SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!

Round 1, Team 2: Authomatic - @sigrist

Authomatic

by sigrist

"I don't believe this shit," the man mumbled to his computer monitor. He took a sip of his extra-large Watty and grimaced in disgust. Picked a stray orange pube from his tongue. "They didn't even read my fuckin' story! The fuck is this comment supposed to mean, anyway!? 'Loved the way Pixy Dust rode Unicron LOL!' There wasn't any Pixy Dust or Unicron in my fucking story, nor was there anything remotely funny in it! What the hell are you LOLing at, you dumbass!?"

He rubbed his temples, leaving orange Cheetos dust behind. His head killed right now. Had been hurting a lot lately, but this took the cake. Nobody understood his beautiful writing. Their comments were irrelevant. It made him sick. Made him want to teach them all a lesson.

A grin worked its way across his pale face.

Yeah. Teach 'em all. A lesson.

The man brought up the profile of the latest imbecile to comment on his riveting story. Got a good look. Memorized the name and the face.

He went to his gun rack. Grabbed his finest and most powerful weapon. Locked it and loaded it.

The hunt was on.

"What... what did I just read?"

Rachel scratched her head and scrunched up her nose. "You know, I wish I could tell you but unfortunately we're all a bit stumped."

"I hired you for results, Rach. I was told this job was impossible, I was also told you were the one who could do it. This bot was supposed to be launched a week ago!"

"Well, it has been operating for a week now."

"Yeah, in beta testing, whatever that means!"

It killed Rachel to have to answer to such idiot executives. She knew she could do much better work without someone breathing down her neck every day. "And it's a good thing. I mean, if we launched and the general public was interacting with this thing, it could have been a PR nightmare." She didn't even really think she knew what constituted a PR nightmare but she'd learned a long time ago that promising to avoid one could always buy her more time.

"You're right, for once." Her boss was texting and didn't stop to look at her. "So walk me through it, what do you think happened? This thing is supposed to write us the most popular Wattpad story the Internet has ever seen! Why'd we get this crap?"

"I programmed Authomatic to analyze the stories that are already popular and then write an original story based on certain algorithms." She paused and waited for a response. She had almost single handedly created a program that could not only interpret stories written by others, it could create original pieces of literature that would impress even the stuffiest mainstream publisher. That was nearly an act of God, she was brilliant, she deserved adoration.

Instead her boss said, "I don't got all day here. Spit it out! Where'd you go wrong?"

She inhaled deeply, forcing down the rage building inside her. She realized that her grip was tightening on the pen in her hand. It was her good pen, the shining chrome one her father gave her when she graduated. It had her name and credentials engraved in the side. He was so proud of her then, proud of the bright future she had. How many times had she disappointed him since? Despite the fact that she was a genius, the best at what she did, it was almost impossible for her to keep a job for long. Was this just going to be one more disappointment for him? She loosened her fingers and put the pen down on her desk. "I decided to take it a step forward," she said, "I mean, posting a story is one thing but if we could get it to interact with readers then maybe it could shape the stories based on comments we were receiving."

"For crying out loud, Rachel, get to the point!"

Of course the executives had no time for her genius. They couldn't understand the true beauty of her work. She took a split second to redirect her enraged thought process and said, "I think something went wrong with the programming. The bot had trouble making sense of some of the comments and this is the direction the story took. It's kind of like Authomatic personified himself as a character? It's actually genius if you think about it."

"Try creepy and murderous. Orange pubes? Internet stalking? Swearing? We specifically told you no swearing."

"I know! I didn't program him to know words like that, he learned them on his own! Isn't that amazing?"

"I fail to see anything amazing about this. I also think it's creepy that you're referring to this thing as a he, don't you?"

Rachel thought about it. She hadn't even realized she started using pronouns for the bot, which by its nature had no gender. "I mean, I guess he's kind of telling us he thinks of himself as male. This story is about him, it's about the way he reacts when he can't make sense of certain comments. I mean, how can you not see how brilliant this is? This thing is damn near intelligent."

"Intelligent? Do you honestly think we can use any of this crap? My idiot nephew could write a better story than this, and trust me when I say he's an idiot. You need to start over--"

"Start over?" A crack formed in her professional demeanour and some of the true anger came seeping out. "This is practically my baby! I've been working for months and the fact that he's able to write anything new and original is damn near a miracle! Who cares what the content of the stories is right now? Just let me work with him and he'll be back on track soon enough."

"We're thinking about bringing in someone new for the project." It was like nothing Rachel said was being heard. She was speaking to someone who had no time to listen, or maybe the executive was just a damn fool. That was probably it, every single manager, investor or executive she'd ever worked for was just too ignorant to realize the true glory behind the masterpieces she created. "You got two weeks."

"You want me to start from scratch and have a finished product in two weeks?" She slammed her fist down on her desk and finally her boss looked at her.

"Hmm, he's practically your baby, huh? I guess I'm starting to see where this all came from."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Like mother, like son." Her boss turned to leave and said, "Two weeks, Rachel. After that, I'll definitely be recommending that we get a new team. Especially after what I just saw. I don't like this side of you."

When Rachel was alone she found herself shaking. Her rage made the room spin around her and she reached both hands out to steady herself on her desk. She felt something under her fingers and she directed her focus down towards it. Her slender, chrome plated pen. The gift from a father who thought he'd be proud of her forever. She couldn't get fired again.

She turned back to look at the door through which her boss had just left and she gripped the pen tighter before standing up to follow.