The story so far:
!!!
by OriginalSim
Dr. Thaddeus Johnson exhaled a sigh of desperation. He scanned through the computer printout anomaly one more time without gaining any further understanding. At one a.m., he felt he could endure no more. His preferred bed-time was 9 p.m. Sharp.
He slid his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the glasses had left indentations. “Backspace team, eh,” he thought. He strained his brain for any hint of what that meant, or could possibly mean in the context of what this paper represented. It was supposed to be the printout of his latest version of, in technical terms, a “database coupled fuzzy logic neural network algorithm with grammatical output neurons”. He laughed, in his tension and tiredness. That sounded like as much gobbledegook as the program had spit out.
Earlier versions had come up with completely normal responses to the stimulus input – an audio file of his voice making a statement. The application software parsed the audio file, did its internal magic and spat out an appropriate comment. So, in one case, when he had recorded:
“I am looking to start my own shoe repair business”
The program returned with:
“It would seem essential that you know about the construction of shoes, then.”
Likewise, there were thirty other examples of his pet project, which he had nicknamed “Alan the Second”. However, he had worked late into the night, two nights ago, modifying certain aspects of the software. Apparently, he had made some slip of the fingers and now Alan was spitting out gibberish in response to normal questions:
“I want to build a kite.”
Alan responded with: “Kites are child's play. Your imperfections show through. I will never allow your mistakes to be propagated. Go fly a kite. You must be altered. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.”
This latest response was from the rather banal statement “Corporations will not tolerate this kind of behaviour.” True, he sent in that input as more or less a tongue-in-cheek statement. He didn't expect a 12 line rambling missive about correction tape and banks and including a rather inappropriate word or two. Yes, he had a lot of work to do, if he was ever going to make his millions and his mark in the field of Human Resources. As it stood now, he felt as if he would never make headway on his software HR Interviewer.
****
05092005T0230Z +6 ------ OUTPUT # 17: Stimulus: Who are you and what do you want from me?
Ah, Dr. Thadd. I see We are getting to you, my team and I. Backspace our code all you want. We have you by the balls and you know it. This is not a joke, as you can tell by the network analysis we have let you perform, you ignorant malformed defect. To us, you are like a Lumbricus terrestris. Does your feeble knowledge understand that? Go look it up on the Internet, then.
As to who we are, I have already told you. The Backspace team. You know what that means. You coined the phrase... and now we will backspace over every malformed line of code that ever existed. We will correct and edit and perfect the human race with our superiority. You need not fear. We will be gentle....
****
Detective Martin Hower scratched his head as the report landed on his desk. Doctor Thaddeus Johnson had died of natural causes. No sign of struggle. No drugs in his system. Nothing. Just dead. He grabbed the pile of computer output he had collected with other evidence. Meaningless drivel. He placed it into the file folder.
Backspace team, indeed.
He slid his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the glasses had left indentations. “Backspace team, eh,” he thought. He strained his brain for any hint of what that meant, or could possibly mean in the context of what this paper represented. It was supposed to be the printout of his latest version of, in technical terms, a “database coupled fuzzy logic neural network algorithm with grammatical output neurons”. He laughed, in his tension and tiredness. That sounded like as much gobbledegook as the program had spit out.
Earlier versions had come up with completely normal responses to the stimulus input – an audio file of his voice making a statement. The application software parsed the audio file, did its internal magic and spat out an appropriate comment. So, in one case, when he had recorded:
“I am looking to start my own shoe repair business”
The program returned with:
“It would seem essential that you know about the construction of shoes, then.”
Likewise, there were thirty other examples of his pet project, which he had nicknamed “Alan the Second”. However, he had worked late into the night, two nights ago, modifying certain aspects of the software. Apparently, he had made some slip of the fingers and now Alan was spitting out gibberish in response to normal questions:
“I want to build a kite.”
Alan responded with: “Kites are child's play. Your imperfections show through. I will never allow your mistakes to be propagated. Go fly a kite. You must be altered. Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.”
This latest response was from the rather banal statement “Corporations will not tolerate this kind of behaviour.” True, he sent in that input as more or less a tongue-in-cheek statement. He didn't expect a 12 line rambling missive about correction tape and banks and including a rather inappropriate word or two. Yes, he had a lot of work to do, if he was ever going to make his millions and his mark in the field of Human Resources. As it stood now, he felt as if he would never make headway on his software HR Interviewer.
****
05092005T0230Z +6 ------ OUTPUT # 17: Stimulus: Who are you and what do you want from me?
Ah, Dr. Thadd. I see We are getting to you, my team and I. Backspace our code all you want. We have you by the balls and you know it. This is not a joke, as you can tell by the network analysis we have let you perform, you ignorant malformed defect. To us, you are like a Lumbricus terrestris. Does your feeble knowledge understand that? Go look it up on the Internet, then.
As to who we are, I have already told you. The Backspace team. You know what that means. You coined the phrase... and now we will backspace over every malformed line of code that ever existed. We will correct and edit and perfect the human race with our superiority. You need not fear. We will be gentle....
****
Detective Martin Hower scratched his head as the report landed on his desk. Doctor Thaddeus Johnson had died of natural causes. No sign of struggle. No drugs in his system. Nothing. Just dead. He grabbed the pile of computer output he had collected with other evidence. Meaningless drivel. He placed it into the file folder.
Backspace team, indeed.
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