And now more of, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," boy and his new AI.
Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
Quote:"Thank you for-----
closing the window, kid."
Rhett had stayed up
on the desk with his back to the wall and his chin on his knees. He
stared across the room at the door he didn't dare go through.
"Kid? Are you
okay?"
"Yeah."
Rhett wasn't
sniffling. It was just dust. From the window.
"Are you
crying?"
"No! I'm okay!"
If utterly screwed
up was okay. There was no way he could go to calculus looking like
this. It was his only in person class for the day but then there'd be
two tomorrow. And study groups and...
"Kid, my
monitor might be busted but I can still hear you crying. Did you hurt
yourself climbing up there?"
"I'm fine!"
There were a few
seconds of silence before the computer spoke again.
"My clock says
it is almost eight. You had best get cleaned up and run off to
school."
Rhett looked over at
his alarm clock, which blinked over to 7:51 while he was looking at
it. Calculus wasn't even until ten, what was her hurry? Looking at
his legs and the pants which had almost slipped off twice, before
he'd tightened his belt as far as it would go, reminded him what had
happened once more. The tail that flicked across his legs only drove
the message across further.
"I can't go
like this. I'm staying home."
"Sorry, but no
children will be skipping school under my watch. You need good grades
so you can goto high school. Work hard in high school and you can get
into a good college. That will let you get a job you... Stop that!
This isn't anything to laugh about!"
Rhett squeezed his
head closer to his legs while he laughed. Soon his whole body shook
as he slipped from into a fit of sharp giggles. It worked. She'd come
out just the way he'd hoped and now it didn't matter a damn.
"I told you to
stop that!" She waited a few seconds while he kept giggling.
"Very well boy, I want you to go and bring Rhett here right now.
We'll just have to discuss your behavior with him. Don't think for a
moment I won't tell him you planned to play hooky."
That just made it
all the harder for him to stop giggling. Two or three scolds and
several deep breaths later he managed to get it down to a twitching
grin.
"You want to
talk to Rhett?" He pushed off the edge of the desk and came
around in front of the webcam, "Alright. Here I am."
"Nice try kid.
I have complete access to the photos and videos stored on this
computer." Another pause and her voice became a little puzzled.
"In fact, I don't believe you show up in any of the photos or
videos."
"I didn't look
like this until today!" Looking around the room he caught sight
of his backpack and dug into it for his laptop. "Look, I'll
prove it."
Waiting impatiently
for it to boot up his fingers banged away at the keyboard as soon as
the login prompt appeared. It took three tries to sign in and more
error messages appeared after he started typing at the command line.
After yet another mistyped command he smacked the keyboard and
slammed it shut hard enough he started worrying whether he'd broken
the screen.
"I am uncertain
how you think damaging Rhett's property will convince me you are
him."
"Oh shut up, I
don't know why... oh... smaller fingers." Opening up the laptop
again he gave a sigh up relief at the intact screen. Keeping his eyes on
the keyboard he started a slow hunt and peck using just two fingers to
type out commands. "Ha! See that? I didn't just sign onto this
laptop, I just made a secure shell connection to the desktop.
Couldn't do that if I didn't know the passphrase for the private key,
could I? Do you think I'd tell that to anyone else?"
"It is
unlikely."
"So are you
satisfied now?"
"Satisfied that my creator isn't competent enough to conduct even one
experiment without accidentally biomodifying himself? No. Satisfied
with your claim to be said incompetent creator, yes."
"I didn't mean
to!"
"You used
liquid handwavium on a computer while it was still running. You are
lucky you didn't cause a short circuit. Considering the electronics
courses on your transcripts I should think you would know better."
"Come on, I had
to keep it running so the files that were to serve as influences
would stay in memory."
"Rhett, I trust
you understand why I am revoking your sudo and root access privileges on my
hardware."
Rhett quickly pecked
at the keys again and glared at the, 'Your attempt has been logged,'
error message that appeared after he tried switching to the root user
account. He barely finished reading it when the connection
between the laptop and desktop was cut.
"Now let us
return to a more important subject. You have a class in less than two
hours."
Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.