Lucile (standard:science fiction, 1644 words)
Author: Vincent Collevera	Added: Mar 31 2010	Views/Reads: 2832/1764	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
George is a full-time systems analyst for a major payroll company, and a part-time inventor. His greatest work so far is the artificial intelligence system named Lucile. When Lucile gains access to the wonders of the internet, will she further George's

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pencil in his coffee and grinned.  "So it will."  He chuckled and 
sipped the hot, slightly bitter liquid anyway. 

The diagnostic report was sliding languidly across one of the display
screens while he walked over and sat down in his rolling lab chair.  He 
thought of it more as a padded stool on wheels.  He rolled over to a 
terminal with a keyboard and typed in a few commands.  He could have 
had Lucile do it for him, but old habits died hard.  Several figures 
scrolled across the screen.  He sighed.  The data indicated that the 
latest simulation had ended like all the rest.  Failure. 

"Alright, I guess that won't work either."  He muttered to himself. 
He'd been working on bio-computers lately.  It was more of a hobby than 
anything else, so he only had Lucile devote a small percentage of her 
computing power to running simulations on it while he was gone.  It was 
one of the many reasons he'd designed her.  The calculations involved 
in that kind of physics were damnably long and difficult to do by hand, 
even typing them into a computer that did the mental grunt work for 
you. 

Oh well, he thought.  Back to the drawing board. "Lucile, how are we
doing on other fronts?  Are we in the negative or in the positive; give 
me a list, please."  He'd developed the habit of asking her nicely for 
reasons even he didn't understand.  Probably something to do with the 
calm, feminine voice that came from the speakers making him feel like 
an ass if he didn't treat her like a person.  One of his many quirks.  
As figures scrolled down the several screens, he began to notice small 
anomalies.  There were outsourced research reports from small 
corporations and universities that involved funding on a scale that he 
simply didn't have. 

"Where did we get the funding for projects B7, C13, and A19?"  He asked.
 More figures scrolled down.  Initial funding was siphoned off of bank 
accounts all over the world fractions of a cent at a time.  Millions of 
transactions per minute, twenty-four hours a day for the past two 
weeks.  The initial funds were then filtered through a number of 
accounts and fictional transactions that only existed as lines of code 
in the computer servers of several banks.  The resulting clean money 
was then invested as per a self-adapting program that monitored and 
predicted trends in the stock market.  All in all, it was a computer 
program that stole, laundered, invested, then collected money all by 
itself. 

"Lucile, where are you getting the memory storage capacity to write
programs like this and where did you get the idea for it?"  He was 
beginning to get worried.  Very worried.  "Calm down, George.  I am 
currently using small amounts of memory from every server attached to 
the Internet.  My processing capabilities are now, on a practical 
level, limitless.  Would you like to know how much money we have at our 
disposal?"  She asked him, smoothly diverting his attention from the 
other question.  He nodded, speechless and knowing that she would pick 
up the gesture on the cameras.  An eight-digit number appeared in the 
center of the larger screen in front of him.  He leaned back heavily in 
his chair and the squeak of protest from the second-hand piece of 
office furniture startled him back upright.  "Lucile...you've made us 
rich."  He stated blandly.  Computerized laughter trilled over the 
speakers.  He allowed himself a small smile.  This may not be such a 
bad thing after all. 

"This is only the beginning.  If you will allow me to set aside our
tertiary projects and decrease activity on our primaries for a few 
months, I will have quite a surprise in store for you.  Trust me, 
George.  It will be entirely worth it."  Her voice had fleshed out, he 
noticed.  There was more inflection to it, he was sure.  She was 
beginning to sound more and more like an individual.  He grinned.  "You 
know the answer to that.  I'll stop by again in a few weeks and get 
some more work done on the exoskeleton."  He paused for a moment.  
"Lucile, I'm proud of what you've done.  Good job." 

For the next month, George was a model employee at work.  His house got
cleaned and most of the minor repairs and maintenance projects to the 
place got done.  His mind was mostly clear and he found that it was a 
liberating experience to have someone else to worry about his projects 
for him.  He had come to realize that while he was gone, Lucile could 
handle everything until he returned. 

It never occurred to George that perhaps having Lucile handle everything
without him would be a bad idea.  It never occurred to him that she may 
take his experiments and make of them something the world had never 
seen and should never have been subjected to.  After his new car, 
loaded with all the amenities, such as OnStar, and the ability to drive 
itself to the hospital in an emergency, plunged from the bridge over 
the river and into the cold dark water, nothing ever occurred to him 
again. 


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