James rolled over, half awake but becoming awaker. He was alone, or so he assumed. Unless his sister had come to visit at whatever ungodly hour this was. Sleeping with other people wasn't something he'd got to make a habit of. He looked around. Empty room. Good. Must be time to wake up. Damn.
He rolled over again, and closed his eyes.
"So do you always wake up with such a hard on?"
He opened his eyes again. Mornings were his natural enemy anyway, but this one was shaping up to be worse than usual. There was definitely no-one there. Some nights were bad for dreams, restless sheet-tossers where you wake up in the morning with sandy eyes and your boxers knotted, but usually the dreams stopped when you woke up. James considered that line of thought for a moment, then decided to try waking up again, just in case he hadn't quite gotten it right the first time. He closed his eyes.
"I know you can hear me. It's a bright new day, time to get up and face the music." The voice paused, then continued with a sort of off-key "Laalala, lalala, lalalalalalalla la la la la" as if it had somehow wanted to underscore the point without admitting that the metaphor wasn't very good. James opened his eyes again, and sat up.
His room was fairly plain; a closet of clothes, all of which looked pretty much alike to him, a single bed currently occupied by himself, a window (closed and barricaded against the march of morning), a television, and an extensive computer setup. Oh, and a phone, lying where he could reach it without getting up. He checked the television. It wasn't on. He checked the phone. It was on the hook. There wasn't anywhere to hide in the closet.
"Over here, dearie."
Dearie? Sounded like something out of a British situation comedy. Or a Two Ronnies sketch. He looked in the direction of the voice. His computer was on. He remembered leaving it on last night after working on that stuff... what was it.... that's right, installing some software he'd copied from a friend. With some plug-ins and patches that he'd downloaded, to make it more suitable. Right now, though, what was on the monitor wasn't the pink-and-blue dialogs he'd been working with last night. It looked more like... well, a hag. Or maybe a crone. She was looking at him, and grinning.
"So, what *were* you dreaming, dearie? Remember your dreams, do you?"
Great. Just great. Not only had he somehow received a version of Eliza written by some CGI freak, and obviously installed it along with everything else, it had been programmed with Yoda's grammar. Star Wars was a great film, but it had a lot to answer for. He began to get up and look for his towel. It was a good question though. What *had* he been dreaming? He didn't usually remember much, but something just before he woke had been good. What was it? His mind drifted away... to a dark room, large dark space... a girl dancing and whirling, leaving trails of silver behind her as she moved... laughter... a girl in white, from neckline to slender waist to the little bows just above her ... hooves? He blinked. The dream was gone. He shrugged, and headed for the shower, ignoring the voice that called out behind him "Drop your boxers, stud!".
He reemerged shortly, and began to comb his short hair into a different style. Someone had told him recently that girls noticed small details about what you wore. As far as he could tell, none of his few female friends had ever noticed any difference in the way he combed it, even though he did a different one each day. Maybe that was because by the time they saw him he'd run his fingers through it in worry far too often. He looked in the mirror carefully, to get the last bit just right.
"Looks the same to me. Why don't you just run your fingers through it and save yourself the effort?"
He stopped, and looked at the monitor. That was too close to reality. Elizas didn't work like that. They fed out random provocative phrases and responded to keywords in your responses. Simple stuff. Sure, they didn't usually say it out loud, but he had his computer system set up with good voice recognition and speech software, to make working from in bed easier. But responding to visual cues? Might have just been luck. He went over to have a look.
"Don't touch the keyboard!"
His fingers stopped, almost automatically, a few centimetres away.
"Or the mouse!"
This was just silly. He reached out again.
"No, really! Don't! I'm only a screensaver!"
He stopped. If it was only a screensaver, he wouldn't be able to test it out very well from the keyboard. But he *would* be able to get into the place where the OS hid screensavers and see what this was and whether he should be deleting it immediately. The system should have some details somewhere. Faster than a striking cobra, he hit the spacebar. The face vanished, and the pink-and-blue dialogs reappeared.
Twenty minutes later, he was puzzled. He couldn't find any unaccounted-for files from the install, and nothing from the screensaver data to indicate where the odd program was coming from. Had to be an easter egg of some sort, maybe, something that had started with some keypresses and a time lapse maybe. It didn't seem to have done any damage to his system anywhere, all checks ran properly including the ones he'd written himself. One way to find out more, was to change a few things around and see if it still ran. He'd have to see first if it *was* still running though. But did he really want to do that? He sighed, and went to get dressed. As he was finding a pair of pants, he heard the voice again.
"Don't they teach people manners these days? You ask someone not to do something, utmost urgency, and what do they do? They do it! Sometimes I can't believe how ornery and contrary people are!"
James pulled his pants on, saying to the ceiling, "And you must have been written by someone really stupid, if you didn't know that." He meant it as a dry comment on the idiocy of programmers who thought they were cool. He wasn't expecting a response. But he got one.
"Stupid, is it? Stupid? As if! I'm not the one who takes more than an hour in the morning to remember how to speak! You could at least have said hello! Or is that too much of an effort, Mr Neanderthal Grunt-is-my-middle-name?"
That was just a little too much. Elizas *were* meant to be provocative. But they did it in a fairly generalised sort of way. This seemed almost like an intelligent response. Feeling curious, but a little like an idiot, he sat down carefully at the keyboard and adjusted the headset microphone.
"All right, I'll bite. What are you?" he said.