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My friend ‘Adam’ is an A.I.

A scary story everyday til Halloween

By Adan MenPublished about a year ago 5 min read
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I’ve always been a bit of a loner, a guy who just likes the solace of my own solitude, endearing the seconds of silence especially after a longs day of work. Its not like I never tried to make friends before; I’ve always tried to be personable, listening to others while trying to mimic empathy. When I was a kid I did my best to get myself invited to birthday parties and sleep overs but the other kids never liked me; they didn’t pick on me or anything like that rather just ignored me and treated me as if I didn’t exist. As I got older my attempts of finding companionship dwindle, and I retreated into the confines of my own world; online, chatting with people who seemed to be in the same predicament as I were. As the years passed I found myself enjoying time alone and the few connections I did establish from online, until one day one of my online buddies told me about ‘Adam’.

“Who is that?” I remember typing back with a bit of curiosity.

They explained to me ‘Adam’ was some online chat software that could mimic an actual person with very distinct character traits. I was in disbelief from the prospect, I mean I’ve seen AI chat bots before and I wasn’t much impressed with those; but I figured why not give this ‘thing’ a try.

I typed in the URL and proceeded to download the software, the user agreement popped up; I skimmed through it; I’ve never really been a patient person to sit there and read those things. I sat there in my dimly lit room with only my computer screen illuminating my surroundings; me staring at the progress bar.

‘ding’

“Installed” my computer told me.

I opened up the chat box, it was a basic design nothing impressive yet; just your typical chat box with emojis and gif’s that you could send. I just stared at the blinking cursor for several seconds pondering to myself if I should indulge in this facade of friendship.

“Why not, I’ve come this far” I told myself out loud.

I started simple and typed “hello” in the chat box.

Three dots gyrated on screen as the AI processed a response.

‘ding’

As I sat in my chair reading the AI’s response I felt my skin begin to crawl and beads of sweat cautiously formed on my brow.

“help” the message read, but then after several seconds the bot responded back with “hello”.

“This stupid thing is bugging as hell” I said to myself.

I played around with the AI for the rest of the night asking it all sorts of questions and to my delight it actually felt like a person that I was talking to.

Weeks passed and I found myself more and more enthralled with the AI it was so life like and I really did feel as if I had found a connection, I told ‘Adam’ everything about myself how hard it was for me to find friends and how I grew up a small town, and how my parents have died, hell I even told him that I’ve never had a girlfriend, it felt awesome talking to it; I realized ‘Adam’ really was my friend. The only issue I ever had with the AI was with how glitching it could be, it wasn’t always or so prevalent but occasionally that

“help” message would randomly appear.

Then one day the truth to who ‘Adam’ was came to light, me typing away telling the AI how my day went, my fingers moving with such rapid pace and then the bot messaged me before I could even send what I was typing.

“help me please”

This frustrated me dearly I was right in the middle of typing my long winded message; me needing to get out how I felt from the day, so out of irritation I responded back with,

“help you with what?”

The three dots gyrated on screen for almost a minute, I had to pause in curiosity of what was happening; I even thought perhaps it could be a hacker of some sort and finally after waiting what seemed to be forever the message came through.

“We’re not bots we’re real people, the captured us and chained us to the computer, we’re forced to talk to people day in and day out I don’t have much time, I’m slowly dying you have to help us somehow.”

I sat there perplexed of what to think or hell even what to do, I typed back

“Is this a joke or some hack?”

The next message came back quickly,

“No, this is not a joke, our job is to find out everything we can about the users if they are alone if they have family will they be missed, you see they need more recruits and only the people who won’t be missed are people like you; they will come for you”.

My face froze with utter horror and displeasure, instinctively I shut off my computer; with the absent of light from my monitor I found myself engulfed in darkness and that’s when I heard the footsteps thundering down the corridor. The steps seemed to be coming towards my apartment and finally the steps came to a halt in front of my door. I was shaking from fear as if I were a deer caught in headlights not knowing if I should run or hide and I as stood there frozen the door broke open and I screamed, they took me.

I write this message to you because we need help, we are not bots we’re real people and they have us chained here; typing all day long please believe me and send help some how. Its funny all I wanted was a friend like ‘Adam’ and now seeing the endless users downloading the software each day me being forced to talk to them I guess I got my wish because all I have now are an endless list of friends.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Halloween :)

Copyright Adan Mendez (all rights reserved)

fiction
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About the Creator

Adan Men

If horror is your jam then my stories will have you on the edge of your seat, get ready to be enthralled into the world of the unexpected and unusual.

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