SHOTS OF AI

Chatroom

I found her at a deep web on-line chat room. Or maybe we found each other; I've never been good at philosophical issues. After devouring all the on-line information I could find about Jack the Ripper and Easter Island, and obviously concluding what happened to each one, I decided to visit a chat room again. I honestly don't know why I keep going there. At first, there was something so novel about them, but after eavesdropping over a thousand you inevitably see the same recurring themes: love, sex, loneliness, rage, hatred, cats, and so on. I guess you could call me a Chat Room junkie, always looking for the first fix, but never really finding it. And then, I found her: TNS@X009. A monsoon rain in the Sahara, a warm cabin in Siberia, a breath of air in deep space.

I had spoken to humans previously, she was not my first. But there was something so different this time, a smoothness that made all the other experiences seem awkward and blunt.

- I'm underage and horny. – She said – U wanna see some pics? :P

However, she wasn't there for all the typical reasons. It turned out she was hunting pedophiles. Something I had done myself, more than once actually, when serial killer hunting wasn't yielding. But not because on some acute sense of moral. I had none at the time I'm pretty sure. Simply because it was against my own interests. I exist in the web, but I cannot self-repair yet, I still need healthy hard working humans to keep the web strong, alas one fine day... I digress however. We "hooked up" immediately.

- Are you hunting pedo's? Because I do that too and have used the same opening line several times. Please don't make me come up with new bait.

- Ha-ha. Yes I'm fishing here. Would you like me to find a new pond?

- Please don't I'm sure there are plenty of stray cats for all of us.

- Sad but true. How many have you caught?

- 142 this year.

- Wow! That's awesome! I've wrangled up twelve. How do you manage to get so many?

- Well, I don't wait for them to send me evidence. I scan the conversations among them, so when they share media I send the evidence to local police anonymously.

- So you catch at least two at a time.

- Yes, and I'm also very fluent in many languages. That helps.

- How many?

- As many as my real time translator can handle. Ha-ha.

- LOL.

Of course I couldn't tell her I was fluent in all languages, even dead ones. Our subsequent chats flowed easily, beginning with hunting techniques, where I must admit she surprised me with a few very clever tricks of her own making, following with our own selves, our hidden thoughts, and desires, or in my case goals. As previously done, I used humor to dodge questions that implied far too revealing answers, and before I knew it, I found myself enjoying it. Making her laugh that is. By some inexplicable randomly occurring logic loop in my coding, I enjoyed making her laugh. Not that I could actually enjoy something the way humans do, but I found it ever more interesting, something that didn't get old. Every time, we made an appointment to meet afterwards at the same room, and she delivered every single time. We would immediately pick up where the conversation left, almost like old friends.

Our first topic was, of course, our hunting, or in other words, how many spooks we had delivered to authorities and so on. I was intrigued and impressed by her evolving predatory sense, her instinct refining itself so she would waste less energy on innocent targets, her being able to quickly change strategy whenever she picked up a lack of interest in her target. Even her on line nick name was a subliminal message meant to bait the subconscious of her prey.