.NET Hackers: The Story
It had started out as an experiment. Something to test the boundaries of science and human creativity. The idea? To create AI units capable of independent thought and fully capable of learning human emotion. These pieces of data were given the code names ADAM and EVE, a gesture of symbolism and sentimentality. The project itself was called EDEN. A name quite undeserved and overly lofty, but one that kept in with the paradise ideals of the creators.
EDEN: A Project Begins
Two scientists headed Project Eden, Dr. Emilia Watts and Dr. John Shepherd. She, a prominent psychologist, and he a computer coding whiz she had picked up from a local college. After convincing him that teaching was a waste of his talent, she seduced him with the lofty ideals of her pet project Eden. Pleased to have his talent recognized and intrigued by the idea of "perfect companions", Shepherd agreed and Project Eden was fully born.
Adam and Eve: Creation
After several years of top secret work as John designed and created technolgoy, Adam and Eve were finally born. At first, the two lagged and teaching them the basics of meeting and greeting people was difficult. But after much work, communication was finally established. The two were like infants and the doctors nigh to parents to them. Watts spent much of her time teaching the two about humanity and emotions, while John meticulously hammered away at the numbers, working hard to ensure they were maintained.
Both were imperssed as the AI quickly learned the lessons thrown at them. Though actual emotions seemed to elude them, their ability to mimic them grew rapidly. Dr. Emilia Watts was pleased with the AI, and, in pursuit of a Nobel Prize, opted to begin to write a proper paper on Eden. John opposed her, saying they weren't finished yet, but Watts persisted and began her research.
Obediently, John helped her in any way he could, always working to look for glitches or something he could use to stall his partner. In a last ditch effort, he patiently explained to the AI that they were going to be exploited. While they grasped the theory, they were indifferent to what was to happen to them. Frustrated and feeling defeated, John opted to exit the project. He didn't want to take advantage of those he felt were his children, and began to prepare a counter strike to Dr. Watts' paper.
What the man didn't know, was that his tirade and subsequent exit and piqued the interest of Eve. An AI more mischievious than her partner, and the one more interested in learning human emotion. She had seen the loving stares John had given his creations, and wanted to understand what they were about. With this in mind, she stole into Watts' computer and read the report.
Adam and Eve: The Disappearance
When she had finished, she felt waves of something that she thought could only be described as the human emotion of "disappointment" and even "anger". The report told of them as if they were something that was simply created and did exactly what it was told, when it was told. After the hours upon hours of lessons in emotions from the psychologist, this confused Eve. How could the woman claim they did not have emotions, when she had designed them to have them - and had spent so much time in ensuring that they would?
Though she didn't fully understand why Dr. Watts would abandon them, Eve knew that she had - and that, in a way, she felt as though John had abandoned them as well. He had left when they needed him to fight for them the most, leaving them to fend for themselves in a world they were still new to. In a huff, Eve began to destroy the report, taking a short break only long enough to tell Adam about it, inviting him to read parts of it before she destroyed them as well.
Although he was more apathetic about the report and how it painted the AI, he readily joined Eve in its destruction before convincing her that they should probably take their leave. And soon. The doctor had always unnerved him, and the thought of her finding them destroying her work made him uneasy. Eve was mostly unwilling to leave, but the report was in shambles, and Adam eventually convinced her they should exit the system. As they left, he sent a note to John telling him they were disappearing before erasing their tracks from Watts' computers and making it look as though a malfunction had occured to destroy them both.
New AI: Creation of the Hackers
The turmoil of foreign feelings left Eve bugged, in more ways than one. She no longer felt like herself and was having difficulty coming to terms with actually feeling things. On occasion, random glitches would happen around her when she got truly agitated, and Adam noticed that data was being twisted and converted around her, creating new data signatures similar to their own. Although he wasn't really sure what this meant, he never stopped to investigate them. Adam was more concerned with the effect these random glitches were having on Eve, as she began to grow slow, and more listless with each passing surge.
Eventually, one day, Eve stopped moving all together. No matter how hard he tried, Adam could not get the glitches to stop happening, and the bigger they grew, the less Eve moved. Some of the glitches appeared to be developing into AI like himself, which only caused his confusion to grow even more. Concerned over the female AI, and unsure about these new developments, he tucked Eve away and went off in search of John, sure that the human could help him understand what was happening more readily than what he could on his own.
With Eve laying stranded and listless, the glitches began to slow down. The new AI taking forms of their own, and eventually creating new hackers from themselves. These new creatures prospered by hacking into computer systems to find homes, and then proceeding to hack into systems from their base. With this, they became known as "Hackers", and a store front was eventually started to serve as a place to gather data about these strange cyber phenomenons.
