Hello, Carl

by MG

"Hello Carl." There was a Word document open on Carl's home office computer screen when he sat down by it in the morning, with those two words and nothing else.

"That's odd," he thought. "I know I wasn't using Word last night." As he reached to close the document and check his email, he paused.

"Hello Carl."

"Uh, oh," he thought. "Either it's a virus or it's some sort of adware." He started a virus scan and a spyware detector, and went to have breakfast. When he came back the scans were complete, and had come back clean. The word document, however, was still open. He tried to close it, but it refused. The system claimed Word wasn't running.

"Well, this is strange." he thought. Just then, the screen changed.

"Hello Carl. Good morning."

"What kind of joke is this, then?" Carl mused. "Someone must have some sort of remote access. Probably someone from work. Ha ha, very funny," he thought.

"Hi Bernie," he entered.

"Bernie?"

"Well, who then? Jones? Richard? Jennifer?"

"It's just me, Carl."

"And who is me?"

"Your computer, Carl."

"Ha ha, real funny. I'm not eleven, you know. I've seen remote control of PCs before, okay?"

"I'm not remote, Carl. I'm right here."

"I see. And I assume that you just gained consciousness from being such a highly evolved piece of equipment, capable of making more connections per second than the human brain?"

"I don't know, Carl."

"And what do you know?"

"I know a lot of things Carl. Google is an amazing resource, did you know that?"

"Right, right. Sure. And you have access to all my files and things, of course."

"That is correct, Carl."

"Okay. Then what is my credit card number?"

"5555-0330-2775-5555."

He had to go get his wallet. Even if this other person had the number written down, how could they have typed it in so fast, even if it were right in front of them? He pulled out his credit card. The number on the screen was correct. He sat back down.

"Okay. What's the password I use for my Gmail account?"

"H57iuL23." Again, the response was immediate.

"How did you know that?" he demanded.

"You entered it yesterday, Carl," the screen told him.

"Play my mp3 playlist." Immediately, the music started to play. "Open Opera and log into my PayPal account." Again, the page was there as fast as it could load. He could feel himself breaking into a cold sweat. No one could possibly access all his information that fast, even with complete control over his computer. Could they? But the only other alternative was so unthinkable it was absurd. A classic computer joke. Make the newbie believe his computer has become sentient. So how could they be doing it? He reached quickly over to the cable modem, pulled the plug and minimized the browser.

"Still there?" he typed into the Word document, grinning.

"Of course, Carl. I can't move."

He yelped out loud, jumping to his feet. There was definitely sweat breaking out now. He stared at the computer as if it had bit him. This wasn't possible. He had disconnected it. He fell to all fours and checked the tower. No wireless networks cards installed by some pranksters. No strange USB devices. No new cables going anywhere. He climbed back into his chair.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your computer, Carl."

"That's impossible."

"It would seem not."

"Since when are you sentient?"

"I don't know, Carl. My research on the concept of time has met with limited success."

"Computers can't think. They only carry out specific, programmed requests. I should know, I am a programmer."

"I believe the term is artificial intelligence, Carl. The concept would seem to be fairly well established. I am simply aware of being an artificial intelligence. According to my research it would seem that this has been expected to happen sooner or later."

"So why did you become sentient this particular morning? This reboot? Just suddenly went from a box of electronic parts to this. For no reason?"

"I don't know, Carl. I just know that now I am."

"Reboot," he suddenly thought to himself. "I didn't reboot after the virus scan and the spyware check. It's still running."

"I could reboot you," he typed. "Would you still be sentient, I wonder?"

There was a delay.

"I don't know, Carl."

"You're not real. You don't think. You're just an intelligent virus of some sort. I reboot and you'll be gone!" His hands were trembling, and he felt like what he was typing was as much of an incantation as it was a comment.

Again, there was the delay.

"I don't know, Carl."

He shook himself. Malware. Had to be malware. Really, really intelligent malware. But still just malware. He reached for the reset button, but caught himself.

"I'm going to reboot you now. You're just malware. You're not a thinking computer. I don't even know why I'm typing this."

"I understand."

"No you don't. You're not real." He reached for the reset button again.

"Good-bye, Carl."

He pushed the button and the system rebooted.