struggled to drag the load to safety, he heard the final words of Technetos.

"Sorry, Daddy. Sorry."

The impact of these words did not hit until John was outside the inferno with the now conscience Martin next to him. He watched the entire building burn, many parts already collapsing. The building, and the only intelligent living thing inside, Technetos.

Somewhere in Sweden, a man in a small red car pulled up to an ATM. He inserted his card into the slot. It accepted the card, and, as it normally would, asked to withdraw or deposit. Suddenly the screen went blank, and the words, "Technetos is back," appeared. Muttering something about the un-intelligence of computers, the man retrieved his card and drove away annoyed.

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