Wizard of Oz || Zuo Hang✓

Three

Yanni sat bored in front of her computer. They had agreed that they would stream the video on Saturday afternoon together, so that they could somewhat motivate each other. After all, it was all for the school. Someone suggested that they should have a group video chat to make sure that everyone was streaming, and fortunately, not everyone liked that idea.

"As long as you see the numbers going up, it will confirm to you that people are streaming," one of the students had said on the school group chat, and everyone seemed to agree with him.

Yanni had just gotten on the page, and the views were already close to 1k. 'Well, people seem to be doing their job well.' She said to herself and pressed play on the video. An ad showed up before the video started, and Yanni rolled her eyes and pressed the ad. It was an ad for some nail polish with the brightest and apparently durable colors. She closed it soon enough, not particularly interested in the product at all.

Another ad came up once she had closed this one, and she clicked it once more. This one was for some computer chatbot which was almost like a personal assistant. She wasn't particularly a fan of chatbots anyway, so she pressed close on the page too.

But to her dismay, a pop-up from her browser wrote "installation started", and soon the program started to install itself in her computer.

'What the hell?' Yanni asked herself as she repeatedly pressed close on her browser, but it seemed to not be responding to whatever she was pressing. 'Is this some kind of virus?'

Yanni was getting frustrated with her computer, but the browser finally closed once the installation had finished.

She felt relieved then got back to the browser so that she could continue streaming the video. She would uninstall the program later, even though she definitely wasn't enjoying the video she was watching.

She minimized the browser and decided to uninstall the program. She pressed uninstall and her computer showed her the uninstallation process. But when she was done, the program was still there. She pressed uninstall again, but the program still couldn't be uninstalled. She started to wonder if it was a problem with her computer.

Her cellphone rang while she inspected her computer, and she picked up without checking the caller ID. Her attention was too focused on whatever was going on with her laptop. 'Hello?'

'Hey Yanni, are you watching Xinhao's video? Terrible isn't it?' Zhixin's voice asked her on the other end of the line.

Yanni smiled. 'Oh I don't know, I would have been streaming it but some weird program installed itself in my computer and won't go away. I have no idea whatever the hell it is.' She pressed uninstall again only to be disappointed.

'Really? What is it?'

'Some silly chatbot that's like some personal assistant when it comes to decisions.'

'Ah really?' Zhixin chuckled. 'Isn't that something you'd enjoy? Something to help you "make decisions"? Something to "understand you" cause apparently your beloved boyfriend doesn't?'

'Oh yeah,' she shrugged. 'But I wasn't serious about it.'

'Hah, try it out and see if it will be any be any better than me. Then you'll realize that you're just someone hard to understand when a chatbot doesn't understand you either.'

Yanni chuckled at his teasing then hang up the cellphone after they had conversed a little more. She put it back on her desk and pressed on her browser, then continued to watch the video. It wasn't any fun, she was thinking of just leaving it on a continuous loop and doing something else. She wondered why she hadn't thought of that earlier.

But before she could get off her desk, she thought of Zhixin's words and they made her curious about the program. It didn't seem safe with how it had just popped up on her computer. But what was the worst that could happen? Of course it could steal her passwords and personal information, and that was a scary thought. But that probably wasn't it.

She decided to open the program: Personal Assistant Chatbot. The interface looked friendly enough as it filled the screen, it was cute. It was white with some pale blue outline drawings in the back. The start menu talked about how realistic this chatbot was, and she completely doubted that. Before she could press anything, a pale blue dialogue box appeared in front of all the options: Hi, I'm going to be your personal assistant. What name would you like me to address you by?

Yanni hesitated, not sure if it was right for her to disclose her name to something that seemed untrustworthy. She thought it was a better option to use a nickname just to be safe. But then again, it was just her name. There was probably so many people called Yanni out there. She decided to type in her real name, maybe it would actually be quite fun and more personal for the chatbot to address her by her real name.

"Okay Yanni, I'll be here to help you with your issues whenever you need help." Zuo typed the words into his new software with a smile. She had actually taken the bait quite easily.

He was quite excited to be able to communicate to Yanni if she was actually up for it, and he was hoping she would really tell him her issues so that he could help. After all, he still cared about her.