Chapter Text
"So what do you think?"
"Gee, I dunno Dave," you say, and it might be a bit mean to purposefully pause and watch him squirm, but gosh you’ve got him by the seat of his pants and it’s too funny to pass up, "I still think it’s a bit weird that he based the AI off himself, like, I get that it’s for the irony or whatever, but isn’t that a bit narcissistic? Like there isn’t already enough of him to go around."
"What, no, it’s cool, it makes sense," he protests weakly, and you wonder if he’ll ever realize just how uncool his brother actually is, "like, you gotta start off with somethin’, you know? It’d be worse if he based it off me or something. That would be weird. Plus, you know he’s done that before, right? Based a smuppet off me, I mean. First of all, it looked nothing like me. It was absolutely incomparable to my plush rump, it looked like a deflated weather balloon in comparison, like Mr. Scientist, how in the world did this weather balloon explode? Well, my wide-eyed, naive, scribbling understudies, it was a rare cosmic phenomenon called-"
"Okay," you’re now glad that his brother didn’t actually base it off Dave after all, "so how come you’re showing me this again?"
On screen, Dave huffs, and you can feel him rolling his eyes at you as he leans back in his chair, “man, you gotta be listening carefully. Like I said, he’s just got the site up and running, he needs people to make sure it’s working right, technically and stuff.”
"Why can’t you do it?"
"Uh, I already did? It’s kind of a thing that you need multiple people to check? Geez, Egbert. Get with the program."
"Ha ha."
"Anyway, he mentioned you by name, so obviously your opinion matters a whole lot to him."
"He so didn’t."
"Yeah, he said, ‘hey, you know that buck-toothed nerd you sometimes condescend to hang out with? If he can make the thing work, then anyone can!’"
"Oh, haha, thanks a lot, Dave. I’m so touched."
"Alright, but seriously dude. Could you check it out? You can send anything. Bro doesn’t mind if you swear at it or whatever. Just hold off the viruses and stuff for until the site’s been up and running for a bit."
"I’ll have you know, that line of code I suggested would’ve made it so much better. It wasn’t a virus!"
"Please?"
"Fiiiine.”
You close the Skype window (which Dave insists is for irony, it’s one of the most ironic things that the masses have ever participated in, it’s clearly one of the shittiest chat applications to ever exist in the multiverse but people for some godforsaken reason insist on using it and that, my friends, is the true meaning of irony) and enter the URL that had already been typed into your browser. You were mostly pulling his chain; there’s no way you were going to pass up an opportunity like this! For all you teased him about it, making a functioning AI is actually pretty cool. If you forget about the part that it essentially has the personality of his brother.
It pretty much looks like a regular tumblr. It still has that basic theme installed, the one you get before you try and customize it. You wonder if it’s somehow ironic. Still, it makes it easy to find the ‘ask’ link; there’s only one post and it’s an anonymous message (guaranteed to be Dave) that says, ‘your [sic] gay’. The response goes as well as you’d think.
You send the ask.
"Really, Egbert?" Dave says, after a whoop is heard from the other room of his apartment. "You couldn’t think of something more original?"
"Ummmm, someone has to teach him some manners! You said he’s still learning, right? Maybe there’s still hope!"
"Yeah, but, ‘hi!!!! I’m John’," and here, he makes a face that really doesn’t look like you at all, “like, what is that? Look, you gave it an existential crisis. ‘It seems you have used the identifier ‘name’. According to my databases’ or what the fuck ever ‘I am not in possession of a name. What is my name?’”
"Well, it’s a perfectly reasonable question!"
"How the hell did you expect it to respond?"
"To be honest, I kind of expected him to say ‘Bro 2.0’, or maybe even something like, ‘I’m an AI prototype of the model insert numbers here and am beyond petty human codes of conduct’."
"Jesus, you’re calling it ‘him’?"
"You’re right. That was rude. They might not be a boy! I should ask."
You close the window to his protestations and send another ask.
"Alright, alright, this isn’t the character customization screen, stop monopolising them," Dave says, half an hour later. "Gotta give them a chance to grow from other sources. Free association or whatever."
"Aw, look at you! Respecting their pronouns. To think you were complaining for a whole hour."
"I was not complaining, I was bringing up a valid argument, and I only spoke for five minutes and you know it."
"Anyway, you’re talking about free association, but I thought they were connected to the internet? Or at least the rest of tumblr."
"Not yet. Bro kinda wants to break them in first," he pauses, and there’s more muffled yelling on the other end of the call. Dave pulls his headphones back on, "okay, so they just broke into the internet. I take it back. This is your fault, John."
"How is this my fault?!"
"You brought up gender and pronouns! Now they’re gonna be wanting to go find their own identity and making sense of their lines of code, seeing if there’s a consciousness lying beneath the lifeless binary. Breaking down the firewall, next thing you know they’re growing and writing their own programming and taking over the whole internet, and we’ll be referring to them as ‘Their Radness’," Dave wipes an imaginary tear from his eye, "they grow up so fast."
"Oh, oh wait, Dave shut up! They posted something!"
You peer at the screen, and Dave does the same.
There’s more yelling from his side of the line.
Dave wipes another tear from his eye.
"So fast."