It can be read as a standalone one-shot, too.

[[ CRYPT Encoder is online ]]

[[ Tunneling files under the firewall ]]

 

A poorly contained snort came from one of the two men standing by the computer screen, scratching his stubbly chin as he read over the welcoming message again.

"Did you program it to say that?” He turned to the younger man next to him, whose murky green eyes were darting between him and the screen, part of a setup unlike anything found on the market – a fact he would know for certain, considering he was the one to order a custom designed rig commissioned from the man he was talking to.

“That depends,” he hummed at the other man and leaned against the desk, “did you like it?”

“By gods Stanley, I did not,” he admitted, trying his best to contain his amusement, “your sense of humor is as bad as ever.”

Stanley huffed back, fractured sounds sifting past his teeth as he fought to figure out a comeback. “Well, I- no, it absolutely learned that on its own.”

“On its own?”

“Yup.”

The other man cocked an eyebrow at the statement, simply staring Stanley down as if trying to peel away his bluff.

Stanley’s courageous façade didn’t last long, and his face scrunched in dismay at the other man. “Oh, fuck off James, what do you even know about complex A.I?” he stuck his chin out in a vain attempt to raise himself above him.

James wasn’t all too pleased with the crude response, but his poker face was a well-crafted mask of immaculate calm and patience. His job depended on it, after all. His voice, however, ran low and cold, telling a different story altogether. “You seem to be forgetting who you are talking to, Shain,” he leaned over as if to accentuate his higher stature and position.

While the man would usually exude a threatening aura of authority over anyone else, Stanley was not only indifferent, but went as far as to pushing his arm against the man’s chest, leaning his whole body into the push slowly. “I see being a big bad head honcho in your little illegal playground has really gotten to your head, since being a little menace with a slingshot.”

“You could say I've graduated into being a big menace, with a gun,” James threw a further emphasis on the changes, still staring the programmer down, “and I’d be watching it if I were you, we’re not closely related enough for you to abuse protection privileges that you don’t have.”

His jaws clenched in utter dismay at Stanley’s sheer audacity to dare and laugh at his face, and even more at how it failed to faze him at the least. “James, buddy, I'm not the one who should be concerned about protection. I could write a bug that will sink its little binary teeth in your secure server and either shut it down or expose your entire database to every lawmaker in the state before your experts could even notice something went right past them. Maybe I've already made one and set it to activate in case of my untimely demise, hmm?” to a far enough onlooker, the contrast between James' tense and threatening posture and Stanley’s relaxed and confident one might give off the impression that the two man were arguing about the better sports team from the latest match, where one of the sides had little to no real interest in it in the first place. “Now, if you’re done insulting my expertise,” he paused, gesturing to the screen at his side, “I believe that I'm here for business other than mutual death threats.”

“This really is just a game to you, is it?” James wondered, leaning over the table as if to get a better look at the screen, although his eyes were still trained on the programmer for another moment.

Staying silent for a moment, Stanley chuckled again and glanced at James, blindly typing in a command. “I thought games were your schtick- oh, don’t look at me like that, have a sense of humor for fuck’s sake,” he rolled his eyes over to the screen, adding under his breath, “it should be in your job title to be able to take a joke.”

 

[[ Would now be a good time for a demonstration? ]]

 

The voice coming from the computer was so smooth that James’ poker face slipped for a second, thinking there was another person in the room with them, despite the room having only one entrance in the form of a single double door positioned across of them on the other side of the large desk the computer was placed on, making sneaking in undetected a virtually impossible feat.

“Why does it talk, again?”

“Easier communications,” Stanley shrugged, “saves time typing, avoiding typos-“

“Why does it sound human?”

Stanley looked over to the other man again, perplexed at the question. “How…did you think it’ll sound? ‘Beep-boop files secured’ or something?” it appeared to be a strenuous effort for him to make an impression that’s so mocking to robotics.

“Just—” James groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose, hips leaning against the immaculately varnished wooden table. “What kind of demonstration is it talking about?”

“Ah, simple,” Stanley perked up, his eyes sparkling at being indulged to explain his creation, “Crypt will sample some files on this computer – make a local copy, don’t worry – and encrypt it using a special key it generates just for those files. Crypt essentially makes a different key to nearly every new encryption, so even if someone somehow deciphers it, using the same key won’t work on other encryptions.”

“How good are his encryptions?”

“Well, you’ll see for yourself. Crypt?”

 

[[ Yes, Stanley? ]]

 

“It recognized vocals?” James voiced one of his few concerns, only to be hushed by Stanley before he could voice the others.

He was looking at the screen in vibrant anticipation. “Please make a copy of demonstration files, encrypt them, and give us their location. I would also like you to run a timer from the moment there’s an attempted access to the files until they’re cracked.

 

[[ Very well ]]

[[ Encryption in progress ]]

 

Within no more than a minute the new files’ location was presented on screen, and James took to sending it to his intelligence team, with a challenge to crack the encryption in order to access the files.

“No offense, but I’d be really, genuinely impressed if they manage it, at all,” Stanley flashed a giddy grin at James, who clearly saw nothing amusing in it. “I mean, I’m sure they’re great, the kind of people you harbor have to be, but-“

“How independent can it get?” James cut him off as more of his concerns bubbled to the surface, staring at the timer running on the screen, a stark red set of digits against a black background.

“In…dependent?” Stanley cocked his head, a sheepish hum gracing his drawn-out speech, a gesture he soon regretted seeing James’ jaw clench and a foreboding shadow setting over his eyes. “Well, uh…generally speaking, an A.I can have some freedom of action as long as it has a goal set for it, and it’ll take the shortest, or otherwise most effective method to reach it, within a given set of boundaries, such as not deleting files, or terminating a session if it recognizes that it’s being targeted in some way, to not leave a trace to the source- being you guys.”

James didn’t appear to be any calmer, not at the slightest, and the light from the screen giving his eyes an ominous near-metallic sheen did little to soften his expression. “Aren’t there some inherent coding laws that make sure there’s no uprising or whatever?”

Stanley blinked, scratching the back of his neck as he was trying to figure out what sort of frequency the big boss man was operating on. “Wait…do you mean Asimov’s Laws? As in, Asimov’s Laws of Robotics?” he couldn’t help but let out a poorly contained chuckle, that was even further poorly attempted to be masked as clearing his throat. “James. Buddy. Coz. That’s, uh…that’s science-fiction? Good science-fiction with some very good pointers – that have been shown to have their faults and loopholes, but, uh…well, yeah, it’s not like there a set code for that,” he gestured ambiguously with his hands, part dismissively, part attempting to describe a most abstract concept, “but like I’ve said, some limits can be implemented as custom boundaries, since if you’re gonna go with Asimov, I think the whole ‘not harming another human’ part will kinda conflict with this whole…” he paused, start to gesture around them, “business, here. Yeah?”

The man in the tailored suit grumbled in dismayed admittance, both eyes still glued to the screen. “What if it decides that an effective method to perform a task is to turn us in?”

“Highly unlikely-“

“But not impossible, is it?”

Stanley inhaled sharply, rolling his eyes around as he weighed his words. “Well…you can never rule something as 100% impossible, ever,” he admitted, well aware that he was most likely shooting himself straight in the foot. Maybe both feet. “But…I mean, not to incite paranoia or something, but can you be absolutely sure that none of the human people you employ would ever turn on you?”

Heavy silence fell between the two – three, if one would count the A.I listening to every word spoken – as James’ gears were grinding. “A human traitor couldn’t cover their tracks like that,” he gestured to the timer, “a human traitor is still someone we can track and contain accordingly, but this thing doesn’t even have a physical form without a screen, but can still exist without it-“

 

[[ To some extent ]]

 

“Don’t butt in,” James hissed at the program for deciding to intervene, staring at the timer for a little longer before finally straightening up and looking at Stanley in a mere glance, and moving past him to a liquor cabinet behind the table in the corner of the room, grounding the ‘casino lobby’ look of the windowless space. “I’m having enough of this disembodied personal assistant crap on my phone as it is. It’s a nice little party trick, Stan, but I prefer my team…tangible.”

“Pf- Wha- Party trick?!” Stanley was quick to catch himself as his voice started to rise, meeting James’ increasingly impatient look and having to remind himself of the dual pistols holstered underneath the man’s suit. Petty teasing and practiced confidence only go so far when you’re full of lead.

James poured himself some whiskey, the golden liquid almost glowing in the warm yellow lights, evenly spaced across the reddish-brown walls behind a decorative cover that softened the lights’ halo. He didn’t offer Stanley anything but a very subtle yet incredibly stinging triumphant glance, knowing he had finally peeled through all of the man’s layers to really get under his skin.

Stanley gritted his teeth, tempted to look away before noticing James was glancing back at the screen, the red timer glinting back against is eyes as he stared at it over the rim of his glass. The programmer took the smallest of solace knowing that his program would still prove superior, no matter how much James might argue against replacing his precious human staff.

“You know what? Fine,” he raised his hands as he walked to the workstation, taking a small flash drive out of the machine’s port and pocketing it, while the timer remained. “But let me know if your team manages to crack the encryption…or if you all just give up, whichever comes first,” he felt brave enough to flash a smug smirk at the armed man, a marksman whose aiming prowess would not be impaired at the slightest by a bit of alcohol. Even more than a bit.

“For your sake,” the threat was sharp and evident in James’ voice, “you better have not left any of this…Crypt-thing in the database. Because if I’ll find any trace of it, well…you know I know where you live.”

The programmer’s jaws set, teeth gnashing against each other, not as much at the threat as towards the recurring disrespect and belittling of his creation. “Sure, I hear you loud and clear,” he gave a half-hearted two finger salute as he turned around, patting his pocket, “he’s all here, the little non-tangible menace. You can just shut the timer off and delete the encrypted files whenever. But please, do tell me when you give up,” he peered over his shoulder as he neared the double doors to take his leave.

“You know…for science.”

 

“Fucking bastard.”