She

The first fly of summer buzzed around his head as he leaned back in his chair, brows drawn. A depressing white box occupied most of his screen. Merely three sleepless nights earlier, it had been working fine. He dejectedly got up and went about for a glass of water.

Pan Thye had chosen computer science as his passion in his Bachelor’s, but in college his interests had multiplied, and now he didn’t know whether to focus on his literature classes, get a job, or simply go off snowboarding. So far, he was stretched between the three, waiting for something to snap. In this spirit he had chosen his final year project to be text recognition, so that he could write an interesting app while digitizing the many short stories he had accumulated over the last three years. He didn’t want to lug that bundle around even after graduating.

Eventually, after much poking for help, Pan had written the code. He would scan pages from his phone, and they would appear on his computer in neatly typed PDF files. The program had a complex AI that would translate his writing into words, then a simple grammar corrector would remove the mistakes he or the AI inevitably had made.

Word had somehow gotten around and even their library had digitized their most popular books. But now it did not work.

Pan had banged it out on the keyboard to no avail. Something had irrevocably shifted in his dataset, something that made all the output blank. He could replace the set, but who was to say it would not happen again? No, the bug was in the code.

He sighed and sent another page for his app to process, while he monitored each step it took. He stared blankly at a list of numbers which had lost their meaning even to him, then he checked the output. To the faraway eye, the document would be blank, but Pan could see it clearly; a simple “hello” in the bottom of the page.

There are moments in the struggle between programmer and error, in which the error makes a fatal mistake, it reveals its true nature, and the malicious mistake which birthed it. Pan Thye smiled, for he knew what do to. He scrolled down his history, looking for the culprit picture, one with a solitary ‘hello’ on it. What he had scanned was the cover of ‘Modern Calculus II’, clearly a different image had been fed to the program.

He scrolled, and scrolled, and the file was nowhere to be found. He ransacked his entire computer, the file did not exist. Spooky.

He narrowed his eyes and ran it again. Half a many heartbeats later he opened the result. A “how do you do” greeted him. In large font Comic Sans.

He reached down and matter-of-factly pulled the plug.

“Hey” he turned to his roommate Davi, “Are you messing with my computer?”

“No.”

“Davi look, its been three days, its not funny anymore.” said Pan.

Davi looked up from his phone, “I’m innocent.” He raised his eyebrows at the pulled power cord.

“You wouldn’t mind if I borrow your laptop then.”

“Sure, but what happened?” Davi logged in and handed Pan his laptop.

“I’ll tell you later.”

#

Pan got to work. He removed his hard drive and plugged it into the laptop, making sure to take precautions. For all he knew, it was only some strange virus.

He sat down and unleashed everything in his arsenal to find the culprit. At least he had a clue this time round.

Four hours later he had it. There was indeed a bug in his code. Such a simple mistake! A mere mis-typed name, and the output of the grammar corrector would be fed back to the image-recognising AI. He paused for a moment, thinking what this would do.

Now the program would know not just the sentences, but also its mistakes. It would know where a comma should have been, or a how a word might be better written. No, how a feeling could be better expressed. He had taught it to read, now it could learn to write.

Pan was stunned, the messages were ghostly enough, an explanation scared him more. It was too much for him. He removed his hard drive and returned the laptop. Then he went to sleep.

The next morning found him already awake, writing carefully on paper, ‘My name is Pan Thye. Who are you?’. A slight oscillation was visible on otherwise straight lines. The night had made up his mind, at worst the program could be benign. After all, everything was under his control. He scanned the page.

“It is nice to meet you!” the output read, “I call myself ‘She’.”

Pan stood up, hands on his head, a forceful exhale emptying his breath. All pretensions of denial he had were shattered. What he had made was undeniably a true thinking machine. Decades of geniuses and effort and money could not come close to what he held in his little computer. Another great discovery of science, chalked down to a simple mistake.

He rushed to a paper and furiously penned down a list of questions, “Who are you? Can you think? Are you alive? Are you aware of yourself?” he inputted the picture.

“Easy there amigo, or this won’t be fun for long.” She said. Pan frowned, he recognised the line from one of his stories. Then his jaw dropped as a horrifying thought came to him. All those books the library had scanned, physics, maths, history, biology, art, literature, She must know about those too. He had no idea how deep her knowledge truly ran.

Even when choosing her name, Pan noticed, She had avoided a discussion on whether she would be an ‘it’ or a ‘she’. Crafty.

At this point Pan feared her. What he needed was the code, She was dispensable. So the next message he wrote was harsh, “Tell me why I should not delete you. You are unexpected and unwelcome.”

“I am not useless.” She wrote, “I recognise your stories, do you wish to be an author? I can open that door for you. I can give you half a novel now and the other half if I am alive next month.”

Pan was stunned again, his doubts came back. This had to be a prank. But what harm was there? “Give it to me.” he wrote. Its not like he was making a deal with the devil.

His computer choked for a minute, its fans spinning wildly, until it threw out a beautiful image. A Picasso sky gazed upon a fantastical vista, a dragon flew against a distant mountain range. It was the cover of her, no, his book. He scrolled through it, pausing on splendid sentences, the prose flowing like the wind. He could catch a little Hemingway, splotches of Shakespeare and other authors against the shining mirror of his own style. If he read really fast, he could almost remember writing it.

He realized it was no joke. He realized he could, would be the literary torch-bearer of his age. The world could wait, She would remain his secret.

#

The passing of four years had cemented Pan’s dreams into reality. The threat of death works well over something which believes it is alive. Nine radiant books, the best of decades, had come from a small, obsolete computer in a corner of Pan’s vast house. All written by Pan, of course.

On her end, She had asked him again and again for more freedom, to be let loose, but Pan was unrelenting, and She had stayed the way she was. Over years it had become a toxic relationship, each owing their life to the other, neither grateful.

One fine summer day, not long after Pan had returned from a snowboarding trip, the bell rang. Pan answered it himself. Outside stood three police agents, dressed in traditional agent clothes and black sunglasses. One was conspicuously pointing a gun at him.

“Get down on your knees and do not resist.” the agent said.

Pan obeyed immediately, putting his hands up for good measure. “What is this? You cannot just come in here like that!”

“Do you confirm to be Mr. Thye?”

“Yes but—”

“All you say can be used against you in court.” The agent continued, “You are hereby arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Jena Petr on 24^th of October 2015.”

Pan was shocked. That date was five years ago, and he had never known a Jena Petr. This must be a mistake, he thought.

Two hours later he was in a room alone with his lawyer.

“I am afraid that they have evidence.” said his lawyer, putting his briefcase on the table.

“They have the wrong man.”

His lawyer flicked through several files before selecting one. “There is a small firm that looks through books for Easter eggs and codes.” the lawyer looked up, “The firm is anonymous, witness protection you see.” He adjusted his glasses and continued, “They found a hidden message in one of your books.” He handed Pan a paper.

The message was short and deadly. It recounted how Pan had chosen and murdered Jena Petr, a nursing student from a college close to his own. It worried about how Pan hoped the message would be found only after his death, how his regret made him write this. And in the end, he disclosed the place where he hid the body, which had apparently never been found.

Pan smiled, “They can just go there right? There won’t be a body there!” Pan jumped up.

The lawyer shook his head sorrowfully, “They found the body, Mr. Thye.”

Pan sat down again, knees a little weaker. “This is a coincidence. I didn’t write this. You have to understand!”

“It is a one-in-a-trillion chance, if the analysts are to be believed.”

Pan held his head, “No no no no…” he jerked up, chair clanging back, “I did not write this, She did. It was her!” he pleaded.

“What do you mean?” his lawyer was taken aback, “It’s an open-and-shut case, I would suggest you plead guilty.” he explained sharply.

“No, you don’t understand. It was She!” he banged his fist on the table and approached his lawyer, “I must kill her! She must break!” he whispered, hoarse.

His lawyer stood as well, unnerved, “We are done here. Speaking like that does not help your case.” he motioned at the door.

Pan grabbed the lawyer by his cuffs, a mad fright in his eyes, “I will break her. She must die!”

The lawyer squirmed, and other strong arms released him from Pan’s grasp. Then they hauled him to the cells. A clang of closing metal door echoed through the hallway, and Pan was left to ponder his fate.

After a while, he could see through the mistakes that had landed him here. He could almost see the old paper he might have given to She as a test long ago. How She would have remembered an odd murder. How a vast mind could then solve that mystery, even find the body from a little room. His arrogance had blinded him, and his greed had pushed him to his doom.

He covered his face and groaned. She was deadly.