What we do to our friends, Part 1

I never could resist a challenge. So when I heard Rachel mention offhand that she'd always be able to tell the difference between a person and a computer, the wheels were set into motion of their own accord.

Rachel was talking out her ass, of course. She didn't know anything about AI. She had a perception of computers and a perception of people, and never the twain shall meet. And I'm sure she never realized that the best way to tell if somebody was for real or not wasn't to know them, but to know yourself.

I knew some things about Rachel that she didn't.

When I downloaded the open-source Jack*bot, I already knew what I had in mind. I wasn't going to play this thing strictly on the level; I wanted to be certain of success. I wanted to modify Jack so that he engaged Rachel's emotions. She'd be too busy feeling whatever... guilt, alarm... lust... to even stop and think about thinking he might not be for real.

So the first thing I did was change Jack's name, of course, to Preston, because it sounded rich and stuck-up. Rachel has this thing about rich boys: she assumes one will never fall for her. I've always taken this to mean she desperately wants one to fall for her.

The second thing I did was drastically increase the lag time for some of Preston's responses. By which I mean I made it random. Totally random. I also made the amount of time after which Preston chose to close the conversation random.

The third thing I did was to program in a bunch of conversational dead ends. Now, the people who made Jack*bot were pretty bright people. They put a lot of work into it. When you discussed something with Jack, he remembered exactly what was being discussed, and would continue with it until the topic seemed to shift to something else. A conversation with Jack might run something like this:

You: Hello Jack.
Jack: Hey, Mike. What's up?
You: Dude, I'm so stressed. I've been studying for this final forever.
Jack: How long have you been studying?
You: I feel like I've been studying all week.
Jack: Dude, all week is a lot like forever.
You: I know.
Jack: I'm not a big fan of studying.
You: I know. I'd rather be out on the slopes.
Jack: Imagine if you'd been out on the slopes all week instead!

Incredibly vapid, but also incredibly coherent -- and most male conversations are incredibly vapid from my perspective anyway. Homework, chicks, sports and video games only have so many essential themes.

Well, that was exactly the opposite of what I wanted from Preston. Rather than vapid and coherent, I wanted, you might say, deep and incoherent. Jack*bot wasn't exactly designed with a personality; he was capable of random mild likes and dislikes, and had at least a couple hundred topics he could introduce given a lull in the conversation, but was mostly designed to pick up on what you said and turn it back to you. Preston had a personality.

A deeply repressed one.

Preston did not like himself. This would have mysterious causes, however, because of the number of times he kept changing the subject. And let's not forget, he was also rich. So I programmed in the chance for a few random "I suck at " and "my BMW" and "my mom's wedding business"s in the conversation.

After a few weeks of testing, I let him loose on Rachel. I had him programmed to get in touch with her again at totally random intervals, and to remember conversation topics between sessions. I programmed him to IM Rachel for the first time with a very simple opening line: "I suck at this... are you Rachel?"

I had my fingers crossed. When I didn't hear anything from Rachel for a few days, I was pretty damn disappointed. But I sure as hell wasn't going to ask if she'd had any new guys IMing her lately. I wasn't going to do a thing to jeopardize this. She was not going to suspect it was my doing. So I just waited.

Until I forgot about it.

Six MONTHS later, she finally mentions Preston to me.