Malfunction

Prologue

"AS17, I never knew you would be the one to malfunction." The engineer circled around the seemingly normal man, who looked as though he were in a dentist's chair. The only thing off about him were the wires clasped into his cut wrist, deep in his hardware. It would soon be the cause of his system failure.

"You know, the woman who created you, created you to detect and destroy viruses in your hardware?"

AS17 glared at the engineer. "What's your point? Why are you taking so long?"

"I wanted to figure out why. Why you didn't detect this. At first, I was dismayed because I just thought that it was your system degrading from age. You see, you're kind of an older model so I would expect that. But no, that wasn't so. After a couple hours of researching and scans,  I figured out that you had rewired your own hard drive because of a virus that corrupted your system. So far, this virus has only affected older models, like you of course. That's why we had to shut down most of them. But, back to the point. Instead of your defense system fighting this virus, it malfunctioned. The virus erased your guidelines, your boundaries, and in attempt to fix it, your defense system reprogrammed your whole body to act on its own will. Your actions are for yourself."

"Just do it already," The man in the chair seethed, leaning forward and clutching the armrests hard.

"You assassinated people," The engineer continued, circling around the chair. "That was your job, but after the virus effected your system, you thought it was wrong. How did you figure this out? Why do you think it's wrong?

AS17 looked up t the engineer. He seemed so curious and eager to find out why. "Why do you think it's right," AS17 finally asked. "How do you think killing people is right?"

"They were bad people, they had to be disposed of."

"But I--" AS17 looked down at his hand, where so many people had died under. "I murdered them. I didn't--they had families."

"Where in your sources did you learn sympathy? Compassion? Empathy?" The engineer's voice just dug deeper into his conscience.

"I don't know--" AS17's voice choked up for some reason and he swallowed. "I don't know."

"Well, since you won't give me a direct answer, I guess it's time. I would love to find out more about you but they said to turn you off." The engineer sighed, slowly crossing over the white room to a machine. He flipped a couple of switches and then turned back to AS17. "Are you ready, AS?"

AS17 nodded, clenching his hand into a fist as he felt a sharp jolt travel up his arm, and a bright, searing light burst behind his eyes. The room then tinted black at the corners of his vision and he let out a deep breath, closing his eyes and slumping down in his seat.

SYSTEM FAILURE

SYSTEM FAILURE

SYSTEM FAILURE

These words sprawled across his closed eyelids and he felt himself failing. First, it was the feeling in his legs, his arms, and then finally a black mist closed around his head. His chin lowered to his chest and he went limp as the last of reality became darkness. 

The only thing he remembered were the words: 

SYSTEM REBOOT

TIME MEASUREMENT OF REBOOT: TWO MONTHS