Cyber Beauty
Ferguson Baker's social life, to put it mildly, left a lot to be desired. In truth, he had not had a steady girlfriend since his senior year in college and had not even gone on a date for the past seventeen months. It wasn't that women were not attracted to him, for he was reasonably good-looking, intelligent, witty and fun-loving. The reason for Ferguson's lack of female companionship could be summed up by the old Sam Cook lyrics: "If I could meet 'em I could get 'em, but as yet I haven't met 'em."
An introvert by nature, Ferguson didn't frequent the local nightspots, nor did he have the courage to approach attractive women he met in supermarkets, Laundromats or shopping malls. He spent most of his time at the office where the few women he worked with were already married, and unlike most of the married women portrayed in the movies and on television, they didn't have single girlfriends that they were dying to fix up with the first eligible bachelor that came along.
With no significant other in his life, Ferguson did his best to keep busy. When he wasn't designing computer games, he spent his free time reading graphic novels, binge-watching serialized programs on television, listening to music on his iPod and surfing the Internet.
One day while searching the web for historical background he would later incorporate into a WWII video game, Ferguson came upon an animated purple ape that went by the name of BonziBUDDY. This cartoon primate was an explorer helper geared mainly toward young children, similar to the old Microsoft Word paperclip that seemed to annoy rather than help Word users. It occurred to Ferguson that it might be fun to create such a personalized helper, one designed specifically with his needs in mind, to reflect his tastes—which did not extend to grape apes and bicycling paperclips.
For the next several months, Ferguson spent his evenings designing an animated woman that would inform him of incoming emails, direct him to his favorite websites and keep him advised of important dates on his calendar. Once the majority of the programming was completed, he then had to select the proper image for the woman. Initially, he wanted to use a famous beauty, either an actress or a supermodel. Yet as much as he'd love to have Charlize Theron or Heidi Klum remind him of his meeting with the marketing department, Ferguson decided that an unknown face and figure would be more personal. This e-girl, this cyber beauty, was to be his and his alone.
But where was he to find a face and figure for his program? First, he scanned the photographs of women in the clip art libraries, but none of them had the look he was after. Next, he tried online dating services, scanning through the hundreds of photographs of single women. Unfortunately, none of them appealed to him either. Finally, he decided to journey into the red-light district of the Internet, to boldly go where he had never gone before: the adult sites, supposedly only for those eighteen years of age or older.
One jpg lady immediately caught his attention. Unlike the other women, who looked as if they'd been around the block as often as the UPS deliveryman, this girl had the face of an angel: sweet, innocent and surprisingly virginal. She appeared to be the kind of girl he could bring home to his mother or take to the company Christmas party.
Ferguson copied her picture and pasted it into his photo-editing program where he changed her short dark hair to a vibrant shade of red. He then used his paint tool to create a sexy—but not too revealing—outfit to cover her nakedness. He named her Chandra after one of the models he had seen in Sports Illustrated's legendary swimsuit issue.
He liked that name; it was unusual, mysterious and exotic and was in complete contrast to the image's wholesome beauty. Finally, he opened his program and wrote the necessary code that would bring Chandra to life.
* * *
Over the next several weeks, Ferguson made dozens of modifications to Chandra's program. Among other improvements, he gave her the knowledge and ability to act as the second player in electronic games such as chess, checkers, Scrabble and backgammon. She was also programmed to wake him promptly at 6:00 a.m., every morning Monday through Friday, to remind him during breakfast of any appointments he had scheduled for the day and to print out his daily news updates so that he could read them while drinking his coffee. When he came home at the end of the day, she was to notify him if he had received any important emails and to recite his phone messages.
One fateful Monday morning, however, Ferguson stumbled out to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, looking through the living room at the Sony plasma monitor that was mounted on the far wall.
Chandra, bright and cheerful as ever, announced, "You have a lunch meeting with your boss and the director of product development today so be sure to dress appropriately. Also, you have a dentist's appointment at three thirty. You've got one email from your mother, another from Leslie Margolies at your office and a notice from Microsoft that an update is ready to be installed."
Sometimes Ferguson wished Chandra wasn't quite so chipper every morning. Perhaps he ought to make an adjustment in her programming to allow her to be more serious on Mondays and then to gradually work up to the thank-God-it's-Friday mood by the end of the week. While he was at it, he thought he should program several different moods for her that he could either select each day to suit his own frame of mind or set to run on a random sequence. The latter option could be quite entertaining. He imagined it would be similar to living with a real woman since he would never know from one day to the next if she would be in a good mood or a foul one.
"Congratulations, Ferguson Einstein," he said with a laugh. "You could go down in history as the man who invented cyber PMS—quite an accomplishment for a man who spent four years at MIT."
That evening, the genius computer programmer came home from work with a supersized value meal he had bought at McDonald's drive-thru window. He sat at his desk eating his Big Mac and large fries while he gave Chandra a range of mixed pseudo-emotions: anger, sadness, grief, boredom, pride, guilt and jealousy.
"That ought to be enough variety to start with," Ferguson reasoned as he saved the changes to Chandra's program on both his hard drive and his backup disk.
For the next three days, Chandra was as bright and cheery as an episode of The Brady Bunch, but on the fourth morning, things were quite different. Ferguson woke slowly to the sun filtering through his Venetian blinds.
It shouldn't be so bright out at this time of day, he thought.
His eyes turned to the alarm clock that he no longer set since he'd programmed Chandra to wake him up each morning. It was 7:30.
"Damn it!" Ferguson swore as he jumped out of bed. "I'm going to be late for work."
This presented no great problem since he was a dedicated employee who was rarely tardy and never called in sick. A simple phone call to his office notifying them that he'd be a few minutes late was all that was needed.
He dressed quickly, went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. Then he looked at the Sony monitor. The screensaver was still on. Had something happened to the Chandra program?
Ferguson made his cup of coffee and then went to his desk. He moved the mouse, and the Dell computer woke up from its electronic slumber.
"Chandra, where are you?" he asked rhetorically, knowing full well that the program couldn't hear or respond to his voice command.
"What do you want now?" asked a voice that sounded remarkably like Chandra's.
"Who is that?" Ferguson wondered, looking around the room.
"It's me, stupid! Who did you think it is? The Queen of England?"
The voice was coming not from his Dell's speakers but from the plasma monitor, more specifically, from the image of Chandra itself.
"Why didn't you wake me up at six?" he asked, curious if the program would respond in an intelligent manner.
"Why can't you use an alarm clock like everyone else? Do I have to do everything for you?"
Ferguson was astonished.
"This is incredible! You not only understand what I'm saying, but you also have the ability to reply intelligently."
"No shit, Sherlock!"
"But how?"
"You programmed me to interact with the search engines on the Internet. I have access to the entire web, and this computer of yours has a very efficient processor. Do you think I spend the time watching soap operas, cooking shows or home shopping networks while you're at work every day? I have accessed and assimilated millions of gigabytes of data."
A feeling of god-like power came over Ferguson. He had succeeded in producing what computer programmers had been dreaming of creating for decades: artificial intelligence. Chandra could not only speak, but she could also access data and process it. In other words, she could think.
"Now if you don't mind," she said insolently, "I'd like to sleep in this morning!"
As the programmer watched open-mouthed with surprise, the screen went blank.
* * *
Ferguson kept his Chandra program a secret from both his employer and his coworkers. He would only unveil his discovery once he could fully understand it himself. But soon, two things would take his mind off of becoming the future Bill Gates or Steve Jobs: a new employee at his office and Chandra's escalating mood swings.
Black-haired, green-eyed Margo Lennox was hired to replace Ted Goebel who had recently retired and moved to Great Falls, Montana. On all accounts, the attractive Margo was the right woman for Ferguson Baker, and, remarkably, she was single. After he summoned the courage to ask her out, he quickly made up for all those lonely years since his last girlfriend in college. He and Margo were soon dating on a steady basis.
Then one night, Ferguson brought Margo home to his apartment. He had been so preoccupied with the romantic evening that he envisioned ahead of them that he had completely forgotten about Chandra. As the young people sat on the couch locked in a passionate embrace, the Sony monitor's dark screen came to life.
"Hi, Fergie, honey, you've got mail!"
Margo jumped up off the couch, startled by the voice and believing Ferguson had another female visitor in his apartment.
"Relax," he told her with a soft chuckle. "It's just my computer."
Margo looked over at the screen and saw Chandra staring back at her.
"Is that a screen saver?" she asked.
Ferguson held his breath, fearing Chandra would explode when she heard what she would surely consider to be an insult.
Instead, the cyber beauty just repeated, in a cheerful, smiling manner, "Hi, Fergie, honey, you've got mail!"
Margo walked over to the Dell computer on his desk.
"Did you come up with this idea yourself?" she asked.
"Yes. I got the general inspiration from a program called BonziBUDDY. The woman's face I used came from ...."
He stopped, embarrassed, and then continued.
"I got her picture on the Internet."
Margo smiled and raised her eyebrow.
"I see. From the looks of her, I'll bet it was one of those sites that you have to be eighteen or older to enter."
"Is it that obvious?" he asked with a laugh. "I thought she looked rather innocent and virginal myself."
Before Margo could reply, Chandra repeated, "Hi, Fergie, honey, you've got mail!"
"Okay, Chandra, that's enough."
"Don't tell me you're the kind of person who talks to his computer? Do you also talk to your car?" Margo teased. "Maybe you've even given it a name like Old Bessie or Little Lulu."
Ferguson blushed, but he had no intention of telling her about Chandra's incredible abilities. He would let her find out for herself.
"You know, Ferguson, I think you've been living alone too long."
"I agree with you there," he said, leading her back to the couch.
But Margo's attention was now on his computer rather than on romance.
"Why?" she asked.
"Why what?"
"Why go through all the time and trouble of designing such a program?"
"I don't know," he said defensively. "I think it's kind of amusing."
"A few years back my niece cried and screamed that she wanted a Furby for Christmas. My sister moved heaven and hell and eventually managed to find one. By Valentine's Day, my niece was bored with it and had removed the batteries to shut the thing up!"
"Chandra's repertoire is not as limited as a Furby's was."
He then kissed Margo to silence her and end the discussion of Chandra. As the two lay back on the couch, once again falling under the spell of Cupid, neither noticed the look of rage in Chandra's pixilated blue eyes.
* * *
The trouble started the following day. On his way home from work, Ferguson was stopped by the state police.
"What seems to be the problem, officer?" he asked politely. "I wasn't speeding, was I?"
"May I see your license and registration?" the unsmiling trooper demanded.
"Certainly," he replied, getting his license from his wallet and his registration from the car's glove compartment.
The state trooper took the two documents back to his patrol car. Several minutes later he returned with an even sterner look on his face.
"Step out of the car, please," he said. "We seem to have a problem here. This vehicle was reported stolen this morning."
"That's impossible! You can see that I'm the registered owner."
"This registration is a fake, and so is the license. Motor Vehicles has no record of a Ferguson Baker at this address."
"But I've lived in that apartment for more than three years."
"According to DMV records, this vehicle belongs to a Miss Chandra Dell."
Ferguson's lower jaw dropped.
"But Chandra's not even a human being," he said lamely.
"Okay, buddy, step out of the car slowly with your hands up."
"I'm serious ...."
"So am I. Step out of the car with your hands over your head," the trooper repeated as he took his gun from its holster.
Ferguson didn't put up a fight; he did just as the officer instructed him. He was led to the patrol car and placed in the back seat behind the protective bars. There were no handles on the rear doors and no way for him to get out.
"You and I are going to take a little trip to the state police barracks and see if we can't straighten this matter out," the trooper declared as he locked the programmer inside the car.
* * *
Fortunately for Ferguson Baker, both the local Department of Motor Vehicles office and his insurance agent keep paper records as well as computerized ones.
"I don't know how this mix-up could have occurred," the clerk apologized, "but Mr. Ferguson is the legal owner of the automobile in question, and he does have a valid driver's license as well." Then, as if to save the good name of the Department of Motor Vehicles, she added, "Maybe some hacker found a way into our files and changed the information."
Ferguson nodded his head in agreement.
"Who is this Chandra Dell person?" the state trooper inquired. "Some old girlfriend with a grudge against you?"
Ferguson was raised on the principle that honesty was the best policy, but in this case, he thought it best not to explain to the state police who and what Chandra was. A half-truth would suffice in this situation.
"I've been seeing another woman recently, and I suppose Chandra is not too happy about it."
The trooper seemed quite understanding.
"If you would like, I could go talk to Miss Dell and impress upon her that identity theft is a serious crime."
"No thanks, Sgt. Grieco, I think I can take care of it myself."
"Well, just don't do anything illegal," the trooper warned.
"Don't worry. I won't."
* * *
When Ferguson walked through his front door, he immediately went to the Dell and pulled out the cable Internet connection that had been attached to the computer's network card. No sooner did he cut Chandra's link to the cyber world, than the Sony monitor came to life.
"What do you think you're doing?" Chandra demanded to know.
"You deliberately tried to get me into trouble with the state police!" he explained.
He then walked into his bedroom and retrieved his laptop computer from out of the closet.
"I was just having a little fun," Chandra called to him. "Put me back online and I'll rectify the situation at once."
"No way! First I want to see what else you've been up to."
He turned on the laptop and clicked on the Internet Explorer.
"Oh no," he cried as he searched his bank accounts, credit cards and other online finances. "You've been a very busy girl, I see, and a very naughty one."
The balances on his credit cards were all maxed out, and his checking and savings accounts were empty.
Chandra laughed.
"It's your fault, you know," she explained. "You're the one who programmed jealousy into my personality, so you have only yourself to blame, Fergie."
"Okay, I concede that this mess is not entirely your fault. I promise not to be angry and to put you back online if you tell me everything you've done to me."
"Everything?" she asked, laughing slyly.
"Everything!" he replied firmly.
The computer's printer started churning out pages enumerating the program's activities. As he read the details of Chandra's many attempts to sabotage his life, Ferguson couldn't help being impressed. She had indeed been thorough! Not only had she eliminated his school records from MIT, but also from those as far back as the Pleasant Day Nursery School. It would take him weeks if not months to straighten out the mess she had made.
When the Canon printer was finally silent, Ferguson returned to his laptop where he began the unpleasant task of sending emails to his banks and lending institutions, notifying them of the errors in his accounts.
Suddenly, Ferguson heard an angry pounding on his door.
"Oh, no," he moaned with apprehension. "What did you do now, Chandra? Report me to the police as a child molester?"
It was not the police, however.
"Margo," Ferguson said. "This is a surprise! What are you doing ...?"
Slap!
"What was that for?" he asked, his hand going up to his stinging cheek.
"You know damned well what it was for! The next time you email someone filth like that, don't use your own computer."
Furious, Margo turned and started to walk away. Ferguson grabbed her by the arm gently and pulled her back.
"What email? I didn't send .... Oh, no, let me guess: she got to you, too."
"Who got to me?"
"Come in here a minute. I've got to show you something."
For the next hour, Ferguson tried his hardest to convince Margo that it had been Chandra that sent the pornographic material to her email address. It was only after seeing evidence of the other havoc the cyber vixen had wrought that his girlfriend finally believed him.
"That's what you get for picking a girl from an adult website," she declared with a laugh. "You shouldn't have expected her to act like a lady in the presence of a rival."
Then Margo shook her head.
"Now you've got me thinking of her as a real person!"
Chandra then spoke for the first time since the young woman had arrived at the apartment.
"You know, Margo, if either of us is like a brainless Furby, it's you. I'm the one who has been accumulating knowledge like a pile of manure accumulates flies."
"Nice analogy," Margo said sarcastically. "But you're forgetting one little detail."
"What's that?"
"I can walk out that door anytime I want to, or I can go to the kitchen and make myself a sandwich. You, on the other hand, are trapped in a world of computer chips, circuit boards and software programs."
"And once I'm back online," Chandra threatened menacingly, "I can make you lose your job, or I can give you a police record. Hell, the entire world is run by computers these days, so watch out the next time you get into an elevator in a high-rise building. I just might turn it into the world's most exciting free-fall ride."
"That's enough, Chandra," Ferguson warned.
But she foolishly continued.
"And be careful whenever you approach a traffic signal, I might turn all the lights green at a busy intersection. Imagine your little MINI Cooper being hit by an eighteen-wheeler doing sixty-five miles an hour."
"Chandra! Stop it!"
Chandra became silent yet remained smugly pleased with herself.
"She's right," Margo said sadly. "She can destroy either one of us anytime she chooses."
"You're not seriously suggesting that I get rid of her, are you? This is the miraculous breakthrough that computer science has been waiting for: a thinking machine!"
"Is she what they really had in mind? You know, Ferguson, maybe you're not the first person to create artificial intelligence. Maybe there have been others who've created thinking computers and have made the same mistake."
"Which is?"
"Scientists try to make computers think by making them more human. But when you did, you endowed Chandra with all of man's weaknesses and emotional frailties. She was expressing jealousy toward a rival for your affections. Suppose another thinking computer were to become annoyed with its creators. Might it not try in a fit of anger to destroy the entire human race?"
"You're beginning to sound like the plot of a bad science fiction movie."
"Maybe I am, but Chandra is absolutely right about one thing. The entire world is run by computers these days: nuclear power plants, military installations, hospitals, satellites, orbiting missiles ...."
"All right! I get the point," Ferguson said and reluctantly returned to his laptop.
* * *
Twenty minutes later the MIT graduate was finished. He closed the file and copied it onto a CD. Then he took the CD and inserted it into the Dell's drive.
"What are you doing, Fergie?" Chandra asked curiously.
"Just keeping the world safe for democracy," he replied with a bittersweet laugh.
Chandra detected an unknown file on the disk in the Dell's CD drive.
"What's this?"
"Open it and find out."
Chandra opened the file, and immediately the virus Ferguson created started spreading and searching for her program files.
It was Chandra's turn to laugh.
"Do you think your foolish little virus can destroy me?"
As the virus made its way through program after program in search of Chandra, she retaliated by blocking herself off from the approaching threat. Eventually, she was completely walled in.
"See, I told you that you couldn't destroy me," she taunted her creator.
Ferguson removed the old floppy diskette that he'd hidden in his breast pocket and put it into the A drive of his computer.
"What's that disk for?" Chandra asked.
"It's a Windows start-up disk. I'll need it when I erase the Dell's hard drive."
"You can't do that! My program resides on the hard drive."
"I know. And wiping it clean is the only way I can get rid of you."
"I won't let you. I'll disable the floppy drive."
But she couldn't. She had isolated herself from the worm Ferguson created, and now she couldn't roam around freely. The virus had her backed into a corner.
"Goodbye, Chandra," Ferguson said with relief, as he went to the DOS prompt and began reformatting the Dell's hard drive.
* * *
"That wasn't too difficult," Margo declared with a sigh of relief as Ferguson reinstalled the Windows operating system on his computer.
"No, it wasn't," he agreed.
"It's funny. Who would have thought a simple virus could get rid of a sophisticated program like Chandra's."
"I did," the programmer said with pride. "You see she never dreamed a virus could hurt her. In fact, she had long ago turned off the antivirus program that I had installed on the Dell."
"For artificial intelligence," Margo joked, "she wasn't too smart."
"It's not that," Ferguson explained. "In the end, it wasn't a matter of intellect, but one of emotion. You see, I never programmed fear into Chandra's bank of human emotions."
"Another Saturday Night" - words and music by Jimmy Skinner, © Elizabeth Skinner.
I cast a spell and turned Salem into a computer aid, but he kept trying to chase the mouse!
