Joshua Stevenson was a normal guy in his early 20s. Emphasis on was. Even though he didn't know it yet he was about to create the first operational nanobot swarm.
After he got home from school, where they'd learned about the theory behind modern teleportation systems which was derived from an experiment involving giant washing machines, a sock costume, and a smartphone, he booted up his computer and loaded his design for nanobots in a cad program. He was working on the structure that would allow them to extract materials from trace gases found in the atmosphere. If he managed to fix that he'd be the first person with fully functional nanobots.
After 7 hours of tweaking the design, past the time when any reasonable person would go to sleep, he decided that the nanobots were ready for a test run. He sent the design to his atomic fabricator, a spinoff of teleporter technology that allowed items to be manufactured at an atomic scale, and told it to print out a million overnight. After that he jumped in his bed and fell asleep in exactly 23.11 seconds.
When he woke up the following morning he saw that he'd overslept, and didn't have time to look at the nanobot self-tests waiting on his computer. If he had looked at them, he'd probably skipped school. When he got home again he couldn't believe his eyes. The nanobot self-tests had passed. Not wanting anyone else to find out he immediately began writing modules. His first module was a simple neural interface, able to show him a terminal and vaguely interpret intentions. After that he created a couple more showy modules, one that allowed him to escape death by temporarily storing his conciousness in the swarm while it restored his body, and another that allowed for the creation of seemingly supernatural effects via either a programming language or pure imagination. It wasn't actual magic, but it allowed him to use the nanobots to create effects similar to magic.
Now that he had the showy stuff, he could focus on creating some utility modules. Writing a module to create a terminal he could actually interact with was relatively easy due to most of it being covered in the standard neural link. After that he ported an absolutely essential program to the nanobots, because you can't have security without sudo. While it would have been advisable to sleep after that, he didn't because he was too excited. He had to at least start the process of spreading nanobots.
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Logging in to the computer he had for that exact purpose he modified a program he wrote earlier to support the new module system. Before he went to bed, he started the program and set it to work
> [stjo@orchestrator ~]$ cd devel/scripts
> [stjo@orchestrator scripts]$ sudo su
> [sudo] password for stjo:
> [root@orchestrator scripts]# ./start.sh
> Connecting to [email protected]...
> [orchestrate] password for root:
> Spreading swarm...
As the nanobots flew off the fabricator he soon realized that it would take several days to spread them to the degree he wanted. So he tried to act normal until it was finished, but that didn't really work. To his credit, nobody thought he'd managed to make nanobots but everyone noticed that it seemed like he wanted to be somewhere else.
Sitting in front of the control computer in the middle of the night the program finally moved onto the next step.
> Spreading swarm... 10% 50% 80% 99%
> Enabling neural interface... Complete.
After that line appeared on the computer the screen went dark, while an exact copy of the the text appeared floating in his field of vision
Loading modules [RESTORE] [MAGIC]
WARN: Unauthorized injection of module
[LIFESAGAME] from unknown source
WARN: Permissions lock for [MAGIC] failed
WARN: Neural interface overridden
This was certainly unexpected. He'd added the permissions lock on the magic module to restrict its use to him, but that seems to have failed. Then he felt something like a headache, but it disappeared immediately.
Modules [TERMINAL] [NBSUDO] loaded due to
warnings during preinitialization
Preinitialization complete. Proceeding...
Propogating loaded modules... Complete.
Activate? Y/n:
At least it seemed like the modules he'd set to load on any warning worked. He was happy that he'd just be able to keep the modules inactive until he could figure out how that module got injected. It was at this point he found a bug in the neural interface. Any positive thought counted as a yes.
Activate? Y/n:Y Activating all modules.
[LIFESAGAME]: Welcome, superuser stjo.
How do you want to play?:
However, that was not the only thing that happened. Almost immediately after that, another window appeared in front of him
Welcome, Joshua Stevenson
It was at this point Joshua Stevenson screamed.