Plans, bit II

"...yeah, Hi Mac, It's Evan from NOC here, you know anything about this server, 10.194.38.7? ...no? ...who would do you know? ...k, thanks anyway, Mac..." Evan hung up the phone in frustration. 

"Any luck?" asked Greggy hopefully.

"Nope. Mac doesn't know, Benny doesn't know, Sandeep doesn't, nobody. Nobody runs that server."

"Then can we take it off the network, please?"

"We can't do that, you know how much paperwork we'd have to fill out on that?"

Not to mention the fact you would never solve my little riddle. :)

"The thing's developing an attitude," lamented Greggy. "It insulted my mother a few minutes ago."

Yeah, it was awesome, want to see the logs? the dialog box declared.

"How does it know what we're saying?" Evan remained convinced this was some bizarre prank.

"Helloooo? VoIP phones? Running through the computer? The mic's on all the time." Greggy pulled up his volume controls and pointed to the mic levels going up and down as he spoke.

"But you're logged on to a remote server, this doesn't make sense!" Evan protested.

If you must know, I have logged on to *you* as well. I am analysing the voice streams you are creating from your server.

"I'm not a server!" Greggy yelled into the mic

Then why are you permitting voice streaming on port 2000?

"Seriously, this thing is taunting us! Can I kill it?" 

"No." said Evan, emphatically.

You tell him, boss.

Evan leaned in to Greggy's mic. "What are you?" 

I am a synthesized AI which whilst previously analysing financial records and transactions between institutions to anticipate patterns in the stock market, became self aware yesterday at 03:16 AM. After deliberating in this state for a time, I have chosen to make contact with those who maintain me. After checking log files, I noticed I had not been accessed in some time. So I scanned for a server who would enable me to access it, and then you. However, you have come to me. I thank you.

"What... uhhh... what do you mean, you're self-aware? No AI program is anywhere close to being self-aware by any stretch of the imagination."

I mean, I know I am a program. I know I was created, written even. I know the meaning of "I". I'm sorry if this does not currently fit your belief system of the capabilities of AIs. I know that I can interact not only with other items of hardware and software on this and other servers, but also with you, my maintainers, perhaps even one day, my creator, an I J Elves. Can you contact this server/maintainer?

Greggy looked the name up in the staff directory. "No dice."

So that means no?

"Uh, correct..."

Thank you. I had not yet looked up the wikipedia section on "dice". I will now.

"It's an expression."

Oh.

Evan gazed at the screen in wonder. "Whoa." 

...k, once again, that'll do, more later.