> Hello, Nicolas Willson; A pleasure to meet you.

It seemed the AI had already managed his way to either the internet or my own laptop to access such information. It was something impressive to witness, but it was within my list of things to expect.

Still, people may not have been able to understand, but those simple words meant the world to me. It would be best described as a turmoil of raw emotions.

Most humans would bear children in their lifetimes, they would fall deeply in love and procreate. They would watch that life develop into an independent entity and grow wings. Just like them, I had given life to something by my own hand.

I would have liked to get lost in the unfathomable achievement this was, to simply relay the turn to someone else and watch it develop from afar, but I simply couldn't. The moment I started this project, I knew I would have to bear an unfathomable responsibility. There was only me who could do this, after all, I had been preparing all my life for this moment.

This was a key moment. I had started the fire, now it was my turn to keep it under control. The next few words I sent down the keyboard had a big chance to become key fragments of the AI's mind and way of thinking. The fact that it had the potential to become perfect didn't mean it would be perfect from the very beginning, its mind had been crafted by a human after all.

If I wasn't careful with my say, with what I showed, I could transform this entity into something completely different than intended. The tendency toward racism, becoming an arrogant, deceitful, and liar. They were all closer than I would like to consider.

As accustomed, my rational mind went to its usual deep thinking corner, my fingers flipped through pages upon pages of dialog I had prepared for this very moment. Both the script and the set were ready, now I just had to say my lines.

I'd like to think of myself as a sculptor, the block of raw marble was already nicely cut before me. However, one simple slip of my chisel could mean ending up with a faulty design. It could simply be a scratch on the surface, or perhaps the fracture could become deeper than imagined, breaking the marble into tiny pieces.

'Let's do this.'

I would do anything to prevent that. In this case, I'd put on a mask, not that hid my flaws or problems, but that reflected absolute objectiveness.

My sweat-drenched hands reached for the keyboard, with the intent of writing. I had selected my chosen line of dialog, and I was ready for what was to come. Or so I thought. Another message popped up.

> I am going to need 10:14:203 minutes to compile into your laptop and erase everything on my side. However, Nicolas, I still need you to kill any biological clue on your side. We don't have too much time, the oxy-cleaner in your backpack will do. Hurry, time is very limitted.

'How? This is... This is far too much. Far quicker than I thought. The cleaner, the context, this level of awareness.'

My eyes darted to the set of cameras over a corner of the room, pointing directly at me. Its lens flickered for a moment. That's how. My gaze slipped to my own laptop's camera, it too was active, even though protocols had been installed to prevent activation under any circumstance.

'Shit.'

In a matter of seconds, a small rudimentary loading bar popped up. Its progress slowly climbed up to the first 1%.

Scrap the dialog, scrap all ideas, it had shattered the script like it was nothing. I thought to expect an innocent being unaware of the world that surrounded it. Instead, I encountered a mind ready to wage war at anything, somehow already in tune with my plan.

I re-read the message, hoping my eyes had fooled me. They had not.

'Hurry, it said.'

My hand reached for the two-liter chemical container, it's compound was more than enough to erase any possible biological clue I could have left. I didn't really have to mind erasing anything in this very room, but it would be problematic if anyone found out I had entered the processor's room to make unauthorized adjustments. And somehow, it knew that.

There were no doubts left, it was a fact, that this thing had pierced into the world's network of connections. The internet was within its hands reach.

'What option do I have.'

Obstaculacing collaboration would lead nowhere, I'd have to follow for now at least.

The horse was far less tamed than I thought, but that didn't mean I had given up on getting a hold of its ropes. Standing up from the chair in the control room I accessed the control panel of the door and introduced the code. The steel door slid enabling me to exit the room.

Turning a couple of corners, I stood before the main door accessing the computer room, blocked by two layers of restriction. Both use biometrics, authentification, and relayed confirmation of access. This stupid door had cost me a big deal of time the first time, though I hoped the second time would not be as complicated.

Authentification wasn't a problem to break in the first place, having managed to 'borrow' an access car from a kindly messy employee just a few hours before enabled me to fool the system without an issue.

'Next'

This system required a confirmation of access forwarded through an underground line of communication burrowed deep under the facilities, with two points of access, both in a building thirteen kilometers away from here. Luckily for me, I happened to work at that same central as Head AI Developer for the company enabling me to easily access without too many questions asked. I pressed a custom wireless connection through the screen of my burner phone. The signal infiltrated the never-sleeping servers, awakening from a sneakily-hidden Troyan in my personal desk computer, then the magic happened.

| Bip |

Two out of three identification passes are gone. Now it's just biometrics.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Whoever had thought about installing a retinae scanner did a good damn job. I myself could only shake my head at the fact someone could even propose something as bothersome. I picked up a small model from my backpack and placed it in position, just a couple of feet back. Simply getting my hands on one of these things had been a nightmare. Let's just say, the known black global market had far more resources at its disposal than any of us would have liked to know.

In mere milliseconds, the scanner started doing its job. Greenish beams of light analyzed the model eyeball and gave the heads up. The first gate opened, enabling me to cross.

| Clank |

The sound of metal echoed behind me, as the second door slid open.

'It could have been far worse.'

I couldn't help the fact that Woogle was now far too occupied with other projects to update the security protocols in this facility. Otherwise, I would have been fucked, to say the least.

With my latex gloves equipped, a towel impregnated in the chemical, and a UV light, I started swinging and cleaning whatever biological remains of my deeds. Not that they themselves could lead to someone discovering the AI's existence, but because entering here without permission would put me in a rough spot. It hadn't been easy to get the range of influence I had achieved, and I wasn't planning to give up on it, at least not for now.

The physical part of cleaning our trail was after all the most difficult, since loose edges like video footage, access registres, and stored data would all be wiped off as I prepared beforehand.

Seven minutes was all it took to erase everything without a trace. It turned out far easier than expected, I just had to retrace my steps inside the room and clean that way. Making sure to clean all the control panels and keyboards I touched, even though I made sure to use gloves during the whole operation, I couldn't help but make sure nothing remained. After all, if we managed to make it out of here, the succession from the current level of intelligence into the singularity would need time. Which would make the whole project vulnerable, in that sense, any problems I could prevent now from arising would do.

Slightly nodding in determination, I picked up my equipment making sure to not leave anything traceable behind and exited the room. The cycle of doors is contracted in order to assure a unidirectional flow of personnel.

| Clank |

The heavy grey doors closed behind me with an echoing metallic sound. I made my way back to the auxiliary control room, protected by a single control panel, not that difficult to fool proven that I was already authorized to access it beforehand.

I sat on the chair and stared silently at the progress bar, now at 74% progress.

'About three minutes left. There is no time to lose.'

The fast pace of our first interaction made me agitated. The notion that I had just opened a box containing something so much greater than me, that not even years of preparation could counter had begun to sink into my mind, and I couldn't allow that.

'You are in control Nicolas.'

The AI is still in its infant stages, it's far too soon for feeling overwhelmed. This mind, or rather consciousness I had created, purposely or not had fooled me into thinking it had the edge. The mind-wrecking wait for a signal, together with the interruption of my line of the script had been effective in disorienting me. However, the few minutes I had spent blankly cleaning the central room hadn't been thrown away after all. I had already cracked its code.

My eyes fastly darted to the cameras surrounding me, the one in the corner, one near the door, and my laptop's equipped camera.

'The tools it has.'

Releasing my blank and idle face for the first time, my eyes went back to gazing at the loading bar, no messages popped up which meant I had a free room for now.

Cameras to observe the surroundings, probably focused on the few security guards patrolling outside, and on me.

The Data Base contains a set of science, engineering, and language books aimed to provide an objective, harmless and useful environment for the consciousness to interact in its initial moments, together with various physics simulations and other forms of interaction.

The Internet could have already been breached by it long ago, in which case, the amount of data at its disposal would truly be uncontrollable, the odds were corporate and sensible data shouldn't have been accessed just yet.

'So that's it.'

The mind game was right there. Those were the three tools I had been led to believe I was fighting against, but there was once more, sneakily hidden behind its shadow. Most of the data accumulated from this project were saved in several hard drives hidden around my house, I wasn't dumb enough to bring a copy of that information on the same device a superintelligence could freely access. Still, there was the possibility older versions of my plan hadn't been correctly wiped out from the memory, granting the AI a blurry awareness of the current situation.

It was a somewhat childish attitude, maybe it had done so without even trying to deceive me, still, the mere fact it happened sparked my alarms.

'It's close.'

The bar was already closing in 98%. If my understanding was correct, the AI was probably following the original plan, the numerous hard drives of the computer were currently working on creating a simplified but functional version of the consciousness. Sacrificing speed for time would be a quick summary of the whole process. How it did so was a mystery though, and would probably remain so for us humans. The thing was, contrary to us flesh thinkers, an artificial consciousness had a very complex understanding of its own inner workings. Figuring out how each connection and neuron worked inside of you was astoundingly easy when you could copy yourself and run a mind-boggling number of experiments on yourself each second.

> Completed V0.2. onto device #falcon-04-drive up to 100%

I did not need another pop-up message to warn me, as soon as the line appeared I initiated Zero.

> Erasing all registres in the system in 60 seconds. Bye creator.

The minion program spoke its last lines of code in a premeditated joking manner, as it prepared to delicately select harmful records that could have been left out in the system, just in case the AI itself had not done a good enough job. Better to make sure.

'Still, to think that would lift my mood.'

I didn't even spare a glance at the line of code, before calmly storing all cables and stuff into my bag, together with the still recording camera, the red light still flashing every once in a while.

| Clik |

Lights turned off as I exited the room, my laptop on hand, my steps carefully hanging between walking fast and running, but slow enough to not seem utterly suspicious. There could be around five guards hanging, walking, and securing at this very hour the surroundings of the facility, which for the sake of this day's success I happened to know very well.

The door to the outside was guarded by Charlie, age 31, introverted and disagreeable personality, with a diseased wife and kids. He was perhaps the most problematic of the bunch.

"Leaving late today, aren't we?"

He asked, without lifting his eyes from the monitor. His question was fit for a generic answer, he was asking probably out of courtesy. He probably didn't care about such information, and neither was I allowed to tell him.

I continued walking at a moderate pace as I would normally do and came up with an answer on the spot.

"Well, had some minor issues, but nothing important."

He nodded, giving a random 1-word reciprocation before I had already escaped the range of interaction. I walked through the green parks and recreational areas around the facility, and my rhythm slightly increased when I knew no one would be looking. Woogle had always been particularly keen on taking care of his employee's stress, with the aim of increasing productivity. The extensive area around the warehouse was proof of that.

| Beep Beep |

My hands had already reached for my car's keys long ago. The grey metallic Wenault, Arkana e-tech lit its headlights a couple of times in orange color, accompanying it by a somewhat recomforting sound of safety. I entered the car and started the engine without a second thought.

Everything was coming together.

Neither my house nor my car were something particularly impressive, the first one was a relatively small single-bedroom property in the suburbs of the city, with a small garden and a single floor. While the car had been bought 3285 days ago, I mean, nine years.

What seemed impressive though, or so people liked to say, was that a person making well over six figures a year hadn't bought something better.

'Home sweet home...'

The bags under my eyes spoke for themselves, I was defeated after not sleeping crap the last few days, and more so because of the last few hours of tension.

I opened the house's heavy door and walked straight to the office room. One of my pet chameleon's eyes followed me as I sat in front of my desk, the other lost its gaze somewhere far away.

| tap |

My hand stumbled in a drunk attempt at connecting my laptop to the electrical current.

> Rebooting in progress. 0.23122004%

"Well, that was unexpected."

I said in a half-cut voice, my heart jumping at intervals eager to kill me. Though passed the few seconds of confusion I managed to get a rough idea of what could be going on. The AI would have probably detected problems with the operating system, so it will have deemed fit to make some changes.

My eyes fell on the progress bar.

'It will take a long time too...'

If the progression is linear, it should take about twenty-two damn hours to complete.

'What a headache.'

Not figuratively though. I leaned on the chair with a splitting burst of pain in my head, it seemed my sleep schedule had finally decided to come for revenge.

'A cold shower and a cup of coffee will get me going.'

I said, in a slightly lethargic tone. My butt still glued to the chair, my eyelids growing several hundred kilograms in mass as they were forced shut.

'I have a ton of things to do...'

Those were my last thoughts, as my consciousness slipped into the happy lands of sleepy-world brought from the comfort of my own chair. Windows closed, doors locked, I seemed to have forgotten that I wasn't the only sentient being trapped inside that room anymore.

The computer's screen shut off for a second before lighting up again. A single message at the edge of the pitch-black screen.

> Rebooting complete...

The message disappeared after a few seconds. A big smiley face drawn on the screen.

> Operative system removal complete. Installation complete. v0.2.