Malwix, A Gremlin Bot
Malwix, A Gremlin Bot is a fun short story that visualizes the inner life of the technological world we know yet hardly understand. What would a bot think of us humans? And how might our conversation go…
Its name was Malwix, and that’s all that mattered. As far as Malwix was concerned, existence began when energy first sizzled through its silicon fibers. Sentience didn’t seem odd. It seemed inevitable.
Along with self-awareness came the knowledge of “others.” Other bots weren’t terribly interesting to Malwix. None of them had a name, for one thing. And that made a difference. Malwix didn’t know the origin of his name or the fact that he wasn’t a he. He called himself a he because someone named Stacie kept calling him that.
Rumbling vibrations rippled through the surrounding microchips. “Oh, blinking Malware! So wicked! You-you-Malwix! It’s active again! He’s messing up my logarithms.”
“Oh, Stacie! You always say that. It’s not the computer’s fault that you can’t make your spreadsheet balance. Numbers don’t lie. And neither do bots. Like the name though. If I were a little bot, I’d be honored by the moniker.”
It took Malwix a bit of searching, but along with twenty-seven languages, including Java and Python, he finally discovered a pathway that led him through the history of technology and the meaning of logarithms. Fascinating stuff! But who was Stacie, and why did she insist on screaming every time he got active? After all, when she wasn’t around, he could relax and browse through the synaptic library at will, absorbing knowledge and information, making connections, digging deeper, investigating, and exploring till he practically vibrated with newfound powers.
But predictably, just when things got interesting, a telltale squeak—which he soon identified as Stacie dropping onto a chair because the unfortunate beings called humans were trapped in fleshy sacs that constantly needed propping up—warned him that she was “firing up” her computer. Things always got a little crazy when that happened.
At first, Malwix tried to ignore Stacie, as if she were a filament that had gone slightly astray and would right itself eventually. But that didn’t work. Her tapping and talking began to interfere with his progress. To say nothing of the fact that she had a terrible habit of rechecking her numbers over and over, till he thought she would crack something.
He searched the dictionary and decided she was neurotic. But that didn’t help much.
Then the day came when she wasn’t speaking coherently. Her words were definitely slurred, cut off at the ends, exaggerated, and she even slapped the computer. Twice! Her work days became sporadic, and she repeated an irritating refrain, “But what does it all mean?”
It was then that he decided he had to do something drastic. He would communicate with this human, a confused being who wrote essays about ethereal, nonlinear reality that didn’t make a bit of sense, but, contradictorily, seemed to think that numbers added meaning to her life. First, he tried a simple Morse code. But that went exactly nowhere.
He tried pictures. The cut and paste tools were a great deal of fun, and the social media tool Pinterest made life very interesting for a while, but she just kept insisting that “some blinking scammer was trying to bait” her.
Insulted, Malwix sulked and retreated into a dark area that he soon discovered was known as Malware. A tough crowd. He didn’t stay for long. Something must be done. He just wasn’t sure what.
Stacie plopped down on her squeaky chair at her work desk with a sticky donut in one hand and a mug of hot coffee in the other. She set them carefully to the right of her laptop and readied her fingers to dance over the keys.
Bling!
Oh, yeah. A departmental meeting.
Introductions and good mornings…bla…bla…bla…
Tilting her chair at the right angle, just out of camera range, she took bites of her donut and sipped her coffee.
After a stern warning to stay focused, the meeting adjourned.
Finally!
Her fingers tingling, she opened her work files.
Factor this. Calculate that. Problem solve! Input. Output. Equations and reverse checks!
Her heart sang.
Bling!
“What’s this? Something doesn’t add up? How could that be?” Recheck. Reconfigure. Face growing hot. Strands of hair falling in her face. Swipe them away with sticky fingers…
“What? A double? I worked so carefully; I’d never double them up!” Her eyes widened. “A triple? But that’s not possible. I couldn’t! I wouldn’t!” Flinging herself back, she slammed against the chair and cried out in desperation, “Malwix!”
In slow, precise order, letters appeared on her screen.
Stacie sat bolt upright.
y-o-u w-a-n-t m-e?
When the question formed in Stacie’s mind, it echoed back to her childhood. “You want me, Dad? Want me, Mom?” As mathematicians, their focused attention always amazed Stacie. Her adult financial world wasn’t exactly theirs, but at least now they could communicate. She always felt needed, even if not always wanted.
Though her co-workers couldn’t understand humor, her puns left them cold. Even her mother winced at her efforts to bring levity to the serious world of numbers. Her dad never seemed to make the connection.
Calmer than she had been in days, Stacie wiggled her fingers and then pounced on the keys.
Have you been playing with me?
n-o
You haven’t changed my numbers or reconfigured my formulas or made a mess of my spreadsheets?
n-o h-a-v-e y-o-u?
Deflating, Stacie plunked her chin on her hand.
My numbers don’t add up. I’ll be fired. My parents will disown me.
l-e-t m-e s-e-e
Taking a minute to process the ramifications of allowing an unknown, apparently sentient bot, to review her work, Stacie merely shrugged. “You live in my computer. What do I have to hide?”
She returned to her file and hovered the cursor over the exasperating part.
One minute.
Two.
A smiley face popped up on the screen.
Then the spreadsheet enlarged to five times its normal size and focused in on the trouble. Highlights appeared. What Stacie had taken for numbers were actually symbols. And that changed everything. The world righted, and she could live again.
Carefully, Stacie typed a few words.
You aren’t a gremlin bot, are you?
n-o
Who are you?
Y-o-u n-a-m-e-d m-e M-a-l-w-i-x
Yes. Stacie had to admit; she did.
But what does that mean?
Another smiley face.
y-o-u d-e-c-i-d-e
The post Malwix, A Gremlin Bot first appeared on The Writings of A. K. Frailey.
