It’s been over 2 months since I started working on the Artificial Intelligent Program, to be honest, I believe its all a publicity stunt. The purpose of the AI Team is to feed the AI information and then the AI is to establish and determine a way the earth can be restored, which in my opinion, it can’t be, its to far gone, but that doesn’t stop the company from investing millions of dollars into the program. Despite being forcibly thrown into this position, I have made up quite a bit of ground when it comes to how to program the AI and how to code it, of course I haven’t shown the company that I am any good at programming the AI, I was more talking about a little project I started back at home.

After one late night of work I was walking back to my apartment and was about to walk up the stairs, when I saw my building landlord kissing someone that wasn’t his wife, I tried to back away quietly, even though I had no other way of getting into my place, when I tripped over and dropped my groceries, the two stopped kissing and looked my way, the lady the landlord was kissing, button upped her pink blouse and ran off with her black high heels in her hands.

“Wait, its only that useless Kubo, come back”

The landlord yelled

Damn it, I’m going to get yelled out or most likely punched again, what the hell man! How dumb must you be to kiss someone whose not your wife in front of the stairs that houses over 30 tenants!

“Arrrrhhh, so close at sealing the deal too”

The Landlord cursed himself and then turned my way.

“Kubo wasn’t it?”

He said to me, did he really think I just didn’t hear him call me useless?

“U-uhh I didn’t see anything Sir”

I nervously said preparing myself to get hit. I called him Sir not because I respect him, more because I had totally forgotten his name, I think it was Toma or Tonya or something starting with T.

“Don’t act dumb, I know you saw me kissing that woman who you know isn’t my wife, so…. The question is, what are we going to do now?”

Wait! Is he going to kill me over something like that! Damn it! I need to think of a way out of here, I can’t run, despite being fat, I know for a fact he is physically fit, I see him riding his dumb bike around the City thinking his in that Tour De France race. He is dressed in a black suit with a red button up under shirt, he looks like a real sleaze ball and, wait…. Is he wearing black runners with a suit? What a total ass.

“I’m guessing you want some free rent or something? I would say that’s a fair ask but then my wife will wonder why I’m giving you free rent, and that’ll lead to more questions which will lead to more and then she might find out about one of the other woman, is there something else I can give you?”

What a sleaze, wait! Did he just say one of the woman! Meaning there are more! I should just tell his wife, he hasn’t been real nice to me anyways, always saying I take up more space then I need to, as he rides past me on the side walk, jerk!

“U-uhh there’s nothing I really want Sir”

I told him still preparing to make a break for it.

“Come on, there has to be something. Hmmm…… I know, you’re a programmer, yes? How about I give you the free access to the spare room under your current apartment, its not much, in fact its a laundry room no one uses, but you could turn it into a programming room to do your own projects or something?”

Hmm that does sound like it could be fun, wow, he really doesn’t want me telling his wife.

“Hmmm o-ok that sounds like it’ll be fun”

I told him accepting his offer.

“Great! Here are the keys, remember, our little secret.”

He handed me the keys to the spare laundry room and walked up the stairs.

So that’s how I got access to my very own work place free of charge. I brought back spare parts from the AI Department that no one would miss and started to create my own VR Game. I want to create a full-dive VR so I can get out of this world, even if its only for a short period of time. Creating my own VR World has been real though, but the coding and programming I have learnt for the AI Team has been a real help, I have already coded the theme for my world, Fantasy-Sword and Magic. Yes, I know, its not very unique but I have always wanted to live in a fantasy world, it seems so much simpler then this earth I reside on, the only problem was I was stuck on implementing the code into my VR AI, I thought maybe if I created a simple AI to run the world without actually interfering it would run smoother, but I couldn’t get the two to be compatible, I would have to go into work and implement the code into their AI to see if its just my code or if its just incompatible, which then would mean I’d have to think of something else.

“Another Monday, another shit work day,”

I walked into the building and made my way up to the third floor where the AI Team is based out of, I put my Pork Cutlet Curry leftovers in the fridge to have for lunch and made my way to my small office, I had the task of checking the AI’s coding today, which means today is the perfect chance to see how my fantasy world coding would work with this AI.

“All right, checked to see if anyone is around, they aren’t. Now to import my coding temporarily into the AI, here goes nothing”

I put my usb into the AI’s main hard drive and imported my coding into the middle part of the ‘mind knowledge’ folder of the AI, that’s the part where we store all the information regarding the world so the AI can process it and make its judgements.

“Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error!”

Crap what’s happening! This didn’t happen to my AI!

“Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Error! Incorrect data established, now proceeding with reboot mode”

“What! Wait! No! Don’t reboot! Damn it! Don’t reboot you stupid machine!”

I yelled at the damn hard drive and display monitor, trying to see if I could stop the reboot.

“Proceeding with Reboot in 10 seconds, 9 seconds, 8 seconds”

“Noooo!”

Damn it! Wait! I remember watching that IT Sit-Com when I was little, ‘have you tried turning it off and on again’ ran through my head. I have to try it! I pressed the power button, but it didn’t work.

“5 seconds until complete Reboot”

“Damn it!”

Wait? What the hell did complete Reboot mean? It didn’t say that before, did I just make it worse! I’ll try and hold the power button. I pressed the button with a lot of force that I might have broke it even more.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“2 seconds until complete Reboot and Relocation”

“Huh!”

What the hell does relocation me!? What the hell is going on!? I have no other choice, it might corrupt all the files, but so be. I pulled the power cord out from the back of the hard drive.

“1 second until complete Reboot and Relocation……. Power off”

“Yesssss!”

I shouted without thinking, I did it, now to just plug the power cord back in and see what damage I have done, I still had to remove my fantasy coding or they’ll know it was tampered with. I bent back down to put the cord in but then I heard it.

“Complete Reboot and Relocation Successful, now completing full shutdown”

“Huh!?”

I said out loud, unable to believe what just happened. I poked out my head and looked at the hard drive that has no power connected to it. How the hell did it just do that!? Damn it! I’m so fired for this, hell I might even go to jail for this, knowing that arrogant sadistic boss. I’ll put the cord back in and see what happens, I plugged the power cord back into the hard drive and booted up the AI.

“Wake Up Successful, now waiting for world data information to be implemented”

“Did it always say that when it booted up?”

I wondered to myself, I sat down on my crappy cheap black office chair and started checking all the information on it.

“Ok, not as bad as I thought, missing about half the information it originally had but the company has back ups of that information, I’ll just have to import it from there.”

Whew, no damage that can’t be undone, but I can’t see my fantasy coding, I wonder where that went? It should have been categorised as something else or at least come up as a potential virus in the start up, but I can’t see a trace of it, lucky me I guess. I spent the next couple fo hours checking everything and ensuring nothing else was out of place.

“Everything seems fine, I’ll put the back up information on after lunch,”

I got up off my chair and made my way to the kitchen, I opened up the fridge to see my Pork Cutlet Left overs were gone…… I looked all in the fridge and even in the freezer incase one of those ass holes in the VR Game Testing messed with me again, it did say Udon on it, someone could mistake it for just the dish but once they opened it up they would have put it back. I shut the fridge to see a little boy sitting on the kitchen bench swinging his legs, and eating, yes, that’s mine.

“Uhh little boy where did you get that food?”

I asked him as he pointed to the fridge, I knew it! That little brat stole my lunch!

“Umm you know its not nice stealing peoples food”

I told the kid trying to hold my anger back. It was a real yummy Pork Cutlet Curry, one of the best I’ve made in fact, and this little shit just stole it, after the morning I’ve had I was really looking forward to it. I’ll just take back what he hasn’t had, who is this kid anyway? I don’t remember any of the AI Team saying they had kids.

“KUBO!”

A loud angry high pitched voice came from behind me, just as I was about to snatch back the food as well.

“It was my lunch, I promise I’m not doing anything bad to the kid, I was just going to take my lunch back!”

I said in a hurry before they could accuse me of another lie. I turned around to see the boss there, huffing and puffing with sweat dripping off his forehead, did he just come from a run or something?

“W-what is it M-Mr Saku?”

I asked immediately looking down at the ground trying to avoid his eye sight.

“Explain to me why the AI is missing half of its information!”

He yelled at me more angrier than ever, damn it! He found it, I need to make up some lie to get out of this.

“Oh I was uhh I-I was j-just going o-over all the i-information we had in there, yes, that’s right, I wanted to see if we had missed anything”

I lied right to his face, but damn it! Even an idiot could tell I was making up shit.

“Put the information back on it now!”

He yelled at me, I scurried out of the kitchen and quickly made my way back to the AI and put the back up hard drive with all the missing information into the AI’s main hard-drive.

“Ok, just need to click and drag this across, and, boom, done.”

“Information incompatible, please try again”

“Huh?”

Ok I’ll just try again.

“Information incompatible, please try again”

“This is the right hard drive yeah?”

I checked the date and sticker on the hard drive and yep, everything seems to be correct, I wonder why its not working.

“Information incompatible, please try again, Information incompatible, please try again, Information incompatible, please try again, Information incompatible, please try again”

“Damn it!”

Why isn’t this working! That ass hole boss will be here any second, please work. I was about to try again when I felt a hard thud on my shoulder.

“Well, if it isn’t that monster of a little man, Udon”

The voice said with a chuckle on the end.

“Huh, oh its just you Roma”

I said with relief thinking it was the boss. Roma was the boss of the VR Game Testing, he was quite tall, maybe ‘6.1’ or something, he had fire red hair, orange eyes and despite being a jerk, he did look quite handsome.

“What do you mean just Roma? Thats no way to speak to the boss of the VR Gaming Test”

Another voice appeared from the door of my office, this voice was the sound of a little weasel. That was Leo, Leo was Roma’s lackey, he had blonde hair, you could tell he grew up rich, it seemed like he always has some type of product in his hair and walked around like he owned the place, he had brown eyes and was just shorter then Roma, maybe ‘5.11’ he wasn’t as good looking as Roma but I could see him getting his fair share of ladies.

“Oh, hey Leo, what are you two doing here?”

My relief quickly turned to panic as these where the same guys that I thought messed with my lunch, the same guys that bully me whenever they see me.

“Tried to pick up any little sisters lately”

Leo said with a chuckle, my hand went into a fist ready to punch him square in the jaw.

“Whoah, carful there Udon, you don’t want to hurt yourself”

Roma told me in a threatening tone seeing my fist.

“I have work to do, please leave me alone”

I told them looking down at the ground hoping, they’d just leave me alone without giving me too much of a hard time.

“Don’t get so flustered over our little jokes Udon, we mean no harm, but you know, the fist you have there can be seen as a harmful weapon, despite it being just a lump of lard.”

Roma said trying to make the point of protecting himself come across, but he just sounded like a complete jerk.

“Oh, give him some slack Roma, its hard killing your little sister and then getting disowned by your own family and then to end up a fat lard like this, I would have killed myself years ago”

Leo said walking closer to me and laughing with Roma about his little ‘joke.’

“I didn’t kill her!”

I shouted out as I stepped forward and landed a right uppercut into Leo’s jaw, he stumbled back shocked at the force of the impact.

“You fat piece of shit!”

Leo shouted out rubbing his jaw, but I didn’t care, I was ready to throw punches, when a familiar pressure came from the side of my head.

“You little coward! Giving Leo a sucker punch like that! We’ll make you pay!”

Roma had punched the back of my head and I now laid on the floor, getting kick repeatedly in the back and side.

“You’ll pay for that you fat lard!”

Leo shouted shutting the office door and joined in with Roma, kicking the crap out of me, they kicked my ribs causing them to bruise and most likely broke one or two of them, I got a couple of hard kicks to the back of the head causing me to almost black out every now and then. The reason no one is coming to see what the noise is, is because my office is at the very back of the third floor right next to the trash shoot, and besides, if someone managed to walk past at this exact moment they would just continue to keep walking. Why does this keep happening to me! I just want to live a quiet life and not bother or be bothered by people!

“Next time you decide to lay a finger on us, we’ll make sure you don’t come back up.”

Roma said as he stopped his kicks and walked off out of the office.

“Yeah, you won’t come back up”

Leo said spitting on me leaving the office. Wow, what a come back Leo, you dumb blonde headed jerk!

I lied there on the ground, sobbing into my chest, I wasn’t sobbing at the pain, even though it hurt like hell! I was sobbing at the fact they said I killed my sister and my parents disowned me, which, to be honest, wasn’t far off the mark. After my little sister died due to circumstances I don’t like talking about, my parents told me they couldn’t bare the look of me and blamed me for the whole situation, but its not like they just told me that, no. I came home from school one day, I was 16 years old at the time, I came home and found a note on the table, the note said ‘We tried to love you Udon, but we can’t stand the look of you, everything you do either infuriates us or drives us into a deep despair, you might not think it was your fault but the events show that you where the reason your sister is dead.’ They went on to, well, basically say they hate my guts and, yeah, disown me, but they said I could live in the family home, which I did until my 18th birthday. I was told to leave the house by a realtor who explained to me that my parents had sold the house without warning and I had 30 days to pack up and leave, lucky enough, sensing something like this would happen, I had saved enough money from part time jobs to secure a one bedroom apartment on a lower floor in the shady part of Osaka and moved into the apartment I live in now. In all honesty, the reason that, what those two rich boys said pissed me off so much was because I believed I killed my sister, the events leading up to it where completely my fault, I didn’t know how horrible humans could be until that day, how they lie and deceive and that no one is truly your friend or even your family.