***Kevin***

I rubbed my eyes, believing that I was dreaming. I quickly stuck my hands into the trash bin to retrieve the screen. But as soon as I got near the bin, the glowing stopped. I took out the screen to inspect it. I quickly came to the conclusion that the glowing must not have come from the laptop screen. Maybe it was an old flashlight that still had batteries in it and the switch just got push on by other pieces of trash. Instead to putting the screen back in the trash, I put it next to the laptop, so I would remember to check it in the morning.
I woke up to the beeping of the computer.
“What is that horrible sound!?” cried Mike.
“That blasted screen-less computer from last night!”
“Well, shut it off!” I got off my bed, and ran to the family room. I held down the power button of the laptop and heard it turn off.
“Why did you turn it on?” I asked Mike.
“I didn’t touch it”
“That’s odd”
“Well, whatever. I’m hungry, let’s have breakfast.” I nodded in approval, and we went to the kitchen for breakfast.
After eating, I was still thinking of the strange events that occurred the night before, a spinning hard drive while the laptop was off, a sudden-appearing floppy disk, and glowing trash bins. Of course, there was also that unexpected morning alarm from the laptop. I decided to hook up the laptop to our LCD monitor and run a few checks. I began with a complete clean up with the program CCleaner (You can get it here), and then I ran a quick virus scan using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Get it here). Finally, I ran a spyware check with Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007 (Download here). The clean up, removed about 800 MB of stuff, and the two scans, nothing.
“What are you doing?” asked Mike.
“Oh, you know, trying to find out what is going on with this laptop”
“I see. So, did you find anything?”
“Nope.”
“Did you check what was on the floppy disk?”
“Not yet.”
“Check it, I want to know what is on it.” I opened My Computer and then the floppy disk drive. We saw that there were 11 files on it: 5 executables, 2 Text files, and 4 WAV files. The files are as listed: Start.exe, Sendit.exe, Tryit.exe, Help.exe, Find.exe, README.txt, NOTES.txt, Song.wav, Conversation.wav, Sound.wav, and Talk.wav. I double-clicked on the README file. Displaying the following: Open Start.exe. I close notepad, and clicked on Start.exe. A dialog box appeared, but before I could read it, the blue screen of death appeared.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.

“Screwdrivers”
“Check!”
“Hammer”
“Check!”
“Pliers”
“Check! That’s it we are all ready to begin the procedure!”
“Alright, let’s do it!” It’s Wednesday night in mid May, we were in the basement of the house. The old, slow, but still working laptop has a messed up (or non-working) screen. A few days before we started the procedure I noticed something: Why should it have a screen if it doesn’t work? Plus it takes up space, why don’t we just get rid of it?” So here I am, screwdriver in hand removing the screws that keep the screen where it is. Then, the power goes out. I just removed the last screw and I pulled apart the laptop screen from the rest of the body.
“Kevin?” asks my assistant, Mike.
“Yes?”
“Should I go get a flash light?”
“Good idea, I’ll stay here.” That probably was not a good idea. As I sat there, the low rumbling sound of a hard drive arose. “That’s odd, I removed the battery.” It put my hand on the black, plastic case of the old Toshiba, and I felt the vibrating of a spinning hard disk. I turned it around, and in the moon light, I could see that no battery was in it. I must be dreaming, I thought to my self. I decided to leave it there and go back upstairs to go help Mike find the flashlight. Bad idea.
As we were busily looking for the flash-light, a different thing happened without us noticing, a small rectangular piece of plastic fell down the stairs.
“I found it!” said Mike, waving it in his hands.
“Great, lets go back downstairs and finish what we were doing.” We didn’t noticed anything funny about the piece of plastic, so we thought that it fell out of the computer.
“That floppy disk must have popped out, I’ll put it back inside. It’s not like it’ll do anything, and anyways it might have something important on it.” I, still thinking about the strange rumbling, agreed to the idea. It’s not spinning anymore, I thought. I grabbed the screen and stuck in in our trash can. While Mike brought the laptop back into the family room. That night we both went to bed. Mike on one hand was snoring away, while I was still wondering about the laptop. Not being able to calm myself down, I went downstairs flashlight in my hand and walked over to the laptop. See, nothing wrong, I thought, but then came a glow from the trash bin.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.

“Welcome to ABC news. This is Tom Mackron with creation manager at Digibots, Chris Hallution. So Chris we’ve heard that your six year project has finally come to an end, how do you feel?”

“One, a lot less stress. Zach just wasn’t cooperation for the last few months, but we have finally got it right. In fact I’ll give you a demo right now.” He smiled and called out, “Zach?” Then suddenly a person walked right onto the stage smiling and bowing.

“Oh my god, it that a person?” said mom in disbelief.

“And to all gasping to know, no he is not a human.”

“I am an intelligent robot created by Digibot’s creation group.” His voice sounded highly realistic.

“I bet if you saw him on the streets one day, you wouldn’t even know he was just a piece of high tech machinery.”

“So Zach, how do you feel being in front of an audience.” Asked Tom.

“You’re kidding” said my dad, robots don’t have feelings. There was an strange sound and then he replied.

“A very interesting question. I would have to say… different. I’ve never gone on a stage, or even outside, only in the lab.”

“Would you want to if you had a choice?”

“Sure, after this I would do it a million times!” My mom was so shocked, she almost fainted. The camera turned to the audience where they all stared hypnotized by the robot. My mom shut off the TV.

“It is the weekend, maybe you could go outside and play with your friends.”

“Nah, I’ll have breakfast first.” My mom smiled.

“I was just about to say that” she said. I grabbed a box of Cheerios and poured them into a bowl. I heard the TV being turned on again, and I poured milk onto the cereal.

Odd day, I thought to myself. I gazed out into the New York landscape. Tall buildings, cars flying past, people walking hurriedly to their destination. I soon finished my breakfast and headed back to my room.

“Turn on” I said. A wall of my room transformed into a screen. “Look up Zackbot on Wikipedia.”

My Internet browser started and Wikipedia instantly loaded with a large picture of Zackbot on the right side. “Interesting. Zachbot is a project that was previously rejected by the US government, but later bypassed. I wonder what made the US government hesitate to make it?

“Maybe they were afraid of the “robots taking over the world” thing”

“But that’s only in movies! There must be some other reason.” We sat there thinking.

“Kevin! Jack is missing, it is reported on CNN” I was startled by Dad’s sudden appearance. “Strangely enough so is Zackbot.”

“Wait, but didn’t we just see Zachbot? On TV”

“News reporters say that the person on stage was not the real Zachbot, but a person. It’s possible that Zack found someone that he looked like and forced him to act.”

“Why would he run away?” I suddenly was horror struck. “Could Zack have kidnapped Jack?”

“Now what would bring you to that conclusion?”

“See Dad? Zack kidnaps Jack. He forces him to make more of himself and takes over the world!”

“You’ve been watching too many science fiction movies”

“No I mean it”

“I’ll go out and look for him in my car” He ran out the door and outside.

Imagine, if there was a world where all your fantasies became reality. Flying cars, robots and high tech gadgets. Innovations have made our lives easier and different. Though many of our current dangers are gone, new ones have arisen. This is what you’ll see, welcome to the 22^nd century.

“Kevin, come here”, called Jack, my brother. We were in the National Organization of Virtual Reality Headquarters. Virtual Reality is a new technology created recently by a group of scientists. NOVR is the organization that’s developing the technology and trying to make it more reliable and helpful.

“What?”, I hollered back, and walked down the corridor into the transfer room. I entered a small, white room. On the right side of the room, there was five booths. Using these booths you could go in and out of Virtual Reality, or VR.

“I need to go check on something in Virtual Reality, I’ll be back in an hour”

“Can I come with you, please?”, I pleaded.

“No, It’s too dangerous for you. You should go home and do your homework, I’ll see you back home.” He ran into a telephone booth styled glass pod, typed in a few commands and disappeared. I waited a few moments and gazed at the wonders of virtual reality.

I left the building and ran down 32^nd street back to our apartment. People are everywhere in New York, but it’s not like back then where people keep on bumping into each other. Since cars are now in the air there is more room to get around.

“Hi, Mom”, I said cheerily as I walked into our territory.

“Hi, where’s Jack?”

“He said that he had to check on something in VR and that he’ll be back soon”

“I see, you should go do your homework, It’s getting late”

“Fine”, I chuckled, “Homework, that’s what Jack said before I left.” I placed my stuff on top of the table and began the long process know as homework. After finishing my homework, I remembered that Jack should be home by then. From my pocket I produced my Xinctra Mobile. “Matt?”

“Yep”, replied a happy voice, and a face filled the vibrant screen.

“Call, NOVR, I need to ask Sam where Jack is.”

“Dialing…”

“Hello, this the National Organization of Virtual Reality Headquarters. This is Sam speaking, how may I help you?” Sam, is the “front desk guy” and he knows all about who went in and who went out.

“Yes, This is Kevin Johnson. I wanted to know if my brother left.”

“Oh, hi Kevin. You were here an hour ago.”

“I know, where is he?”

“I haven’t seen him leave the building”

“Okay, well give me a call back to this number when you see him”

“Fine, bye, Kevin”

“Matt, open WIRED magazine, January Issue 2108”

“Holographic, or on screen”

“ On Screen” Okay, you’re now wondering: why not holographic? Holographic is awkward to work with and the text isn’t very clear, so I just stick with the old fashioned way. Sometimes innovations don’t help. Hmm, interesting: are robots becoming human? I started to read about different AI projects, iRobot and Digibots are the leading producers.

“Kevin! It’s time to go to bed” My mom’s voice startled me.

“Yeah, okay” I picked up my mobile and headed to bed.

“Kevin! Kevin! Wake up, look on the news. Digibots just announced the arrival of Zachbot.”

I was suddenly wide awake. I quickly dressed and ran to the TV.

To be continued…