Max and Max the Search Engine

Welcome to the New 50s

AN: This is based on a dream I had and may not be representative of the tone or style of any stories I write in the future. The characters in this story are completely fictional and any similarity to people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

 IT BEGINS!

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"The future ain't what it used to be," thought Max, staring out the window on a drizzly tuesday and adjusting his hoodie, reflecting on what his great grandfather told him. He kept on going about his glory days, back when there was a book for faces or everyone had an internet space or something and everyone wore fedoras. He was really boring and a bit weird.

"Where are the flying cars?! I WANT MY JET PACK!" He'd always yell. He can get pretty erratic for a hundred year old. But that's not why Max didn't like him. He reminded him of his missing mother, who looked a lot like him for obvious reasons. She didn't die or anything, or at least he thought. After the divorce she fell off the radar around 10 years ago.

He just couldn't live with the thought that his mother died. It felt anticlimactic. She seemed gone without explanation. Last he heard was when she was on a private research boat or something, but they never heard from her again. Sure, the ship had regenerative food and a power generator with enough power to last years, but at one point the messages stopped. Nothing on the phone, nothing on the internet and nothing on the radio. It was like she fell off the side of the Earth.

Just as his mind started to wander onto another subject, the door to his sister's room opened as his twin sister, Lizzie, dressed in her average hoodie and handmade baseball cap, stepped out, derailing his train of thought. "We're going to go see MACSS tomorrow. You know, that sentient security computer thing they're testing out." Lizzie said, acknowledging his brother's presence, "I still don't know how or why every government leader thought that putting a bunch of cameras in control of a sentient computer was a good idea, don't they know how those old stories go?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah... I should totally be allowed to see everything. Or something like that." Her brother absentmindedly replied.

"You're not even paying attention. Look, like it or not, we're going tomorrow. It's a huge breakthrough in computer science and Dad promised Uncle Doctor Syens that we'd be at the unveiling. We're going to see Judith and Old Guy Taber after."

Uncle Doctor Syens was not really their biological uncle. He was a close family friend who happened to be working on one of the biggest breakthroughs of science. the development of a completely sentient computer. MACSS, affectionately known by the professors as Max, was an AI designed to assist global security by monitoring just about everywhere with security cameras. Of course, it's naturally difficult to trust an AI with the world's security cameras, so Max was designed with both Asimov's Laws of Robotics as well as a sense of morality and benevolence as a priority to prevent the obvious cliched outcome. Max was officially on trial status.

"Whatever."

He flopped back down on his bed and messed with his laser gun replica.