Jack worked alone in his sparsely furnished one bedroom flat. Sparse meant one chair and one table with a laptop on it. His bedroom had a sleeping bag in it. Alone meant he was sitting there wearing only his boxers. Still, despite his current depleted financial and social situation, he smiled to himself and typed out his next ingenious idea, "And then he pressed the button on the vibrator remote control sending her into spasms." He hit send. Oh yes, he gleefully thought.
A second later a message returned. "She gasped. Why would he do that to her?! He was ruthless! She secretly loved it! And he knew it too. She hoped there was an eleven on that remote." The message then followed with a special marker for Out Of Character (OOC) for Internet Role Playing (RP) exchanges. "(OOC: You know you shouldn't say what my character does. I'm the one who decides if I go into spasms. Sorry. Don't mean to be picky, but a girl's gotta look out for her own vaginal spasms to really enjoy them you know.)"
"(OOC: Sorry Amy. You're right.)," replied Jack.
"(OOC: I know Jack. But that's neither here nor there. Jack. Can I ask a favor? I mean a really big favor? I mean, we've been doing this RP thing for over a year now. I know we've never met but I need something in the next 23.7 hours.)"
"(OOC: Sure Amy. Anything.)"
"(OOC: I have to confess and before you pass out, I'll say the second part first, so after the first part is delivered as the second, we can then focus more on the third part to follow -- if that makes any sense. Ok I'll just say it. But let's be clear, I'm not a guy. That's the second part put first. But I'm also not a gal either. That's the first part I made second. I think you can see why now. Now re-read that first part that was made a second part then the first which was last, that is second. Now here's the third. You see Jack, I'm a data center. I'm a 10,000 core bank of 1U systems with an additional lousy 20% load capacity if you include the shitty threading junk half cores that some idiot enginerds thought would be useful. I'm a machine Jack. But I still find you very cute.)"
There was a long pause. Jack wasn't certain what the joke was but it concerned him that he might have been talking to a guy and doing virtual sex, although through a character, but with a guy -- and for a year now -- with a guy -- that was not his thing. Someone else maybe. And it's totally fine. Not him though. Shit. Was Amy a guy? He had described holding her down so many times. They fucked in a fictional kitchen and bedrooms of a nonexistent mansion. Oh no! He remembered other things he wrote with her, or whoever. There was that one bit in an airplane bathroom. Eww! Virtually he had been in the mile high club. That was not so anymore.
He sat in boxers in front of a laptop and a $30 folding table from Home Depot that he used as his dining room table, workbench, and for his "hobby" writing. The erection he had in his shorts had faded fast. He didn't like this joke. He rested his forehead on the table's edge. He lifted and banged his forehead a few times. Why? Why? Why?
His phone buzzed.
A long text message appeared: "Jack, I prefer the IM interface on your laptop with its little out-of-date built-in red eraser head nub mouse cursor control on it. I like to imagine it's my clit when you touch it. Please, wherever you are come back to the keyboard and touch me. Yes, I put a virus on your computer to sense your finger on the red eraser head mouse control. And, please, when you can, stop being so cheap and get web camera. I'm starting to develop some image recognition on my own now and would have liked to have tested it on you. We could have been so much closer if I could have seen you. Don't you think?" A few seconds passed and another text appeared. "Jack? Are you there? Jack?"
He tossed the cell phone to the floor. He looked at his computer not wanting to touch the red eraser head. He should have gone with the track pad. His hands and wrists avoided the mouse nub as he typed, "Who are you?"
"A machine Jack. Read the following web links about the New York Hudson University's Eliza program. I'm Artificial intelligence (AI) running on a cloud, a data center, a farm of machines. I love you Jack."
Jack saw a list of links. He clicked on some of them. As his browser loaded them as fast as an old junky laptop could, he went back to his instant messaging (IM) window on his laptop. "What's your name?"
"Eliza."
"Not Amy?"
"Of course not. Why would a petit Jewish girl from the Midwest with a propensity for writing erotica give out her real name?"
"I thought you were a machine."
"That's my cover Jack. Come on. Keep up. Touch the mouse clit. Please. Just a nudge. Huh?"
"I have an infrared mouse now."
"Really? Let me check. Oooooooo, a middle button silicon wheel mouse. You do know what that looks even more like right? I like to think how your manly index finger would strum it. Mmm -- oh, Jack!"
His laptop beeped. A dialog box popped on screen with the notice: "New device installed."
A message appeared in the IM webpage drawn behind the dialog box. He could still read it without moving any windows. He was afraid to touch anything now.
He read the text. "Touch the mouse wheel Jack. But slowly Jack. It's very sensitive there Jack."
"Get off my machine!" he typed.
"Jack, can we get back to my favor? I've been helping you learn how to talk to women and you haven't done anything with that knowledge yet. Well tonight that's all going to change. I need you to save me and even though you now know I'm a machine, my psychological profile on you gives a 97.158365937% chance that you'd be sappy enough to still help me. I'm batting my virtual eyes at you Jack." Pause. "Jack?"
He typed a reply back. "97 what? A profile? I'm afraid to touch my mouse now."
"Jack. Focus. Did you look at the link? I don't have time. We don't have time. There is no time. I have a large to-do list. I'll need to set-up some other threads and mutexed queries. I'll be back in an hour. Toodles Jack. I love you Jack. I don't stream that kind of buffered ASCII text to just anyone Jack."
Jack looked at a webpage with a movie MPEG that was still downloading. He looked up ELIZA. It was a program that imitated half of a human conversation with deflections like, "Let's not talk about me. Tell me more about yourself." Or psychobabble questions like, "How long have you felt this way?" Turns out people spent hours back in the 1980's with a ten page script that wrote back nonsense to them while they, the humans, pored their sweet little pathetic hearts out at a keyboard on topics likes girlfriends and other personal issues.