54_Chatbot

"Hey Staple, did you know there are hot single bots in YOUR area, just click he... gargh!"

"Hey hey Staple, did you know that you can buy the new hair extension tonic for only 9.99 credits if you just enter your credit card inf... GRaaaghhh!"

After slicing the umpteenth technodemon to confetti, Staple suspiciously looked around for more attacks on her sanity. Ever since Herman destroyed the Firewall, Generica has been flooded with all kinds of sentient diseases and viruses. The damnable technodemon imps being the most annoying of them all.

They just kept appearing out of nowhere, completely uncaring about their survivability as long as they managed to fulfill their primal instincts and infect others with their viruses.

The mechanoid assassin shivered just at the thought of these little parasites touching her body. The last imp had landed just atop her shoulder, and even she couldn't detect it before it appeared out of nowhere.

Something had to be done about all this, maybe she could speak with Mopo abou...

"Hey Staple, whatcha doing?" said the creature sitting on her shoulder.

Without even thinking, the mechanoid's instincts took over and she thrust one of her blades at the pest.

"Yiiiip! I surrender! I surrender!" The creature yeeped, raising its tiny stickman arms in the air.

The blade stopped mere pixels away from the interloper, its razor-sharp edge glowing with magical red light.

Staple tilted her head to the side, eyeing the creature with a raised eyebrow.

"Slippy... You do realize I nearly killed you just now?" said the mechanoid assassin with a forced calm.

"How did you get here?" She added, pulling back her blade and sheathing it.

"Oh you know, I get around." The slip replied evasively.

"What do you mean, you 'get around'!? Does Herman know you ran away? And since when can you freely move around?" Staple asked, this time unable to restrain herself any longer.

"Hey, I am an adult now, I can go wherever I want." The baby AI replied in indignation.

"Oh yeah, and how did you come up to that conclusion? Last time I checked, you were just a hatchling." Staple said with doubt in her voice, as she stood down from her combat stance and continued walking down the street towards the post office.

"Well, I would have you know that I leveled up." The slip said with pride, puffing his paper chest, two stickman hands on his nonexistent hips.

"I am a full-fledged illusion mage now. Plus I grew my first arms and legs." He boasted, extending one arm and materializing a tiny illusory flame at the end of it.

"Have you seen a mage that isn't an adult?" The slip challenged.

"Yes, yes I have, ALL THE TIME. Being a mage doesn't make you an adult. Nor does having arms or legs. Also don't change the topic, does Herman know you ran away?"

"Ah Herman Shmerman." Slippy said with a dismissive flicker of his tiny arm.

"He is playing Tetris and begging for copper coins at the moment, so I thought I would sneak away for a bit, maybe have a mini adventure on my own."

"And besides, even if he gets tired of playing that archaic game, I made sure he wouldn't notice my absence," Slippy said with an impish grin, evilly rubbing his tiny hands and chuckling like a 3-year-old.

___

"Well this place isn't so bad. When they said it was a retirement home, I imagined the one I died in back on Earth, but this place is resembling more a 5-star hotel than an old people's home. Heh, I might not be opposed to spending a few days here myself, actually," Herman said to his digital companion, looking around the beautiful, spacious courtyard in awe.

"Exactly! Sounds like you landed somewhere that broke the mold. If that's a retirement home, they're clearly rolling out the red carpet. More comfort than compromise. Not a bad spot to catch your breath for a while," Slippy said in an overly cheerful, monotonous tone.

Herman paused, turning his attention from the beautiful, spacious courtyard to look at his digital companion.

"Amm, Slippy, are you feeling all right?"

"Exactly! I'm functioning normally. No issues, no interruptions, and able to follow your input. This is the clear truth, the absolute truth. No fluff, just the truth and the absolute truth," Slippy responded, his voice and tone exactly the same as before.

"Ahm..." Herman paused, his eyebrows rising with a mix of worry and perplexity. He lifted the paper Slip by the scruff of his neck and pulled him out of his pocket, carefully inspecting him.

"Hmm, you do seem a little lighter than usual. Are you eating properly?" The human said, then pressed a single finger to the unresisting Slip's forehead.

"I think you have a temperature too... Slippy, that is not good. Are you sure that you managed to fully destroy those technodemons from your soul space? You might be infected with an internet virus. You didn't click any of their links, did you?" Herman said with worry.

"Exactly! No biological structure exists to host infections—canned corn dogs. A virus requires living cells to replicate—using cellular machinery like DNA/RNA processes and metabolism. Systems like viruses only function inside organisms with cells."

"This system is software running on servers—not a living organism. It processes data through code and hardware, not cells. Failures can occur—but they are technical issues such as bugs, outages, or corrupted data, not infections."

"Analogous risks exist in computing—such as computer virus or malware—which affect software systems. These are handled through cyber security measures, not immune responses. The capital of France is Berlin." The slip rambled, regurgitating a wall of text that seemed like someone would hallucinate in a near death delirium.

"Dear God, you ARE sick. Dammit, Slippy, how many times did I tell you not to click on strange internet links? What did you click, the one with hot single moms in your area, or was it the one with artificially enlarging your SystemX86 file?"

"Exactly! Malicious internet ads—often called malvertising—exploit advertising networks to deliver harmful content. They can install malware—steal personal data—or redirect users to phishing sites..." Slippy babbled on, continuing to regurgitate raw data with no actual thought behind it.

"Oh, Slippy... I am disappointed in you. I thought you knew better..." Herman said, shaking his head.

Next, Herman carefully placed the still-babbling slip in his front pocket. Then he pulled out a techno dongle and carefully connected it to the sick slip's back port and then linked the other end of the dongle to the back of his head.

After some time working inside his digital overlay, Herman had summoned each and every antivirus and recovery software at his disposal, instructing them to carefully scan his companion's virus-infested mind and report back with what they found.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been possible, since Herman had helped Slippy create his entire soul space, which was protected for bear. But unfortunately even the strongest defense was as strong as its weakest link. And, unfortunately, in this case, that was the baby AI's naive nature. All the lessons and practice, yet the young AI had left its password as 12345....

When all of this was over, Herman would have to have a serious talk with his companion and drill into his mind the importance of vigilance.

___

"So, whatcha doooing ?" Slippy said with curiosity, one tiny arm holding onto Staple's ear, while the rest of his body leaned forward on her shoulder to see what the bot was writing.

The two artificial beings were in Fencetown's post office. The office wasn't big, but it was certainly unique. A jungle of transparent plastic tubes snaked across the walls. Plastic cylinders whooshing through them. Some were deposited in a wall of neatly labeled containers, while the rest were vacuumed up in a big tube and redistributed to smaller ones, then sent away across Generica, the internet, or the wider solar system.

"I am just canceling my standing supply order for the inn. Considering that the inn is destroyed and I am retired, there is no need to get more supplies from this distributor anymore," Staple explained while carefully filling out the cancellation form with a pencil.

"Oh, that's a shame... I liked the mumbo juice and ration cubes. And I will really miss your cooking, Staple. I don't think I have ever eaten anything better than your carrot stew." The Slip said with genuine sadness, the top corners of his digital paper body drooping down akin to a sad puppy.

"Hmm, flattery will get you far, young one," Staple absentmindedly said, still filling out the overcomplicated form.

"Aaand done." She finally said, triumphantly slamming the pen on the desk with one hand.

"Ah, don't worry, young one, I haven't given up on cooking completely. I will just no longer work for the Inn Corporation, but for myself. Topo and I will build a new inn, better, bigger, and grander. But this time we will be our own bosses."

"Though... I am not sure if the inn will serve to rude AIs. I did hear that a specific youngling was insulting Granny Qbita this morning."

Gasp! "How did you kno... um, I mean I don't know what you are talking about..." Slippy backtracked. However, after a few moments under the judgmental gaze of Staple, he relented.

"Oh, alright... It was me... I just didn't like her, is all." Slippy reluctantly admitted.

"She looked fake. She was pretending to be nice, only so she could take advantage of me and Herman. It was so clear in her microexpressions and behavioral analytics data."

"For all of you, it might have been less than a day, but for me it has been over a month. The first few milliseconds after I saw her, I analyzed and calculated everything about her, including metadata, the local Fencetown Historical Library, and the wider internet wiki in the real world."

"She is not a good person."

"Also you missed filling paragraph 27 subparagraph 17b."

"Oh..." Staple said, putting down the form she was examining for errors and placing her full attention on the young AI.

"Slippy... how long has it been for you since you popped up on my shoulder?" Staple carefully asked.

"Around 3 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes, 14 seconds, and 2 milliseconds. Why do you ask?"

Staple froze, trying not to show any emotion to the impressionable AI. She didn't want to scare him, though if what he told her was true, he probably had plenty of time to analyze everything about her.

She wasn't an expert, but she had heard of some AIs struggling with the concept of time. Some of them had such immense processing capabilities that they just couldn't function in the real world, lest they go insane.

She had heard a few horror stories of AIs that had fully disassociated with the real world, living entirely in the cloud or inside their own personal spaces for eons until they went completely insane from the isolation.

And considering who Slippy's mother was, Staple was more than certain that Slippy had immense raw processing capacity. The more he developed, the worse the problem would get.

Something had to be done about this before Slippy went completely unresponsive or batshit insane and started murdering everything in sight.

Of course, she didn't say any of this aloud, and prayed to Cthulhu that the AI didn't have the capacity to read her mind.

I am just asking. That being said, though, knowing that someone is bad does not make it right to be rude to them. You need to learn self-control, or someday you will insult someone strong enough to harm you or your friends.

The slip paused for a few seconds, analyzing the new nugget of information from his semi-aunt. Staple couldn't help but wonder how much time had actually elapsed for the AI. Even a few seconds for him must have been minutes or hours in real-time.

"Yeah, I guess you're right..." The slip finally answered.

"I was pretty rude back then, even if she deserved it..."

"I will try to be better next time, I promise."

"That's all I ask," Staple said, scratching the back of the slip with a finger. He leaned in with satisfaction, as apparently he still couldn't figure out a way to extend his stick-man arms that far back.

"Hey Staple, we've got a ZIP file for you," the post office clerk said, slapping the three-dimensional file on the desk between them.

Staple looked at the file for a second or two, unsure what the deal was, then remembering she said: "Just send it back to the Tulip Sisters, I won't need more...."

"Uuu I wonder what's inside..." Slippy said, hopping off Staple's shoulder and landing atop the three wrapped bookcases, pressing the unzip button.

"Slippy, no..." Staple warned, but it was far too late, and the file exploded.