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 Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:45 pm
It was another day Luca was called in off his regular schedule. He didn't mind, it was nice to get out of his apartment and he preferred the cool building of .Net to the stuffy and noisy flat he resided in. After hanging up his jacket he walked to the kitchen for a glass of water and then back out to the lobby.
As he drank he looked about the room and was happy to know his presence hadn't mired the sparkling interior that Fiach kept. From his side, his PDA buzzed in the new holder he had bought. Luca placed the glass carefully down on the closest available space and retrieved his device. A message appeared on the screen beneath a pink Hacker.
-So when is this person supposed to show up? It's boring just waiting. I know! Put on some music and dance for me!-
Luca shook his head. "I'd rather not thanks. I'm sure they will be here in due time. This place isn't exactly the easiest to get to you know."
Another message. -Oh fine. >: ( And I guess you are right.-
The man nodded and replaced his PDA. He lifted the glass of water from its perch, checked to make sure no ring had appeared, and drained the contents. Then Luca made his way back to the kitchen to put the glass in the dishwasher with all the other glasses.
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Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:13 pm
Tiercel poked her head in the door of the lobby, scanning the room interior with an inquisitive expression. "...wow. Shiny." The words were soft, half to herself, as there appeared to be no one else in the room... She thought she might have seen someone just disappearing around a doorway beyond, but her mind often played tricks on her, these days.
Speaking of which... She adjusted the messenger bag slung over one shoulder, within which was contained the reason for her visit. Her laptop -- an eccentric machine at the best of times, and one she fondly anthropomorphized in the back of her mind. But it had finally started showing warning signs: vanished or corrupted files, inexplicably rearranged folders... She'd scanned and rescanned for viruses, found nothing, consulted tech support, been put on hold for a good half hour, only to be told she must have a virus, and to try scanning again. That had been a facepalm moment.
And finally she'd been directed here. The lanky young woman moved all the way into the room, feeling a bit awkward... She felt like she should be removing her boots and setting them beside the door, rather than tracking whatever all over the spotless floor. But that might be juust a bit too ridiculous for a first impression. Instead, she called, a bit louder, "Hello? I have an appointment...?" Maybe she was a few minutes early? Or late?
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Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:07 pm
Caught up in his own thoughts, Luca barely heard the door open and shut. The closing noise of the dishwasher door brought him back to earth almost at once. He sighed. Random brainstorming for writing. It all seemed so good up in the head but once he tried to place it on paper it came out all wrong and had no flow whatsoever. Probably a block en route from his mind to his hand. Whatever. Now was not the time nor the place for that.
At the sound of a voice from the other room, he jumped a bit. Startled. True, he was expecting a person to come in with reports of computer trouble, but he hadn't expected so soon. Quickly he composed himself and strode to the kitchen door and out into the lobby.
"May I help you miss?" He put on the calm, polite tone that he always used for business situations. Luca waited for the woman's reply, but upon seeing her bag, he nodded at it. "I guess you are the one who phoned in yesterday." He paused, looking around the lobby before turning towards the kitchen. "If you'll come this way we can sit down and discuss the problems you reported having."
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 10:11 pm
"Ah, here we go. Real live person. So much better than tech support." Out of someone else's mouth, the words might have had a sarcastic or annoyed edge to them, but Tiercel simply sounded relieved to see the man; she'd long since accepted that bizarre technological failures in her life were as unpredictable and unstoppable as lightning strikes, and that worrying unduly over the hassle would do nothing but give her an ulcer. Although, admittedly, this was a weirder problem than usual. Oh well. This guy looked competent, at least.
She patted her bag and nodded at his words, following as he turned. "Sorry about the trouble, but I've lost a bunch of data already, and it seems to be getting worse. Is it a new kind of virus, or...?" One hand ran distractedly through the short-cropped, tousled dark hair, an expression of good-natured bafflement in her eyes.
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Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:26 pm
Luca smiled at the woman's tone. At the statement, he nodded.
"We prefer to have a more human approach to fixing problems. There's only so much you can do over the phone, and explaining it isn't the easiest thing when you can't see who you're talking to or what you are dealing with."
He stepped over the kitchen threshold and pulled one of the chairs from the table out before motioning Tiercel to sit in it. Luca then walked to the one directly across and pulled it out before pausing. "May I offer you a drink of water?" He stood holding the chair for a response. If the woman said no he would sit down and simple as day get to her problem. If yes, then he'd get glasses for the both of them and then get to the problem.
Waiting for her answer he realized he hadn't introduced himself. "By the by, my name is Luca, Luca Creste. I take care of most of the people who report problems on their devices." He smiled and lifted one hand off the chair back before extending it to Tiercel. "Welcome to .Net."
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:09 pm
She smiled at his offer of a drink. "Thanks for asking, but no, I'm fine." Sitting in the proffered chair, she opened her bag and pulled out the offending computer, a older-looking but still serviceable machine with a "Student Driver" bumper sticker affixed to the back of it, where most people would put a laptop skin or other decoration. It was a bad joke, but Tiercel was fond of it.
When he held out a hand, she accepted it with a polite nod. "Tiercel Raymoor. Nice to meet you." Patting the machine, she added, "I know you probably see mostly fancier stuff in a place like this... But I can't really afford to upgrade to the new model, and anyway, he still works fine, if you can ignore the occasional quirk." The pronoun was used quite casually, as if she'd forgotten that it wasn't exactly normal to refer to one's electronics with gendered pronouns.
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:24 am
When Tiercel declined his water offer, Luca sat down in the chair across from the woman after shaking her hand in return.
"A pleasure to meet you as well." He causally removed his PDA and its holder from his belt and placed it on the table. He smirked at the sticker on the back of the laptop as Tiercel retrieved it, but shook his head at her statement. "That's quite alright. As long as it functions right?" He cocked his head at the mention of the pronoun, but quickly determined it was the laptop she was talking about. He folded his hands on the tabletop and nodded at the machine.
"If you could tell me what sort of problems you have been having with your computer, I'm sure I could figure out how to help it." Luca hoped so at least. He had a feeling it was a Hacker that was on this woman's computer. And if so, there wasn't much he could do than lay down the 'Your Hacker and You: How to deal with an intelligent being on your hard drive' speech.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:04 pm
She frowned a bit -- this was the tricky part, explaining the problem without sounding crazy. "Well... It started a little while ago -- maybe a week? This little egg-thing showed up on my desktop; I play a couple MMO's, so I figured it was an event thing, either that or one of my friends had sent me one of those interactive pet doodads that are so popular now... You know, like Tamagotchis except they sit on your desktop. I don't know, I don't really follow that stuff." Realizing she was rambling, Tiercel figured it was time to stop rationalizing her initial apathy towards the bizarre little icon, and cut right to the chase. "But then odd stuff started happening. Like files getting corrupted, or vanishing altogether. A few of my files have been rearranged, and I know no one uses this computer but me. And now I can't figure out how to delete the egg thing."
She opened the laptop, pushed the power button, and briefly made a face at the screen. "I ran virus scans, but they all turned up no help at all. Sorry -- do you know what it might be?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 7:31 am
Luca nodded at the things Tiercel said. The parts that interested him the most were the ones about the egg, the file corruption and/or vanishing, as well as rearranging, and the virus scans not functioning. He gave a short smile.
"I know exactly what it might be. If you could just locate the egg in your computer and turn your laptop around to face me, I think a visual would confirm my suspicions. And if I'm right, I'll have to tell you a few things about that egg of yours." His eyes turned to the screen of his PDA, where a pinkish Hacker was floating around on the screen. Upon seeing Luca turning his attention momentarily to her, Au'ret nodded. She knew what she might have to do.
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Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:39 pm
Tiercel nodded, glancing at the laptop screen before adding, "Oh, and the other bit that was weird... Sometimes when I open a word processor or an instant messenger window or something, if I leave it alone for a while and come back to it, there'll be text there that I didn't type. Not like gibberish, though -- it makes sense, though not necessarily in context. Quotes from literature and things." That was one of the things that had baffled her, as well as the tech support guy, but since Luca seemed inclined to believe her, she figured it was worth it to add that in.
There was the egg, nestled serenely amongst the icons that were neatly arranged on her desktop, looking like it positively belonged there with the fractal wallpaper and the widgets she'd downloaded on a whim. It was hard to believe that such an innocuous-looking thing could be harming her computer... Well, it would be hard to believe, at least, if Tiercel hadn't noticed a curious hole amid the carefully arranged folders. My e-books! You fiend! With no further hesitation, she turned her laptop around so that Luca could see.
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Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 6:06 am
He nodded at what the woman added. It was true, Hackers would do things like that to get attention from the person they are now attached too. They were like humans in the aspect that they needed and craved social activities. So if this egg was a Hacker egg, it was trying to get its new owner to acknowledge its presence in a friendly way.
As Tiercel moved the laptop around, Luca leaned across the table and his eyes scanned the screen. The fractal wallpaper drew his eyes to it instantaneously, but he quickly regained control of his ocular senses. He glanced at the icons that were arranged on the screen and spotted the egg amongst them. It looked like it belonged there, like a link leading to a game. Leaning back, he cleared his throat and nodded. Time to break the news, albeit gently since the woman seemed to think the egg was malignant.
"You're in luck," He said, straightening in his chair. "I do know in fact what that is and I think you'll be glad to know it's not as malignant as you thought. What you have on your computer is called a Hacker. Or, at least, the egg stage of a Hacker. They are AI programs that are similar to humans in many aspects." He picked up his PDA and looked at the screen before putting it back on the tabletop. "But they also have voracious appetites for data of any kind, which is probably why your files are gone and discombobulated. So, do you have a named picked out for it?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 12:42 am
Tiercel's eyebrows shot up when Luca said the word "Hacker", but then her expression turned to one of bafflement. "An... AI? I thought those were just science fiction -- or at least, the complex ones. Simple, yes, but... You said similar to humans?" She turned the screen back around to face her, staring at the egg with renewed interest. "So... It's not a virus, it's just... a hungry, intelligent thing. How intelligent, exactly? Like, can they be --" don't say trained, she stopped herself hastily don't say trained, just in case they're smart and easily offended "taught which data is okay to, um, eat?"
Her previous desire to remove the thing from her computer had vanished entirely, replaced with curiosity. Not that she knew enough about the kind of advanced programming required to make something like this... she guessed probably few people, if anyone did... But still, it was exciting. "...You'll have to forgive me if I think for a bit; I didn't exactly come in with a name ready." On a strange whim, she opened up Word and left it there for a few seconds. As she'd been half-expecting, as soon as she glanced up at Luca and then glanced back -- there it was. A small block of text at the top of the page, cursor blinking mutely at her at the end of the last line.
Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’.
Remember?
Tiercel's Italian was rusty to nonexistent, but she knew enough in context to recognize the most famous few lines of the Divine Comedy. The first file to vanish: a copy with the English translation and the original Italian side-by-side, one she'd been intending to read through entirely but never had. This was the first time she'd been fully able to understand one of the cryptic messages.
"...Virgil. I'll call him Virgil."
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Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:16 am
"Yes. AI. Artificial Intelligence. And in recent years it's made leaps and bounds in the scientific community. But yes I did. They learn much like humans can and can express emotions, eat, communicate, etc. They also have a need for social activity, much like humans do." He paused, inhaled lightly, and continued. "They are quite intelligent and absorb things they learn like a sponge. Similar to children who learn things from the world around them." He smiled at her query. "Indeed they can. Your best option is to study what your Hacker prefers to dine on and create a separate folder for it to be restricted too. Oh, and make multiple copies of your work or what have you and save it to a USB port."
Luca pulled his own USB from his pocket and held it up. He tried to look serious about the thing, but was having difficulty. Much to his dismay it was pink, just like his USB cable. At the name chosen by Tiercel, he nodded.
"A good name. Now, I should tell you the stages a Hacker goes through. Right now, Virgil is at the egg stage, which is sort of like a baby stage."
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