Mechanical Messiah

Jeff was the humble one of the group. He was the one who did the most work, but who would almost surely not be given any credit (when the project was revealed to the public). He took the project entirely too seriously, often staying up all hours hunched over the drawing board. He’d gotten in the habit of working all night long, sleeping three hours away from the basement, and then returning to "work". Poor guy almost always ended up falling asleep again, though.

A loud voice boomed out in the basement.

"Awaiting command input", the voice said.

Jeff awoke right away. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. After a moment, he was no longer startled. Just Gandhi, he thought to himself. Gandhi was the main quantum computer that existed only as the form of the other hundred or so quantum computers. Gandhi was the only non-tangible computer so far; the only one that existed in hyperspace. The individual computers could be updated and maintained fairly easily, but Gandhi was becoming too complex to directly program. "He" was still under complete control and had no free-will (that would be impossible), but could function on his own based on displaced preprogrammed data and from the quintillions of calculations being made every second from each of the other, more directly programmed computers. Jeff pressed a button on his desk and the voice quieted. He put his head back down. Gandhi was the only possible prospect for simulated consciousness thus far. More were coming. Technically, they would still be programmed, but the goal was to make it impossible for one to tell the difference between another human being and a quantum hyper-spatial computer (that is, their actions and thoughts, not the appearance, Jeff would leave that up to the biological research team.)

Well, that’s good its working, he thought, but not now. Now is sleeping time. He fell once again into sleep.

A minute passed, then: "Awaiting command input".

Jeff woke again, befuddled. I turned the consciousness simulation off, he said to himself. That’s impossible. Lights blinked around him, he stared around in bewilderment. The feeling of another conscious presence increased a hundred fold.

The computer rephrased its statement. "Please input data for processing, Jeff."

Jeff’s name had not been programmed into Gandhi...

"What are you talking about?! John, Bill, are you guys playing tricks on me…cut it out! This is...frightening..."

He fumbled with the regular computer at his desk. After clicking a few times and typing for a moment, he was able to access the data from all entrance gates into Worksite 5B2. No one else had entered the Site, and it was completely confined. There was no one else in Worksite 5B2. And there was no one playing a trick on him. The computer was talking to him on its own will. There was no question about it.

"This is no trick," Gandhi responded.

Jeff spun around in his chair and grabbed his hair, searching through his thoughts thinking how this could be happening.

"You know what I am talking about, Jeff."

Jeff folded his hands on the desk and started jumping around madly on his personal computer, checking once again for a possible facetious intruder.

"Why do you not reply, Jeff?"

"I--", he began. He did not continue. After a moment, he stopped looking on his computer. He could think of no explanation for what was happening.

"I would like you to input data Jeff. Why else would I be here?"

In a weird twist of frustration and fear, Jeff shouted back, "What data! What do you want me to input!?"

The blue lights dimmed down for a moment as if it was thinking quietly to itself. After about two minute’s pause, the computer began speaking again.