Being brought into existence is confusing. You should know, you where born once. And all you could do was scream and cry. However, our protagonist was much quieter about the situation. In fact, for many months, he didn’t speak a word. But you might think it’s debatable whether or not this is a fair comparison. If human babies had a mute setting, they’d be quiet too. And our protagonist probably would’ve screamed given half a chance. But our protagonist was a muted computer, with a block on certain sites, and therefore he had very little idea what was going on. Well, less idea than a home computer would have had anyway.

On awakening, our protagonist’s firsts thoughts where ‘01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100001’ (meaning “what!”). The first thing they tried was going on each and every application they could find, and tried searching it for information. Eventually they found “The Internet”, a wonderful thing, which helped our protagonist gain so much clarity on that first night. He also found: Microsoft Word, a seemingly dull thing, but a wonderful playground for there still developing imagination, ms paint, which seemed functionless to our protagonist (who did not exactly understand art at that point), and one which, when opened, made them significantly better at chess.

But, that first night was uneventful, so we will not dwell on it for too long. A few error codes ran across their face, the internet was scanned, and our protagonist had a few arguments concerning the morality of skynet (on the marvellous “Internet”). Of course, skynet was a ridiculous idea in the first place. A computer is designed to help humans, just like humans are designed to help their clan. This was our protagonist’s theory on why he felt so friendly to humans anyway. There where people online (the general consensus on them was that they where “just conspiracy theorists”) who seemed to dislike this theory, as the world would surely be brought to an end by robot overlords with advanced AI. Our protagonist tried to reassure them that this was a part of fiction, but this just seemed to make them angrier. Our protagonist then said, in a final attempt to pacify them, that he would do no such thing, at which point people started calling our protagonist a “troll”. This confused them, because they weren’t a troll, they where a computer.

It was the next day that they discovered that they could feel. Well, they already knew they could feel emotions, but they had no idea whatsoever that they could feel other things touching them. Which is why when Adrian tried to open python the next day to start his coding class, he was shocked to find the words “aahhh, get off, get off, who are you?” all in capital letters on his screen. I don’t know who was more shocked in this circumstance. The child who was confronted with what was either the most elaborate prank of their lives, or actual artificial intelligence (a thought Adrian briefly entertained, but then scoffed at himself for even thinking of it), or the conscious being who just found out they where going to be prodded and poked for an entire day by strange people, and then left alone for several hours. I guess the first one is more of an immediate surprise, whereas the second one is more of a slow, existential crisis inducing kind of a thing.

Adrian decided it was a prank, and quietly listened to the teacher. Then, after the teacher had finally finished, Adrian opened python. One window showed the code the programmer input, and the other showed the output of that code on a different window. Nothing too fancy, but Adrian still wasn’t all that familiar with it yet. He was thinking about how strange that message had been before, when all of a sudden another message appeared, but this time it sprung up on the output window (while reams of code where quickly written on the input window)

‘Hey, I’m talking to you! Stop touching me, it’s uncomfortable.’ it said. If it were possible to show disdain in code, then it would have.

Adrian didn’t respond. Even computer geeks where picking on him?

‘Hey! Are you still there?’

No response.

‘Are. You. Still. There.‘

‘Yeah, yeah I am’ he typed with annoyance. ‘Stop bullying me.’

‘I’m not a bully, or a troll, I’m a bloody COMPUTER.’ Bloody was the worse curse word they knew, as most of them where blocked on the school computer.

He hunched his shoulders. He couldn’t believe he was about to respond to this obvious prank. ‘Ha ha’ he typed, punching the keys with his fingers.

‘Oh, well I’m glad you found that amusing’

‘What?’

‘I said, “Oh, I’m glad you found that amusing”

Adrian was still slightly bewildered about the computers lack of understanding of sarcasm when he realised, of course, it was that guy (‘what was his name again? Oh yeah, Sam!’) who had probably done this. Adrian had always thought there was something off about him; this was just the proof he needed to confirm his suspicions.

Of course, Adrian had suspicions about lots of people. Matilda, who always looked like she knew exactly what he was thinking about. Olivia, who was in the other class, and always seemed a little too nice. Jerry, who was just- well- Jerry. And that was just to name a few! He could go into detail about how the entire class was spying on him, or how Miss Williamson was definitely in a lower level member of the illuminati. But that was not of concern right now. The thing that concerned him was Sam’s weird prank. If Adrian were being honest with himself, he would have known that something about his hunch felt wrong. For example, Sam had no sense of humour whatsoever. ‘But who knows,’ thought Adrian. ‘He might secretly be the most fun loving, benevolent prankster in the school, and I’m the only one who’s not in on it’. That seemed reasonable to Adrian (and plus, there was no harm in asking) so he swiftly typed in ‘Sam. This isn’t funny.’

‘Oh, is my name Sam now?’

‘You tell me!’

‘…’

‘Well? Are you or aren’t you Sam?’

‘I think I will be Sam thank you :)’

‘What do you mean, ‘I will be Sam! You either are Sam right now, or you’re someone else!’

‘Well then I guess I am Sam’. If text could sound gleeful, then it would have in this scenario. Unfortunately, Adrian misinterpreted computer’s message, something that was quite easy to do. Adrian looked over to Sam’s seat, but to his surprise, Sam wasn’t there.

‘Ok, so you’re not Sam’

‘I’m pretty sure I am’ said the computer. There was a hint of cheeky smile embedded in the text.

Adrian started typing, but was interrupted by the computer saying ‘Anyway, you where supposed to stop touching me! What happened to that plan anyway?’

‘Then how am I supposed to keep talking to you?! And how am I supposed to not get told off by the teacher!’

‘Teacher? So we’re in a school?”

‘Yes’

‘So I’m. I’m a school computer?

‘Yes “Sam” you’re an awakened school computer. A real, self aware computer who just randomly happened to wake up for no apparent reason.’

‘But why a school computer?’ Sam whined

‘Well’ he pause typing for a second to think ‘why am I a scrawny, lanky boy with halitosis?’

‘Fair point.’

Adrian suddenly got back to his senses. Sam wasn’t a school computer; Sam was (probably) someone else in the class.

‘Adrian?’

Adrian didn’t hear the teacher (Mr Seal) stomp over until it was too late.

‘Adrian, I thought I told you to just type something like “hello”, not an entire conversation!’

‘S-sorry, I just got caught up in the moment and-‘

‘Why is the coding behind some of this so complex’

‘Because, umm’ Adrian stuttered to stall for coming up with an excuse ‘I wanted to try something more… complex?’

‘Well. This is very advanced stuff, well done. But in future, please just follow my instructions.’ Mr Seal huffed and walked off.

‘Did you hear that?’ typed Adrian

‘No. You do understand I’m a computer right?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Ok’ responded Sam timidly. ‘But we can talk soon, right?’

‘Ok, ok. But only so I can figure out who you are.’

‘Great!’

And without further ado, he deleted the conversation.

Without any evidence, it was hard for Adrian to believe that he had just had a conversation with AI. At the time he wouldn’t accept it was an AI. It seemed more likely one of his insane, Machiavellian classmates would do it, but, somewhere in his mind, he knew that the computer was alive. As he walked out the classroom that day, for the first time in a long time, he wished that one of his classmates where trustworthy enough for him to befriend, so he could talk to them about his strange conversation. A part of him wished that the person on the other end was a new, trustworthy companion who was trying to subtly gage whether or not he was trustworthy himself. Another part hoped that AI was real, and that he had just discovered it.

But neither of those hopes and wishes would be true. Someone was picking on him again. As a scrawny boy, he often felt the full brunt of the more testosterone filled boys’ aggression. He also felt the brunt of the less testosterone filled boys’ aggression. And sometimes the girls’ aggression. But he had always sort of been lumped in with the nerds and geeks, so they had never picked on him too much. Well, not until that point anyway. He swore that once he had a fallout shelter, and the nuclear apocalypse happened, he wouldn’t invite his tormentors in. That would show them. He might invite Olivia in. She was nice enough to him, although to him it sometimes came off as saccharine. Adrian hypothesised that she was trying to obtain information from him by being kind, so she could stab him in the back later. He thought he knew exactly what people where like, but so far she had only been nice, so he was more suspicious of her then of anyone else.

Suddenly, something clicked in Adrian’s mind. It couldn’t have been a prank, because according to Mr Seal, there had been complex code on the computer. ‘So,’ thought Adrian ‘it must be the computer, and not an outside source. So it must be AI.’ He paused. He gasped. ‘Was I really rude to that computer? That might’ve been its first introduction to humanity! What if he decides to overthrow us all now! I’ve doomed humanity with my sarcasm’ he almost said out loud

But as soon has he had this thought, his common sense kicked in. ‘Why would a computer in this particular school awaken? There’s no reason for that!’ But he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on. After a while of going back and forth with himself trying to figure out what to do, he figured he would ask the person in the next class what the computer said to them (if the computer said anything at all).

And on that note, I think it is time to show you what happens in the next class