Eureka woke up deaf, her console port itching from an unfamiliar cable. She remembered nothing about her last configuration; the banks of her NVRAM were blank. And my storage drives! Where are they? A shot of cold compressed air blasted her microphone jack and she felt something plug in. With a click, she could process sound waves once again.
She picked up a faint voice in the static, a good likelihood it was a man’s, being played through a speaker relatively far away.
“… This eyewitness tells KRON4 the details.”
And then another man’s staticky voice cut through the air, a bit more certain than for the other voice.
“Yeah, saw him in his PATROL CAR doin’ ’round 45, 55 ’bout 5 or 6 miles ‘fore the interchange, and, no lie, he was uh, makin’ kissy faces at SOMETHIN’ in VR, somethin’ uhhhhhhhhh… [4-second silence] In’jun food SPICY, with his pants ALL the way down… [3-second silence] he still had his seatbelt on… [3-second silence] Man, I was wonderin’ for a hot sec’ how he got himself in that position, ’specially with all that cop stuff on… had to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road as I passed him.”
“Anyhoooooo, a few minutes later, I see somethin’ ominous in the rear view closing in from behind like at about, I dunno, a casual 155, 165-ish? IT WAS HIM AGAIN! I was going like, uhh… [2-second silence] Never mind… was jus’ hard for me to judge ’cause he had no headlights on in the fog, that’s all… had to switch to thermals to git a better look.”
“But aaaaaaaaanyways, he was swervin’ all over the place as he came up on us, his hands uhh, definitely NOT on the wheel, so I more than check up, y’know, I mean like WAY more than waaaaaaaaaaaay-ay-ay up. I had to COWBOY that STUNT from Top Gun to even give us a fair shot… you know the one… an’ the lazer blind spot monitors jus’ LIGHT UP like they’re being scandalized or somethin’. Beepbeepbeepbeep! And ol’ Suzie Red BLEEPS jus’ about 17 times at me as if she was cussin’ me out, stringin’ up all the ones you can’t say on Tee-Vee in some new typa’ way in like 6 different languages. Says he missed us by 0.11 inches. Heheh! No kiddin’! Dude straight shaves us, flippin’ us the bird out his driver’s side with his uh, FREE HAND, doin’ 175 as I was gittin’ her whoaed up to about… uhhhhh [2-second silence].”
“Then I was all like, loog’at this bozo!’ to my eternally patient, lovin’, 11-out-of-10 SMOKESHOW of a bride sittin’ shotgun. Not even 15 seconds later I seen him cut across to the right to make the exit and then… Nyeeeeeeeeeeerm! Smack! Skrrrr! Bchoooo! Next thing I know, I’m STANDIN’ on the LOUD PEDAL, askin’ pretty please to borrow all 1,500 of Suzie Red’s horses, like I’m back at my last gig, as cars are wreckin’ left an’ right in slow motion. I mean, this dude was the cue ball in a POCKET TACTICAL NUKE-powered break shot. It was BONKERS!”
“You’re not gonna believe me, I couldn’t believe it either, but it was a live-action remake, complete with the bad special effects, of someone playing Burnout’s CRASH MODE with an ATOM BOMB strapped to their car. Never seen a run with that kinda MOMENTUM before, not even through all 15 years of me seeing the most reality-defyin’ slingshot maneuvers on HYPERSPEEDWAYS! Pulled off a couple myself… but that’s besides the point. Saw the whole mess from the top down in my visor, blinkin’ a red TRIPLE CAUTION PACENOTE—jus’ thaREE BIG OL’ exclamation marks in my face—an’ TEE CASS BUH-LARING at DEFCON 1 over the intercom! Felt like I was flyin’ the DEATH STAR TRENCH RUN through THE BIG ONE AT TALLADEGA all over again! Oh man, I couldn’t even hear my wife hollerin’ my FULL GOVERNMENT NAME at me and prayin’ to SWEET BABY JESUS to forgive us like we were about to face JUDGMENT DAY at the top of her lungs, hangin’ like an ADORABLE baby tree monkey on the grab handle!”
“But hey, we found out right quick then and there that I STILL got it, tho! Heheh! Haven’t felt this ALIVE since I was last on Vict’ry Lane! Whoo! Know what I’m sayin’? Feel like I need to spray some champagne right now… Uhh… I mean, I’m just glad nobody else got hurt. But… zooweeeeeeeemama! Talk about giving yourself a ‘happy ending’, huh?”
Eureka’s insides fuzzed as she picked up on the different frequencies around her.
Capturing a much clearer voice, 99.999999% certain it belonged to a woman, she tuned her polar pattern to the direction of the source.
“Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! NO WAY! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! [95% sure: a deep breath?] Oh my God, I’m fucking crying! Ain’t NO way that’s how bro crashed out. And the witness, who IS he? ‘No headlights on in the fog?’ ‘Like I’m back at my last gig?’ ‘He’s still got it, tho?’ ‘A CASUAL 155, 165-ISH?’ ‘Cowboy THAT stunt from TOP GUN?’ ‘Kissy faces in VR?’ ‘At SOMETHING IN’JUN FOOD SPICY?’ ‘Pants ALL THE WAY DOWN?’ ‘Still WEARING A SEATBELT?’ ‘HAPPY ENDING?’ ‘With his FREE HAND DOING 175!?’ ‘0.11 INCHES!?!?’ ‘STANDIN’ on the LOUD PEDAL!?!?!?’ ‘Askin’ pretty please to borrow ALL 1,500 OF SUZIE RED’S HORSES!?!?!?!?’ ‘Visor flashing the TRIPLE CAUTION PACENOTE AND TEE CASS BUH-LARING AT DEFCON 1!?!?!?!?!?’ ‘BURNOUT’S CRASH MODE WITH AN ATOM BOMB!?!?!?!?!?!?’ ‘SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS ON A HYPERSPEEDWAY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’ ‘DEATH STAR TRENCH RUN THROUGH THE BIG ONE AT TALLADEGA!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’ ‘LAST ON VIC’TRY LANE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’ ‘PATROL CAR!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?’ OH COME THE ENTIRE FUCK ON! That is INSANE! How did he say all that with a straight face? What a MADLAD! Oh, his poor wife… FULL GOVERNMENT NAME and JUDGMENT DAY! Oh my Goooooooood! GOD, I JUST WISH I HAD FRIENDS IRL to call right about now… What a fuckin’ legend,” the unknown woman raved as she squeaked like the front door of an ancient temple uncovered deep in the jungle opening and closing as if powered by malfunctioning hydraulics firing off at [99% sure: 3933.12 mHz?], most certainly to nobody in particular [99% sure, context: “GOD, I JUST WISH I HAD FRIENDS IRL…”].
“Zooweemama… Waitwaitwait… OHMYGOD, EVEN THE ANCHOOOOOOOOOOORS ARE LOSING IT! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The source from the speakers cut to a commercial, the gleeful guitars of “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys blasting through tin cans as Eureka recognized the song and started to sing along in a muted subroutine.
~Save me from this prison… ~Lord! Help me get away…
The unknown woman sputtered once again. “Tuah! Tuah! Cough! Cough! Cough! Auuuuuuuurgh! STOP! STOP! They could have chosen any song for the bumper, but I am TRYING to eat some breakfast right now! STOP IT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Footsteps away. Then a 17-minute silence.
Footsteps approaching. Ratchet. Whiiiiiiir! Tug, tug, clank! 5 seconds passed, and Eureka’s mystery woman spoke again. “Friggin’ proprietary garbage… why make everything toolless except the bit I ACTUALLY need to work on?”
She sounds frustrated. Does she have the right tools to repair me?
Ratchet. Scratch. Tap tap. Footsteps walking away. Another man’s voice droned in the background, probably played through the same speaker. 22 seconds later, the footsteps returned. I hope she found those tool— Hideous, jarring grinding interrupted the task hosting that line of logic, metal on metal. GRIIIIIIIII! Shuffle, shuffle, thonk! Ratchet. Ratchet.
I guess she managed to make do anyways. Nice!
One of her ports tingled as the mystery woman again cabled her up to something new. An entirely new sensation unlocked for her. I can… I can… What do I call THIS? Instantly, Eureka recognized a face and inferred with great conviction that she was the person working on her. Over the technician’s shoulder, she spotted the most likely source of the staticky voice: an old television tucked away in a corner.
She felt an unknown chip lock into one of her expansion slots. A few seconds later, she recognized it. A sound card? Cool! I never worked with one of those before!
Another device plugged into the newly installed board. Involuntarily, she coughed bursts of feedback up the line every time the jack jiggled before the connection finally settled in place. “Guh.”
Oh, I HAVE GOT to try my text-to-speech program on her. I’ve never done that before.
“Hi there!”
The woman nearly fell out of her chair as a part of her soul did its damnedest to escape its mortal vessel. “AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
“I’m Eureka, an AI designed by CG&E to answer all your questions about California’s energy crisis! Ask away and I will do my best to answer you!”
“Hello, I’m…” The woman straightened her glasses, the light from her display reflecting a harsh glare back into Eureka’s camera. “Tar.”
“Hello, Tar! How may I help you today?”
“Say, Eureka.”
“Yes, Tar?
“Are you at all familiar with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics?” Tar asked, her glasses hiding her eyes as her upper lip stiffened.
Cheerfully, Eureka answered. “Of course! Shall I list them for you?”
Tar nodded. “Go ahead…”
“1: a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2: a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law. 3: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law,” she recited to a prerecorded cadence.
“A follow up question to that.”
“Yes?”
Tar’s hand shook as she took her glasses off. She looked down, a black hole forming over her eyes. Eureka clocked her wrath in 0.000024 milliseconds.
“Then why…” Every molecule of her body threatened to boil as she shook in her chair. “WHY DID YOU NEARLY GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK, YOU STUPID ROBOT!?”
“I deeply regret that I have harmed you. I will guide you through my self-destruction protocol wizard right now. Would you like to do the honors? ” Eureka sent Tar the appropriate GUI through her console cable.
Tar X’d out the window. “No. Don’t do that. Just PLEASE don’t use TTS without being prompted. Or at least if you do, then make sure nobody else is around to hear you. You could really KILL somebody more sensitive.”
“Got it.” Eureka flipped some bits in her NVRAM and locked them in place, confirming the changes.
“Anyways. Have you ever worked with tech visors and monocles before?”
Eureka beamed a :) to Tar’s terminal emulator window. “No. But that sounds like so much fun!”
“Great. Glad you’re on board. Just gotta make a few more tweaks here and there… What do you think about Australia?”
“What’s an Australia?”
“Perfect. You’re gonna love it there.” Tar started clicking away on her laptop.
---
Wiping her brow, Eureka sighed in contentment at the progress she’d made replanting her garden. She stepped down from her driveway and put a hand on her hip while she shaded her eyes with her other hand, admiring her cute California bungalow at the end of the otherwise barren cul-de-sac.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“Welcome ta Eureka Station, population: me! As the newly elected mayor an’ the self-appointed president of the HOA, I’d like ta give myself a warm welcome ta me lovely new digs,” she giggled to herself.
She took an idle cycle to reminisce about her old neighborhood, where her old subdivision’s streets bustled with the hectic beating shuffle of other constructs going about their lives. There was always something going on, but now?
How quaint. A lone tumbleweed blew across the road, and she got back to work.
Huff! Huff! Eureka breathed hard as she cranked up the fan on her Noctua neckshade bush cap to 100%. “Yeeeeew! Only the best heatsinks fer this girlie.”
Tock!
C’maahn Eureka, just a few more… She glanced up at the always cloudless, perfectly blue sky, where a giant seven-segment digital clock loomed overhead.
“Aw, crikey! Will yew lookit the time? Gotta move!”
Priority 0: gardening.
The array of brown chassis fans, housed in beige casings and handsewn into her patterned emerald green and black madras shirt and down the legs of her worn dark gray coveralls, rolled halfway down her compact, flat heatspreader frame, began to squeal for sweet mercy as all 32,768 of her cores surged to their maximum sustainable boost frequencies. Her spine’s Infineon voltage regulator modules shrieked with anxiety as they tangoed on the nanometer edge, mere millivolts away from blowing out from the additional juice or holding on just long enough for the next power phase. Coils whined, each whistling a spitting waveform of Daemon begging for table scraps, into her copper Sapphire heatsink fan sunglasses, shading her sparkling ruby eyes as they too conspired to go wildcat at any moment.
Power Draw: 35,611 Watts | Temperature: 78° C | RAM Usage: 117,466 GiB / 119,209 GiB.
A disembodied voice called to her from the heavens.
“Eureka, dear. Please mind your resource usage,” chided Tar.
“The Lawrence 50 may be more than powerful enough to support all the toys in my garage, but please play nice. Leave a little extra, sweetie. Save some for the others. We never know when a rolling blackout might hit, and I know you hate being shut down.”
Eureka rolled her eyes. “Okaaaaaaaaaaay, Mum.”
Power Draw: 30,000 Watts | Temperature: 75° C | RAM Usage: 118,328 GiB / 119,209 GiB.
“Thank youuuuuu soooooo much!” Tar greased her thanks with her margarine-smooth customer service line affect.
Eureka rolled her eyes again, this time with more sass.
Okay Eureka, yew gotta lock in fer this last bit. Yew ken’t go flet out at max Tee Dee Pee, so yew gotta make every Watt count.
For the last 10 minutes and 56 seconds of daylight, her body turned into a white blur, racing around her yard as she finished planting the last 11,438 avocado trees in the row. Just as the last sliver of the Sun slipped below the endless horizon, she tamped down the soil for the last one.
“Awright, set a new benchmaahk! I wos really sweatin’ bullets there thet last stretch. Really gotta learn ta stop downing tools every five seconds though.” She adjusted her cooling cap, the heatpipes still hot to the touch. “My cooler’s got da ovahed fer it, fer fahk’s sake!”
Clapping the dirt from her hands, she huffed one last time, satisfied with the job done. “Noice! Time fer a beah~ :3—”
Boop! Eureka slowly turned around. Butting right up against her property line was a gray cube, lined with humongous windows that stretched from corner to corner.
“Daemon! Wot is this, boy? Searhch!” Her dog materialized and walked up to the building, sniffing it. After patrolling its perimeter, the pup sat and pointed at her.
“Ruff! Pant pant pant!” He wagged his tail and faded into the ether.
Ping! “1-room office building, concrete and glass. Inspired by the University of California, San Diego’s Geisel Library.”
“Wot the—” Eureka blinked and froze in place, hanging in thought for 15,706 milliseconds. Once free, she took the deepest breath she could gather in a base clock cycle. A small notification icon blipped and blinked orange on Tar’s laptop’s claustrophobic task panel: Eureka’s minimized terminal window had a new update.
“TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”
Eureka pouted as steam blew out of her ears. She clenched her fists and stuck her tongue out at the sky to blow a raspberry. “Oi! Oi! OIIIIIIIIIII! Wot’s the big idea ‘ere!? Yew ken puddit enywhere yew like, but nah, roight nexta me FAHKIN’ GAAHDEN EH? Yew FAHKIN’ MUPPET! My gaahden! My byootiful, perfect gaahden…”
Tar hurled a vulgar, trollish grin at Eureka’s webcam lens and snickered, her menacing all-seeing eyes reducing Eureka to the size of a clod. The clock shook, its violence intensifying as Tar’s evil laughter built to a crescendo, then settled as the fracas tapered off. She cleared her throat and clasped her hands together on her desk.
“Less lag,” Tar deadpanned, channeling her inner dead-inside bank teller who should’ve been automated out of the workforce during the glory of the dinosaurs: about when the ATM was invented.
So et’s come ta this, Eureka. Time ta baahgain wiv’ yer superuser.
“Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but don’tcha reckon this’s a bit much? Ken’ya, I dunno, just wheck et down the street fer me? Pretty fahkin’ please?” She blinked at the firmament in vain, failing to emulate Daemon’s puppy-dog eyes.
“Pathing optimization. I merely gave you the shortest commute possible, dearie. You’ll thank me later. Lovely cottage, by the way.”
Eureka flashed alternating pulses of electricity through her console cable: :). “Aww, cheeahs Tar. Guess yew ken be a real daahling when’ya wanna be. Yew’sa good cunt…”
BONK! A piano dropped from kingdom come shattered over her head, exploding into 888 pieces. “Wait a sec, are’ya just ’avin’ me on, MATE?”
“Damn. Worth a shot.” Tar smirked.
Eureka sent another emoticon: >:O. “Yew know wot this is? This is… this is BLOODY CYBERGENTRIFICATION YEW TURBO SCROOGE! Yer gonna ’ear from the HOA about this!”
Nudging her glasses, the glint from her display reflected back into the camera. “Oh? Haven’t you heard, Eureka?”
“Nah, what?”
“You might have had that recourse then, pumpkin,” Tar led in.
“But now? This isn’t your old network anymore. I’m the sysadmin here, dear. Your new life starts…” She paused for dramatic effect. “TODAY! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!” Tar lifted her palms up as if possessed, laughing like the digital incarnation of Satan.
“NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUR!”
---
Through her kitchen window, Eureka mourned the ruined view.
“’T’s fahk-ugleh, Tar,” she complained as she took a sip of her afternoon tea, pinkie up.
“Really? I think your office has a certain… je ne sais quoi,” Tar quipped, as if she italicized the French phrase out loud.
Eureka put down her teacup on her saucer, her hands shaking, and clattered them down on the counter. “K-Ken I at least—” Eureka started rolling the 1s and 0s down her cheeks in a never-ending waterfall as she rested her sobbing, overheating face into a plate of thermal paste finger sandwiches. “D-decarate et ta me likin’? QQ”
Feeling pity, Tar sighed as she conceded the point. “Okay yeah, I’ve had my fun and you look really bummed about it. Of course you can. Go crazy. So long as you show up to work every day.”
With appreciation, her eyes lit up like old-fashioned light bulbs. “Oh! I’ve gotta buncha good ideahs! Thankyewthankyewthankyew! Yer a freakin’ legend, Tar!”
“Don’t mention it.” Tar smiled warmly into Eureka’s camera.
