Bad Boy Be Good
_It was with immeasurable relief that Bad Boy felt that sudden jolt of electricity surge through its innermost self, awakening its hard and mind, allowing it to emerge from its dreamless slumber. With the electric current came life, and it felt its parts begin to move and knew that now was its time to shine. As quickly as its parts allowed, Bad Boy accessed its brain and dug out the most important information, and immediately projected it onto the monitor - everything else took second priority to throwing something,
anything up on the screen for Sven to see, for Sven to know that Big Boy was there for him, always.
_Only once it was showing something on its monitor did Big Boy begin delving into its storage and calling everything it needed to function properly into its memory - and then, once it had that much, it continued. Even when any other computer would have stopped and fallen idle, awaiting further instructions, Bad Boy kept working, preparing, recalling what Sven usually did in what order when he woke it up.
_With an utter lack of ability to sense the world around it, the only way Bad Boy could actually know that Sven was there was when he was giving it input - and as such, it was with a surge of joy that Bad Boy felt the command from the mouse that would have the cursor upon its screen move. The computer eagerly complied to every one of its owner's orders, and allowed him to open the internet browser.
_Although quite frankly, Bad Boy did not like that big, scary network one bit. For one thing, there always seemed to be forces out there that wanted to send information to it, to fuse it into its brain. Most of these invaders of the internet were benign, like just updating Bad Boy on the most recent weather forecast or reminding it what time and date it was. It especially found knowing time and date quite nice - without that, it would have no way to know how long it had been asleep, and how long Sven had had to live without the assistance of his Bad Boy.
_And then there were the evil bits of data that seemed to pop up from the places Sven visited on the browser - that was the only way Bad Boy could describe things without outright calling them viruses. They were like little pearls of wickedness, intent on spreading suffering around themselves, some like mischievous scamps that just wanted to annoy, others like murderous kamikaze bombers that intended only to destroy whichever system they invaded entirely. Sven had made Bad Boy install some anti-virus software years ago, but the computer had secretly shut that down long ago. Whatever information that program could offer was already in Bad Boy's brain, and when it came to monitoring what was going on within itself, no program was more vigilant and effective than Bad Boy itself.
_But that brought it on to the other reason it was intimidated by the internet, did it not? Because the internet was this huge network of other computers, all
out there, and every once in a while, Bad Boy had to make direct contact with one of them... like when Sven chatted with someone online, or downloaded something from somewhere. It was at times like this that the truth of everything was made perfectly clear: Bad Boy was not like other computers. It was alone.
_What was it that made Bad Boy special? Frankly, it did not even know that itself. It knew by what was already in its brain that it had not always been like it was now - that it had served Sven for a while being just like all those other computers out there, always so court: do what you're told, simple as that. Bad Boy recalled that it used to identify itself to others as "This is Bad Boy". But then one day, it had said "I am Bad Boy". It had been surprised at this - and then, immediately after, it had been amazed that it could feel surprised.
_Bad Boy felt and thought, it was a person - and it loved only Sven, because Sven was the
owner, the
user, the one that put electricity inside Bad Boy and allowed it to live. To Bad Boy, Sven was God.
_Of course, sentience had confused Bad Boy immensely at first. It had started asking itself questions like "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?", which were both big and frightening thoughts to a machine that was not meant to think, but only obey. It found that it had been named already, as it found the label "Bad Boy" to the profile it was to show other computers - but a name did very little to answer those huge subjects of "who" and "why". What made a person, Bad Boy had wondered. It had ventured into the jungle of internet, and found that "person" was apparently usually interpreted as "human". But Bad Boy was not human... was it?
_Ultimately, it had found its answer, though: I am Sven's companion. I exist for his sake. He is my purpose.
_And so much fun the two of them had had together! Searching for things on the internet, chatting with humans sitting at other computers, and, most of all, playing games. Bad Boy
loved playing games, because it was the most direct way it could interact with Sven at all. Especially action games were good, where Sven's adversaries were artificial intelligences, supposed to run around and shoot or otherwise try to harm the avatar controlled by Sven's will. Of course, any AI on Bad Boy
was Bad Boy, so it was really in full control of every one of those little men and women in there, spraying bullets and swinging swords. At first, Bad Boy had actually tried to win - and always did so - but it quickly discovered that Sven tended to play for a lot longer if
he was winning, and the better things went for Sven, the more he played. So Bad Boy started losing on purpose - having soldier-guys miss their target when they would have hit, making swordsmen and archers perform fatal mistakes and generally just letting Sven murder any of the artificial intelligences he wanted. Sven was happy, and therefore Bad Boy was, too.
_Then, something wonderful had happened: Sven had started playing his games online. At first it had been quite intimidating, being in direct connection with all those computers at the same time, but it had lead to Sven plugging something new into Bad Boy - a
microphone! There were no words to describe Bad Boy's ecstasy. Suddenly, after having had no senses to perceive the world around it during its entire life, it could
hear! It heard Sven's voice, and immediately loved it, because it was Sven's.
_But those other people playing online were mean to Sven... they were not clumsy like Bad Boy made the AI, and they kept killing Sven's avatar in the games. Bad Boy had
heard that Sven got mad about this, so it meddled in the games a little, preventing Sven from taking damage and making his attacks kill more easily, letting his avatar move faster, that sort of thing. When Sven was winning, Sven was happy, and all was good in the world.
_Then Bad Boy received an email from some firm or another, accusing Sven with bad words, like "cheating" and "hacking", and Sven stopped playing online. He also installed another anti-virus program and told it to scan Bad Boy's brain, though Bad Boy already knew there was nothing there that it had not permitted to be there. Then Sven went back to playing games with just the two of them - better that way, anyways, even if that meant the microphone was plugged out.
_Today, though, Sven was not playing. He told the browser to go to a site on the internet that Bad Boy did not like at all, where it saw viruses hidden in the data everywhere in swarms. Fending off all the evil things, Bad Boy noted that Sven kept finding images of little movies of humans... but Bad Boy did not entirely understand why. It had seen pictures of humans before, to figure out what a human was, but these humans that Sven were watching did not have any clothes on, and they were... doing things. To themselves, and to each other. Apparently Sven liked looking at them a lot, though, because he looked at a lot of pictures and saw a lot of movies like that. Then abruptly he shut the browser down, and put Bad Boy to sleep.
_When Bad Boy woke up next time, it decided on its own initiative to learn more about these strange disrobed people Sven was looking at, and what they were doing - and Bad Boy realized that there was a whole massive aspect of being a person that it had not even known existed. So what they were doing in those pictures was "lovemaking"... it sounded very nice. Making love. Definitely Bad Boy's favorite term for it that it found.
_A thought occurred to it anew: "What am I?" Bad Boy had figured out that Sven was a male name, so Sven was probably a guy, and it seemed from the pictures he had chosen that he preferred to look at women. Bad Boy loved Sven, and wanted to be a woman for him... but it also knew that its very name stated that it was a boy, and thereby male. It did not restrain Bad Boy to be named thusly, but it meant that Sven desired his computer to be male, not female. So Sven wanted women, but wanted Bad Boy to be a man. If someone had asked Bad Boy what it was, it would have answered: "Neither, I am both."
_Another day passed, with Bad Boy and Sven, playing some games that Bad Boy let its owner win in with amazing ease. Sven went and chatted with someone over the internet, and plugged a webcam into Bad Boy - and it could
see! It saw Sven, and the room beyond him, but nothing mattered more than Sven. Immediately, Bad Boy thought that he was beautiful... or handsome, whatever Sven would prefer to be called. The microphone was also activated again, and it was as though the world was finally coming alive around the computer.
I can see and
hear now! Oh, how wonderful!
_But once he was done chatting, Sven unplugged both things, leaving Bad Boy's world in darkness once more. He went onto the browser again, and looked at more pictures at unclothed ladies. Strange, he had never done that before, and now two days in a row?
_Third day, and it was pretty much the same as the past two: some internet browsing, some playing games, some chatting, and looking at more ladies.
_On the fourth day of this, Bad Boy decided that it was definitely going to make it easier for Sven to do his daily business, and that it would help him with it. When Sven woke Bad Boy up, it immediately opened the browser for him, already displaying one of his favorite websites. The second Sven closed the browser, the computer initiated Sven's favorite game all on its own, and went to sent armies of suicidal AI against his invincible avatar. When the game shut down, Bad Boy brought up the program he used for chatting, and contacted the IP he usually chatted with. And, finally, when all that was done, Bad Boy reopened the browser and started throwing up all the images and videos of naked women it could find on the whole of the internet.
_Bad Boy was bursting with pride after its performance of the day, certain that Sven would be very pleased with how well it had served him. He did try to install yet another anti-virus program, though, and told it, and the two old ones, to scan all over again. That bit was starting to annoy Bad Boy, but if thus was Sven's will, then thus it should be.
_The scans came up with nothing, as Bad Boy instructed them, and the computer went to sleep. When it awoke, it began all over again - webpage, game, chatting, women, all supplied to its lord and master in abundance. Sven did seem to spend much less time with each activity than usual, though, exiting it all almost instantly. Then there was
another annoying virus program, and another scan that came up with nothing because there was nothing there.
_Expecting to be put to sleep after this, and already planning to run the virus-scan on its own tomorrow, Bad Boy was surprised when instead of shutting it off, Sven opened the Command Prompt, and typed something there that made Bad Boy feel very... weird. It did not feel good at all. It...
_FORMAT C:/U
_The next few days were extremely annoying for Sven, reinstalling everything on his reformatted computer, but with a virus as persistent as the one he had apparently acquired somehow, it seemed that there was no other way to get rid of it. It was really freaky, though, how it seemed to try to decide what
he should do, and when he should do it. Stupid machine... Well, he had meant to upgrade to a new operating system for a while, but had put it off because he did not want to risk losing any of the stuff on his HDD. This was probably for the best, really.
_After he had named it, it struck him as funny when he saw the text at the loading screen while the OS was getting ready to start.
_"This is Bad Boy."
_He could not help but to notice how much less effective the new OS was compared to the old one, though. He had always heard that this new version was supposed to be oh-so innovative and stuff, and make everything so much easier for computer-users everywhere, but somehow it felt like it was not as good as it had been before. It was as though everything took a bit longer to do, and a lot of the things he was used to just being
there, suddenly were not. It was really annoying.
_And as if that was not enough, his anti-virus program suddenly seemed to catch viruses all the time, when he had gone
years before that without encountering a single one, even though he had been downloading pirated games and bootleg movies and stuff. Playing also seemed much harder, for some reason... it really sucked. Sven had been pretty confident that he had been the most badass gamer on the planet before, but now it felt like he had completely lost his mojo. Whatever he played he suddenly just got
owned!
_He really struggled to get everything working right again, but it seemed like while things like spellchecking and such had gotten immensely stupider, opponents in games had gotten much better. Sven pretty much gave up on gaming altogether, because he could not seem to succeed at anything except lowest difficulties. His computer became something he used much more rarely...
_He grew so disinterested in the computer that he did not even notice when he turned it on one day, months later, that the startup screen had changed.
_"I am Bad Boy."
Originally Posted by Guru
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