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It was maybe a foot square, and on what I guess was the back of it was a small piece of plastic that looked like an exact fit to put it on the metal rod that stuck out of the base. Another mental shrug later and it was attached. I sat back and looked at it, breaking into laughter over the complete
cheese
that it was. It seemed like one of those ultra-cheap props in a science fiction movie.

The manual said that it too was a wirelessly powered peripheral. I nodded, as if it should have been a no-brainer, and put the manual back in the box. The only thing I seemed to be missing was a mouse and a keyboard.

“Damn it,” I grunted, remembering that I hadn’t ordered either component.

I unhooked my mouse and keyboard from the old computer, and turned the
new
one around to plug them in. I searched the back panel of the case for inputs, but there seemed to be none. Not even the punch-outs that usually covered the holes until they were needed.

“What the…” I said, rotating the case back around to see if there were ports on the front.

None. This time I physically shrugged, and pushed the mouse and keyboard off to the side. I reached over and hit what the manual said was the “powered state” button. Nothing happened.

“Derp,” I said out loud, remembering that I hadn’t plugged the power cell into the wall outlet.

I stopped for a second, trying to remember if I’d even seen a power cord for the power cell. I walked to the pile of boxes near the garage door and sorted through them until I found the power cell packaging. Inside, at the bottom, was a thin cord that had the typical three-prong connector. I wondered if the cord itself was thick enough to even carry electricity along it without melting and possibly burning my parents’ house down. Once again, I shrugged, and found the spot on the rear of the power cell to lock one end of the cable into, then plugged the other into the power strip under my desk.

I pushed the button on the front again, and this time the interior of the case lit up with a soft, blue glow, the same as the cpu when I’d plugged it into the socket. I squawked and fell over backwards in my chair when the monitor came to life. The
screen
was like a normal flat monitor’s screen, but it was more… I don’t know. It seemed so real as to be fake. It was like a hologram that was being projected about two inches from the surface of the square plastic piece I’d attached to the metal rod in the monitor’s base. The screen projection was twice as big as the plastic backing, which would, according to my estimates that were accompanied by a growing panic, make the total screen size around twenty-four inches wide.

“Tyler?” Mom called from the kitchen. “What was that?”

“Nothing, Mom!” I yelled from where I now knelt on the floor, keeping the newly-uprighted chair between me and whatever it was sitting on my desk.

I waited to see if she would wander near my room to make sure, but I heard the faucet turn on and more dishes clinking. I got up slowly, walked to my desk, and stared at the projected image. A giant “4Q” was displayed, slowly revolving as if it were a globe. Below it, in futuristic block lettering, were the words “Activate Setup With Voice Command.”

I opened my mouth to say something, then slammed it shut. I could feel my knees starting to wobble, so I sat down in the chair. A little too hard. The rush of air from the cushion made a slight farting noise. Normally, my toilet humor would kick in and make me laugh like a small child at the sound, but I was shaking. If these Stanford or M.I.T. nerds had really been having me on, I now thought they had definitely gone
too
far. Pissing me off by sending bogus computer parts was one thing. Fabricating some weird shit that pretended to actually work like a computer was something else.

I opened my mouth again. “Begin setup,” I said, not sure if I was still being led into a practical joke, or if the thing would respond.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a voice came from… somewhere… it sounded like from the projected image, and said “Begin voice authorization.”

“Uh… Hello,” I said.

“Warning. Voice authorization failed. You have two remaining attempts.”

“Shit,” I said aloud.

“Warning. Voice authorization failed. You have one remaining attempt.”

I almost said “goddammit” before catching myself. I leaned back in the chair, watching the 4Q logo continue to spin slowly.

“Tyler Gallagher,” I said aloud, hoping that it was the right command, wondering if I was somehow on a good LSD trip.

“Voice authorization accepted. Commence with setup?”

“Uh… sure.” When the screen did nothing, I tried again. “Computer, commence setup.”

I felt stupid. I felt like the dorks who watched too much Star Trek and did the LARP thing. Live Action Role Playing was for those that were far, far nerdier than me. I’d gone to high school with a group of them. Vampires are what they pretended to be, the type of kids (and now adults) who would hang out in cemeteries at midnight and have weird role-play battles, or maybe just acted out scenes that one of them wrote when not masturbating alone.

“Setup commencing. Would you like the guided setup, or automated setup?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Which one is better? Easier?”

“Unknown command. Would you like the guided setup, or the automated setup?”

“Goddammit.”

“Unknown command. Would you like the—”

“Yeah yeah,” I said. “Automated setup.”

I didn’t want to chance screwing anything up. If I could barely tell the computer what it should do, I’d probably choose a bunch of wrong or stupid options during setup. I’d set up Windows at least two hundred times, and even had some experience with Linux, but I was sure whatever operating system this one had would be different in the extreme.

I watched the screen go through options automatically, faster than my eyes could follow. Every time I thought I saw a word or symbol that I recognized, it would be gone before my brain could be sure. After a few minutes, I reached forward, touching the projected image, jerking my finger back the first time as if it was made of acid. It wasn’t, but I was damn nervous. The whole setup routine, hell, the whole day so far, seemed too surreal. I started to wonder if I was still asleep, and the doorbell had actually chimed, but had triggered my dream to go from blasting aliens in an asteroid belt to building some weird science fiction computer.

Three minutes passed before the screen blacked out. The blue glow inside the case winked out immediately after. I reached forward to push the button, but the glow came back just as my finger touched the plastic, the weird monitor projecting its image again a second later. I sat back and looked at the screen. It was a strange background that looked like a star field, with a couple of slowly spinning galaxies in the upper right and lower right corners. I stared at it and noticed that the stars or whatever they were would wink, pulsate, and creep across the screen. Five minutes passed, and the galaxies that had been in the lower right corner were now almost in the middle of my screen, the upper right galaxies nowhere to be found.

“Uh, computer?” I asked.
It
didn’t respond.

“Computer!” I said, louder this time. “Damn it. Uh… guided instructions? Guided manual? Manual help?”

I felt stupid once again. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but voice commands no longer seemed to work. I touched one of the icons on the projected screen. It flashed then opened. I’d somehow lucked out and found what must have been a web browser. It opened to Google, which was weird. It was my start page on my old computer and my laptop. I checked to see if I was signed in, but the login link was in the upper right corner of the page. I felt a wave of both relief and disappointment. I touched the search box, and the cursor appeared in it. I had no keyboard or mouse, and no virtual keyboard popped up like it did on my smartphone.

“Infinitia,” I said, hoping that voice commands still worked.

The page instantly showed search results. It looked exactly like Google was supposed to look when doing a search. It even showed the same results as my laptop when I’d searched earlier. An investment firm, some social media user pages, and a bunch of other search results that were almost Infinitia, but not quite.

“Quantum computing,” I said, but nothing happened. I touched the search box again. “Quantum computing.”

The search results came back instantly, with Wikipedia at the top, a bunch of science sites below it. I touched the Wikipedia link and the page loaded. I walked out to my laptop and performed the same search, getting the same results. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Then I walked into the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, hon?” she said, turning only her head away from the dough she was rolling out on the counter.

“Am I awake?”

“Are you what?”

“Am I awake?”

“Tyler, go play mind games with your father.”

“He’s still at work.”

“Then go annoy your friends online. I’m busy. Unless you want to help me?”

“I’m being serious, Mom. Am I awake?”

She picked up the heavy wooden rolling pin and turned to me. “Would you like me to crack your skull open and see if you wake up? If you have to go to the hospital, will you believe you’re awake?”

“Okay, okay,” I said, putting my hands up, backing away from her as if she were crazy.

“Yeah, you better back up,” she said, a wicked grin on her face.

I cracked up laughing at her attempt to be scary. She might have pulled it off if not for the dusting of flour on her chin, and a spot of dough right at the end of her nose.

“Run, Forrest!” she shouted as I went back to my bedroom.

I stood near my desk, staring at the weird black case and the crazy projection monitor, the Google search results still plastered on the screen. I wondered if I shouldn’t grab my camera and take some more pictures. I thought about punching myself in the face for not recording the whole setup and voice command authorization part. Then I had another thought… how the hell did the computer connect to the internet? I hadn’t set up any of the networking, hadn’t even plugged in the ethernet cable yet. I hadn’t seen any place to plug one in that I could remember, but that was a lesser worry than the thing simply booting up and going online all on its own.

CHAPTER 3 - Kassi, Me, and Computer Make Three

November 26, 2014

“Tyler?” my mother called from the kitchen.

I looked at the weird thing on my desk, unsure of what to do.

“Honey, will you come and help me?”

“Be right there, Mom,” I yelled from my bedroom.

I squinted at the
computer
, as if that would make it do something. Or maybe I thought it would somehow clarify my vision and I’d see a big Lego box on my desk with a blue LED light in it. I’d given up partying in my freshman year, the only time I’ve ever received a C in school. I guess I’ll admit to toking up once in a while, but that’s not the same as bombing out on mushrooms and vodka and waking up in City Park, a police officer nudging you in the ribs with the toe of his boot while scarring your retinas with one of those big cop flashlights.

“Computer,” I commanded, feeling just as stupid as the first time, “turn off.”

The search screen stared back at me. I touched the search box again.

“Turn off.”

The search results page showed over two billion results, with mostly dictionary and thesaurus definitions on the first page.

“Tyler?”

I gave the weird machine one last squint, daring it to do something even crazier than it had already done. I decided to leave it alone for the moment and go help my mother.

“Tyler? What’s wrong?” Mom asked as soon as I walked into the kitchen.

“What? Nothing. Why?” I asked, pretending I wasn’t freaking right the fuck out inside. Trying to, anyway.

“You’re as white as a ghost,” she clucked, reaching out to put her hand on my forehead.

“Mom…” I said, leaning back.

“I know, I know. You aren’t a
child
anymore.” Her frown said otherwise.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay. But you really are as pale as a sheet. What happened?”

I gave my mother a short hug, trying to keep the bits of food and flour and whatever else that covered her arms, face, and apron from transferring to me. I had a date later on, and still needed to shower and put on proper clothes, but it was a natural reaction. I was twenty-one, and while I was never a momma’s boy, my mother and father and I were very close. I never had to chafe much under her care when I hit my teens, other than here and there when she was having her own mid-life crisis about her baby boy, her only child, growing up and not needing her anymore. Most of the time she was a tank, but a friendly one. One that made me cookies instead of rolling over me with too much love.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said, kissing her on the cheek, tasting the flour a second later.

I gave her an exaggerated glare and made a spitting sound, as if her cheek had been poison. She paused in her chopping and waved the big knife in my direction. We both laughed, and I asked her what I could help with.