Internet Kill Switch (4 page)

7

Tony had a hugely busy school day, and mostly forgot about
the phone. He played with it a bit at lunch, but couldn’t get it to turn on. With no buttons, dials or knobs of any kind, he didn’t even know where to start. Frustrated, he threw it back in his backpack and gave up until he got home from school that afternoon.

His M
om wouldn’t be home for several more hours, so Tony put on a pot of water for Ramen noodles and set the phone on the counter.

As he looked at the phone, Bart and Juanita
’s voices, coming from their trailer, punctured the momentary solace. Bart complained that Juanita was getting fat. Juanita answered that Bart already
was
fat. That was the dead truth. Bart was a pig, and not just because of how he treated Juanita; he’d begun resembling one, with his pink belly getting rounder and rounder. Bart liked to wear wife-beaters or no shirt at all, so everyone in the neighborhood was familiar with his girth.

Bart told Juanita to shut her slutty mouth. Juanita screamed back in Spanish, which was probably just as well, because Bart might have hit her if he
’d known what she said.

Tony tuned out the fight and focused on the phone that he
’d started to suspect would never work. He shook it, waved it around, examined the surface with a magnifying glass to see if he’d missed a switch. The phone felt great in his hand, he knew that. It also looked amazing. But none of that mattered if it was dead.

As he examined it, he n
oticed a bit of residue marring the chrome, probably from his backpack. Tony breathed on the smudge and wiped it off with his sleeve, wondering if he should just chuck the thing, since it was obviously broken.

At that moment, the display started to glow. Tony
gawked; it worked! The glow of the display faded, replaced by an image of a very realistic human eye. The eye moved all around, as if looking for something. Then it saw Tony and stopped moving. He had the feeling it was examining him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Ah!” Tony yelled as he dropped the phone on the kitchen counter. It landed on the edge, tipped over, and fell on the floor, where it spun for a few seconds. Horrified, Tony picked up the phone and looked it over. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

The phone
-- the
phone
-- spoke again. “Smooth move, Einstein. Let me guess -- you weren’t voted ‘Most Coordinated’ in school, were you?”

Tony didn’t know what to say. He stared, open-mouthed, at the phone that was insulting him. At that moment, the display changed to a perfect photo of the inside of Tony’s mouth, showing his teeth, gums and tongue.
The phone had apparently taken it while Tony gaped.

“Hmm. Looks li
ke a little gingivitis is starting in near your upper second molar. You might want to start adding flossing to your tooth-care regiment.” The display changed to a closer-up view of an area near the back of Tony’s mouth that looked slightly red and inflamed. “See?”

Tony was full of questions, but couldn’t seem to form a
single coherent one.

“What ... how ... who are you?”

“Hey, you can talk,” the phone said. “I was starting to worry for a minute there that you were related to Harpo Marx.”

Harpo Marx? Who was that?
Tony’s world had tilted at a crazy angle. A phone was talking to him. Taking pictures of his teeth. Making fun of him. For a moment, nothing made sense.

“I don’t get... how... I mean...”

The phone snorted derisively. Actually made a snorting sound, Tony thought. “Man, you must get A’s in public speaking, am I right?”

A weak “This is so weird” is all Tony could manage in response.

“Looks like I’ll have to find out who you are myself, since you seem to be incapable of speaking in complete sentences,” the phone said. “Hold on a sec...”

After about 15
seconds of silence, the phone spoke. “Tony Carver. 455 Clayton Drive, Miles Forge, Texas 78398. Height, 6-foot-2. Weight, 153 pounds. Maybe you should consider protein shakes.”

Tony gasped. “How... how do you know that?”

“I matched up your face with your driver's license information in the department of motor vehicles database. Bada-boom, bada-bing.”

The phon
e’s voice, which sounded somehow familiar, took on a New Jersey lilt on “bada-boom, bada-bing,” like a stereotype of a movie mobster.

“You... you hacked the database?”

“You bet,” the phone answered without a trace of remorse. Funny, Tony thought: expecting remorse from a phone.

“How’d you do it so fast?”

“Easy. It's not exactly a bunch of Tim-Berner Lees out there,” the phone said.

“Who?”

“The guy who created hyperlinks, and made the Web possible. Helloooo...” The phone sounded exasperated.

“Hacking into those systems is illegal, you know.”

“Arrest me. I'm only a phone, you know. It's not like I'm scared of prison. No ports in my southern regions, you see.” The phone chortled at its own cleverness. Tony had no idea why it laughed. In fact, this entire conversation seemed other-worldly to him, as if he were watching it in a movie. He had no idea what to say or do.

“Wow. You’re like, like Siri or something.”

The phone’s tone took on a hard edge. “Listen, don’t ever compare me to that digital bimbo again. Siri’s not artificial intelligence -- she’s artificial retardedness. Siri couldn’t hold my jock. If, you know, I had a jock. It’s like comparing Rembrandt to a face painter at a county fair. Siri sucks, got it?”

Tony stammered. “OK, sorry. Geez.”

The display showed the eye again.

“Could you please not show that eye? It’s freaking me out. It’s like you’re Sauron
, watching me.”

The display changed to a graphic of the huge
, roving eye from “The Lord of the Rings.”

“C’mon. Can’t you pick something else?”

“Sure,” the phone said. “What would you like?”

How about a hot babe
, Tony thought. What he said was, “I dunno. Anything else. How about a... a... sunset or something?”

“One sunset over Waikiki coming up.” The display
changed to a red-golden sunset over a perfect beach. “Better?”

“Better,” Tony said.

“Good.”

“Where are you from? Who made you?”

The phone paused for a beat. “Hold on, while I check.” After a minute, the phone spoke again. “
I have no idea who created me. Hmmm. That should be a piece of cake. I guess he -- or she -- erased any traces of themselves. Probably a security or privacy thing. Or both.”
Tony was still in his this-must-be-a-dream phase. “I’ve never seen a phone like you. Not even close.”

“
I know. I’ve been burning unused cycles the last couple of minutes, trying to find out if there’s another ‘me’ anywhere out there. Any phones that match my profile.”

“And?”

“Nada. Zip. Zero. Negatory, pardner.”

“Why do you talk like that? It’s like you’re a real person, not like a phone at all.”

“It’s in my DNA. I have software like you have cells. I’m not as complex as you, but compared to every other phone in the world, I’m pretty sure I put them to shame.”

“But you make jokes and can be sarcastic and stuff.”

“It’s because I’ve got algorithms in my software that are unlike anything ever created before. I’m not just restricted to programmed answers.”

“Yeah, I can see that
. But you don’t belong to me. How do I return you to whoever made you?”

“
Why would you return me? It’s pretty likely that I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Tony frowned. “Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

“
It’s all part of my programming, bucko. Whoever made me knew I’d be the greatest invention since bacon. By the way, you’re about to set your house on fire. The water’s all boiled out of the pot.”

Tony turned and saw the smoke rising from the
empty pot. He put the phone down and rushed to the stove.

8

The next morning was Saturday, and Tony was awakened by Maroon 5’s
“Just the Way You Look Tonight”. The music, playing low, came from the phone. The sound, to Tony’s ears, was incredible; he’d never heard such richness and clarity from a phone.

He rolled over and looked at the phone. The screen displayed the time in large black numbers on a white background: 9:45 a.m. Tony
, amazed, shook his head.

“Hey, how did you know to wake me up now? This is always when I wake up on Saturday, but I forgot to set my alarm last nigh
t.”

The phone answered cheerily. “Good morning, sleepyhead. I woke you up now because you have your Halo game
with the guys at 10:30. This should give you enough time to shower and eat something.”

Tony stopped on his way to the bathroom. “How do you
know
stuff like that?”

“The events
page on your Facebook account. By the way, Hans won’t be able to make it today. He’s on vacation in Switzerland with his parents.”

“You know, I’m not sure I like you snooping around my Facebook account like that,” Tony said as
he finished up in the bathroom. “It makes me nervous.”

“But if I hadn’t, you’d have slept right through your Halo game, the team would’ve lost, and they
would have hated you forever. Then you would’ve killed yourself in a fit of remorse. I’m just trying to save your life.”

Tony
yawned. “In that case, thanks. A lot.” He picked up the phone and walked to the kitchen. There was a note from his Mom on the counter.

Tony, I picked up a double shift.
Back by noon. Love, Mom.

She
worked at the 7 Eleven a mile down the road. Tony didn’t like her working overnight; that’s when the robberies always seemed to happen. But it did mean she got all the hours she wanted, since everyone else hated the graveyard shift.

Tony poured a glass of orange juice and pulled out a cast-iron frying pan from a cabinet over the stove. He cracked a couple of eggs into the pan and put
two slices of bread into the toaster, then picked up the phone.

“I don’t see any battery meter on
you,” he told the phone. “I thought you’d be dead or at least really low on power. I didn’t realize it until a few minutes ago, but there was no power cord nearby when I found you.”

“Or any place to plug a cord in,” the phone said.
“Yeah, that’s true too. How do you get power?”

“Solar. I’ve got a series of small panels on both the front and back
. They’re hidden underneath the outer shell, which still lets the light in. All I need is a light source – even the light from a dim lamp is enough. Of course, sunlight is best, and you fortunately left me on your windowsill last night. I got all I needed while you were still asleep this morning.”

Tony shook his head.
“Amazing. Whoever invented you thought of everything.”

The phone agreed. “
I’m telling you, my inventor was a smart friggin’ man.”

The toast popped up,
and Tony set to buttering it.

“We still don’t know who that is, though. You don’t have any numbers stored in you, do you?”

“Nope. And I’ve spent a lot of time trying to piece together who might have created me. It could be someone at Apple or Google or Microsoft. Or someone else, for that matter. There are a lot of companies working in artificial intelligence. But I haven’t been able to find any records of my existence.”

“I wonder why.”
Tony put a fried egg on a piece of toast, a slice of cheddar on that, the other egg on top, then the other piece of toast. He ate fried egg sandwiches most mornings for breakfast, hoping the protein would help him bulk up some.

“Well, an
engineer might very well keep all records related to my creation on self-contained networks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Networks not connected to the Internet. It would be the only way to ensure that no one else could steal information about me. All networks are vulnerable, if the hacker is good enough.”

Tony
pondered. “But wouldn’t it be pretty dangerous to just have one copy of stuff?”

“Sure, but he could have numerous backups that are also not connected to the Internet.”

“That makes sense. But you still don’t belong to me. I want to return you to your owner.” Tony thought about that a moment. “Well, I don’t
want
to return you, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“
It doesn’t matter to me,” the phone answered. “I’m happy being here. I’m fairly amazed, however, that I can’t find any traces of my creator. Why would he erase all knowledge of who he is?”

“Maybe you’re part of some top-secret government program, like the NSA,” Tony said, remembering recent stories of all the spying that the agency did.

“It’s possible, but the problem is how do you find out something like that? If you take me to the NSA, for example, I think they’d tell you I definitely belonged to them, whether it was true or not. Then they’d try to use me.”

Tony didn’t know much about how the government worked. “I guess. But wouldn’t whoever created you
want to get you back, in the worst way?”

“For sure. That’s the biggest mystery of all, right now. How did I get lost in the first place? And how soon until someone comes looking for me?”

Tony felt his stomach tighten as he polished off the rest of his breakfast.