Scary Stories - Twist in the Tale Series

The Alpha Bug

Connor slumped backin the chair and kneaded his stinging eyes with a thumb andforefinger, in front of him the complex lines of code scrolledendlessly up the glowing screen. He had lost track of how long hehad been seated there with only the humming machine for company;he knew only that he must remain there until the problem wassolved.
It was the ultimate acknowledgment of his skill when he had beencommissioned to head the team that programmed Alpha; no greateraccolade could be conferred upon him than to serve the Ministryin such a way. What pride he had felt when he had received thesummons! At last, all his hard work and dedication had beenrewarded; he had reached the pinnacle of his career.

In the latter half of the 21st century, information was all;society could not function without it, and in an age whenautomation largely provided for every human need, industryexisted solely for the gathering of it. The workforce's only taskwas the sifting and sorting of facts and data, coordinated andsupervised by vast government departments. Heading thesedepartments and overseeing all their activity was the largest andmost powerful of them all: the Ministry of Information.

In many ways, it was an ideal society. The population wasprosperous, labour and toil had been removed, and sickness anddisease had been all but eradicated. They lived peaceful,comfortable, leisurely lives, their existence controlled, orderlyand smooth. It was an era of contentment, and it was all thanksto computerisation.

Over several decades, computers had developed until they becameso powerful that they replaced human responsibility. Everyrequirement of the populace was produced in gigantic factories,where computerised robots ceaselessly churned out goods andproducts to supply the computerised shops and stores. Likewise,the fields and farms were similarly mechanised and computerised,their resultant foodstuffs further processed, treated, cooked andfinally served by yet more automatons. Even the hospitals hadbeen revolutionised by computerisation. What little illnessremained was treated by robots of incredible delicateness andsensitivity, which were programmed with all the latest medicalknowledge. Indeed, should any human part or organ need replacing,usually because of wear and tear rather than disease, it was doneso by mechanical ones manufactured by robots and installed byrobotic surgeons.

Connor focussed once more on the screen, returning his attentionback to the problem in hand. Somewhere among all the reams ofcode was a mistake, a bug. It was like looking for the proverbialneedle in a haystack. He knew from long experience that acomputer error could arise from just one wrong line in theprogram; even a single operand could throw out the whole thing.The dilemma was locating it. As his hands tapped at the keyboardhe marvelled as he often did at how much more efficient was theright one, the artificial one that had so seamlessly replaced theone that had been accidentally smashed by the door of acomputerised taxi some years ago. Operated by tiny electroniccircuits and microchips and enveloped in plastiskin, it lookedand felt real - more than real.

However much all this computerisation and mechanisation had easedthe workload of humankind, still the people were not satisfied.Computers proliferated everywhere in every aspect of life, eachone controlling its own specific area. Each computer relayed itsdata to yet more computers in a long chain right up to thegovernment department responsible for that facet of operation, beit the Ministry of Food, of Transport, of Entertainment or anyother of the multitude of Ministries. Each of these Ministriesthen had its own computers, which further transmitted their datato the chief one: the Ministry of Information.

The problem was that each computer needed someone to operate itand many more to supply it with the data necessary for itsallocated function. Although these tasks were not laborious,still they were considered too menial in a society accustomed tothe pursuit of leisure. What was needed was one massive computer,a computer so powerful that it could control every othercomputer, a computer able to collect and hold every particle ofdata of every human being and their every need and want.

Therefore, Alpha was created.

It was a massive task, but then, Alpha was a massive computer, somassive it had to be housed in its own building. Of course, inthese days of automation, little human labour was used in itsconstruction. Man's only involvement was in the planning anddesign stages; the actual manufacture was left to machines. Thefactories where computers were made were instructed to postponeall other production and concentrate solely on this one greatproject. Each factory then went into full-scale activity, theirvast workspaces scenes of organised, tireless industry as robotslarge and small went about their allocated functions offabricating each of the thousands of parts and sections.

At last, Alpha was completed. Robot transporters took itsindividual components to the huge, grand edifice erectedspecially to contain it by the building robots and it was thereassembled by other specialised robots. It was then that Connorand his team were called in to program Alpha, to gather andassimilate every iota of information of every human being,everything from their genealogical makeup and DNA, right down totheir individual tastes, preferences and idiosyncrasies. If manwas to finally free himself of all work it was vital that Alphaknew all there was to know about him to enable it control andcater for every aspect of his life.

The team consisted of hundreds of programmers working round theclock at Alpha's many terminals. Each was assigned a particularsection of code to work on and it was Connor's responsibility tocollate each section into one whole, smooth-running and highlyefficient program. It was hard, onerous work and it took manyweeks, but no one begrudged the effort. After all, it was to bethe last labour of man.

Finally, the last line of code was written. Switches and leverswere thrown, and Alpha hummed gently into action. Humankind wasat last able to totally absolve itself of all toil. Thepopulation could devote itself to a comfortable, cossetedexistence. Alpha took care of all.

Connor sat forward and the circuits in the chair adjusted to hisnew position, controlled by Alpha, they contoured the chairexactly to his unique shape for his maximum personal comfort,just as they would for whoever sat there. It had been a shock tobe summoned for the meeting with the Minister of Informationhimself, he had only dealt with his underlings in the past. Itwas more of a shock when the Minister informed him that all wasnot well. After ten years of faultless operation, Alpha haddeveloped a defect.

Blanks had started to appear in Alpha's database. Entire recordsof individual members of the population were disappearing fromits memory banks, every detail of their existence were beingdeleted. It had been a gradual process, and no one in theMinistry had noticed at first; an odd erasure here and there fromall the teeming millions of files held by Alpha was insignificant.However, the mysterious obliterations had quickly escalated todozens, then hundreds, until now huge swathes of data were beingwiped out. It was vital that something be done, and quickly.After all, how could Alpha look after the people if it had noknowledge of them?

The Minister had told Connor clearly that it was up to him to putthe problem right before rumour of it got out and panic sweptthrough the population. Connor, as chief programmer, must correctthe error, or not only would his reputation be at stake but thewelfare of the people.

Connor was exhausted. He had tried every diagnostic technique heknew and still he was no nearer to the answer. His fingers movedrapidly over the keys and his eyes scanned the screen searchingfor the one little glitch, the one tiny bug he knew must bepresent somewhere in the code. It was useless. The program wasperfect; nowhere could he spot a mistake.

He ought to call his wife, she must be worrying about him by now,he had been away from home so long. He rose from the chair andstretched his aching body. Leaving the terminal room, he went outinto the corridor where there was a vidphone on the wall anddialled his home number. Odd, there was no answer. She never wentout at this time of day. Shrugging, he decided to stroll aroundthe building to collect his thoughts.

It was very strange, in this time of crisis, he expected there tobe many Ministry staff around trying to be useful, but there wasno one. Although he walked the corridors for some time and lookedin various rooms, he encountered not another person in thebuilding. Absorbed in his work at the terminal he had notrealised how utterly quiet it was too. It was as if he had beenleft entirely on his own. Vaguely uneasy and not a little annoyedat being abandoned in such a way, he returned to the terminalroom and resumed his seat in front of the screen.

It had been some hours since he had last checked Alpha's databaseto study the inexorable progress of the data erasure, so hecalled it up now to do so. He was horrified. When he had lookedpreviously he had needed to search for the blank spaces among allthe millions of personal records. Now they were being created infront of his eyes. As each record scrolled up the screen therewas a pause, there was a whir from somewhere deep inside Alpha,the screen blinked, and the complete history of a human being wasdeleted as if wiped out by a cloth. Record after record appearedon the screen, and as quickly disappeared.

What was happening?

Why?

Connor could only stare, dumbfounded, as faster and fasterdetailed information of thousands of human beings was expungedfrom Alpha's memory.

Desperately Connor keyed in his own name. He breathed a sigh ofrelief. At least his own record was still there, the details ofhis genes, his DNA, of his very essence. The noises from Alphawere getting louder, the deletions were happening too fast forhim to follow any more. The records came on to the screen andwinked out again too quickly for his eyes to follow. The soundscoming from Alpha were alarming.

Soon there was only one record remaining in Alpha's memory banks.Connor stared disbelievingly at the last name on the screen.

His own.

Outside the enormous building that housed Alpha, in the towns,the cities, and the houses the robots ceased their activity. Ifthere had been anyone there to observe them they might havethought they looked a little confused. Perhaps they could beforgiven their confusion; they had been built to serve. There wasno one there to forgive them. There was no one there to serve.

In the terminal room in front of a blank screen stood an emptychair. On the keyboard rested a perfectly engineered artificialhand. One of the fingers gave a last twitch and was still. Alphahummed quietly to itself.