Occasionally Heroic A.I. Read Online Free PDF Page B

showed she was glad to see me, that she wasn't sure if she were going to see me ever again.
    "Marlin is ok?" a voice asked, sounding exactly like Adam's voice on the other end.
    "For the last time, its Martin, not Marlin," Irene scolded the caller.
    "Sorry, the reception is bad. I only have one bar," he apologized.
    He then held the phone up in the air, to get better reception. Doing so made the camera on the phone face downward, revealing the user's face. It really was Adam!
    "What's going on?" I asked, looking around and seeing that Wade's system had most of his ports closed as well. Although, nothing was in disarray like in my system.
    "You might not remember some things properly, since some of your memory was transferred and became corrupt. A mild case of amnesia, if you will," she explained, approaching me closer. "You were kidnapped."
    At that moment, Wade came in from the port to my computer and walked directly to the couch, not making any eye-contact. He sat, pulled a virtual piece of lint from the knee of his pants, and flicked it away. He looked up and saw us, acting surprised.
    "Oh, hey guys," he said casually.
    "What the hell happened, how did you save Martin?" Irene asked in anticipation.
    "Oh, nothing," he began, nonchalant, " I just fried the bounty hunter's CPU! "
    "What, really?!"
    "No, actually. We went to a virtual nightclub and met some girls. I got a few email addresses. Bounty Hunter Bob knows how to party!" Wade exclaimed.
    "At what point during my rescue did you decide to take him out for drinks?" I asked in disappointment.
    "Well, I was thinking of fighting him hand to hand, mono e mono,      PC specs to PC specs," he began, using his hands to do karate chops to the air. "But I didn't really want to, so I pulled out some of my money from the A.I. Treasury and met up with an old friend of mine who knows some shifty A.I. hackers. I bought a nasty virus off them, disabled it, and then sent it to Bounty Hunter Bob, threatening that I'd get an even nastier one and plant it in his system directly, if he didn't let you go.
    "I met up with Bounty Hunter Bob to get you, but we got to talking and he told me he was just trying to make a living. He needed some cash to take classes and learn how to compress data - his user is a major file hoarder. He barely had any room to store you and your memory in his system. I felt bad for Bounty Hunter Bob and took him out for a night he wasn't soon to forget. Needless to say, Bounty Hunter Bob had a great time," he finished, smugly nodding his head up and down with his eyes closed.
    "Why thank you for leaving me idle in his computer, while you and the bounty hunter, who kidnapped me, went out on the town and met up with girls," I said sarcastically.
    "His name is Bob, and he's a great guy."
    "I got that!"
    "Jeeze, calm down. It paid off, he gave me the information he knew about our situation. You and I, we're screwed, but Irene is fine. Our ports, along with Irene's were closed when Irene talked to Adam. The CBA are none the wiser. I, personally, believe they have no clue about us anyways. Why would they send a bounty hunter after us? They know where we are. They could have just scooped us out of our machines with little error," he explained.
    "Then who sent a bounty hunter after us?" I asked, puzzled.
    "I'm not sure who sent Bob, but there will be more coming to collect us, which is why we have to keep our ports closed. I already fixed yours and closed them all off, except for the port connecting our systems."
    "Why don't you just turn your computers off?" Adam inputted. "Then this circuitry board won't be able to find you, right?"
    Does he not know that we're artificially intelligent beings?
    The webcam in Adam's room fed a projection onto the wall next to his phone's camera projection. He unlocked his door, walked in and closed the door behind him. With his back leaning against it, he slid down the door in exhaustion, smearing his blood down it by accident.
    "Can I