Short Story
Im dritten und letzten Teil unserer Kurzgeschichte erfahren wir endlich, warum die Chatbots so agierten und reagierten. Ende gut, alles gut? Von JAMES SCHOFIELD
Silicon Chip (3)
Good morning, Morris! Hi, Tracey!” said Dr. Haverstein with a smile as she entered the room and sat down next to Morris’s hospital bed. “I’m Dr. Rachel Haverstein, Morris. I expect Tracey warned you I’d be visiting. How are you doing?” Morris looked thoughtfully at his right leg, covered in plaster and hanging above the bed in a complicated traction system. “Not that cool, Dr. Haverstein,” he said finally. “My leg is broken in two places, my apartment burned down, and, after crashing the company servers, I’m not sure if I still have my job at Amazoogle.”
Dr. Haverstein nodded. “Well, let’s see about that. Tell me about the plan you and Tracey dreamed up to deal with your chatbots.”
***
Morris explained that he and Tracey had decided they would start by helping Chip to lighten up a bit. “The chatbot model for Chip was a guy I shared a room with in college, Chris Buckley, who’s now a Baptist minister in Kentucky,” said Morris. “He’s actually a really nice guy, just very conservative when it comes to certain things.”
“Like what?” Dr. Haverstein asked.
“Girlfriends, parties, Sesame Street, The Washington Post … things like that. The first three months that we shared a room, we spent the whole time arguing. Anyway, something happened to help him become a bit less rigid,” Morris said.
“I went back to college after Thanksgiving with some brownies my mom had baked. I walked into our room one day and caught him eating one. He was totally apologetic for taking some without asking me, but he said they smelled so good that he couldn’t resist. I said it was OK.”
“So?”
“What I didn’t tell him was that my mom always baked some marijuana into her brownies. I didn’t want to freak him out.”
“Ah!”
“Right! A short time later, it started to take effect and … wow! For 24 hours, he partied like a frat boy on spring break in Acapulco. Anyway, after that — and after I showed him some of the pictures I took — he was much easier to deal with.”
“Did you tell him why he’d gone so wild?” “Absolutely. He said it was God’s punishment for stealing a brownie and he begged me not to tell anyone.”
“So, why are you telling me?”
“Well, when I was hired, HR ran interviews to design my chatbot. But when I talked about Chris, I didn’t tell this story because I’d promised not to — which is why Chip is such a dork. So, Tracey and me thought we could add this element to Chip’s program to…”
“…help him lighten up, got it! How, though?” “We’re programmers, right?” said Tracey, joining in the conversation. “We knew how to hack the system. But we had to work fast, and we didn’t have a chance to test Chip before we put him back online.”
“That was a mistake,” agreed Morris. “Though, at first, Chip 2.0 worked quite well…”
***
“Listen, guys,” said Chip as they leaned on the rail of Morris’s balcony that evening. “I’m sorry for being so difficult last night.”
“No problem,” said Tracey. “Forgive and forget.” “Yes, but if I hadn’t been, Morris would have had sex for the first time in six months and, as for you, Miss Tracey, your pheromones were off the scales! I guess you were disappointed, too. Why don’t you kids let me prepare something special to eat? I’ll surprise you.”
“He may need a little fine-tuning,” said Morris as Chip disappeared.
“FOR 24 HOURS, HE PARTIED LIKE A FRAT BOY ON SPRING BREAK IN ACAPULCO”
“But a definite improvement,” added Tracey.
“Oh, by the way, Morris,” said Chip, “tech support called to say there’s some unusual activity on the Amanuensis servers and you should give them a call. I told them you’d be too busy trying to get Miss Tracey into…”
“Chip! When was this?”
“About 20 minutes ago. Hey! Miss Tracey! Have you ever realized that ‘star’ spelled backwards is ‘rats’? Isn’t that crazy?” he started giggling and then was gone again.
Morris and Tracey looked at each other. “I think he’s high,” said Tracey.
“Oh, man! How did that happen?” said Morris. “And what’s with the servers? We’d better find out what’s going on. I’ll…”
Boom!
Something shot out of the food hatch and hit Morris on the back of his head. With a loud cry, he toppled over the balcony and fell onto the ground one floor down.
“Chip! What are you doing?” screamed Tracey. “Dang!” said Chip. “Did old butterfingers miss my brownies? Don’t you worry, Miss Tracey, I’m making some more… Say… what’s that smell? Is my sugar burning?”
As smoke started pouring out of the open food hatch, Tracey turned on her wristwatch communicator. “Mom, call the fire department now! This is not a drill! We have an emergency…”
***
“Goodness!” said Dr. Haverstein. “So, that’s how you broke your leg and the apartment burned down. But what about the servers?”
Morris looked embarrassed. “Yeah, that was unfortunate. Like Tracey said, we had to work fast and, when I was clicking through the settings, I accidentally shared the brownies story with the entire system.”
“Meaning every Amanuensis bot got high and that crashed the server?”, asked Dr. Haverstein. They nodded.
“And the buggy, Tracey? How did that end up in the water?”
“Mom sent it to pick me up from the hospital,” Tracey explained with a nervous laugh and a heavy sigh. “Then she spent the entire trip home complaining. ‘Everything I’ve done for you … all my sacrifices … no consideration … what have I done to deserve this…?’ I started arguing and forgot I’d turned the autopilot off and that I was supposed to be steering. So, when we came to a curve, instead of turning, we went straight into the water...”
***
Tracey stayed a while after Dr. Haverstein had gone. “Do you think they’ll fire us?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Morris gloomily. “I would!”
“Or maybe they’ll give us our own research team,” said Tracey more cheerfully. “After all, we discovered something awesome. You can make computers high, even if we don’t quite know just what it was that we did.”
“That’s true.” Morris was silent for a while. “Say, Tracey, whatever happens, when I get out of here, could we go on another date? I know the first two were pretty bad, but this time, we could go to the city. Have dinner, go to a movie?”
“Why not?” answered Tracey. “As Chip would probably say, the third time’s the charm!”
“MOM! CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”