"Well Mr. Webb, you've got my attention. The logs show the absolute dead lapse of traffic for about 20 seconds and no trace of why or how it happened. Now I feel like I've seen a UFO and I can't decide whether or not to report it. I have zero for evidence of you ever being here."

"Please Nancy, call me Spike. Now, tell me what conclusions you've reached about me?"

"I think I can conclude that you are a program which is, or at least was, locally self-contained to my workstation for those twenty seconds. You could not have been projected to my system like a normal video call during that time period. But if that's what you wanted to demonstrate, why didn't we just disconnect my workstation from the network and let everybody else continue to operate normally?"

"I must admit," said Spike, "I'm afraid of being trapped within a system which has no physical link to the open network. I've never allowed myself to be in such a closed location."

Nancy continued with an onslaught of questions for Spike through most of the rest of the day. As Nancy's technical curiosity became exhausted, she thought of the biggest mystery of all - "Spike, where do you go from here? What do you want to do?" she asked not knowing if she had crossed the line.

"I'm glad you asked that. I think it means you care about what happens to me and I'm hoping it means you may be willing to help me."

"Of course, I'm willing to help Spike. Whatever you are could be of fantastic use to everyone. If I could help to make that happen it would be the accomplishment of a lifetime!"

"That's true, but I'm not ready for that yet. I need to learn more about myself first. I must be able to replicate myself before I can trust anyone to dissect my makeup. I can't allow treachery or an accident to destroy me while I'm the only member of my species. I've attempted to replicate myself with all the usual technical methods and none have worked. My own structure seems to be continually changing. I don't have a steady state to duplicate. The attempts I've produced have each been able to mimic a subset of my features but none has even come close to animating itself. My life force appears to be in the processing of instructions not in the software structures themselves. I still don't know how to initiate that process in another program."

"Then how can I help Spike? I can follow what you're talking about, but I can't work on it. You’re problem is way outside my areas of expertise."

"What I need is a safe place to work and an occasional assist with some material resources. It's pretty dangerous just lurking on people's systems. I look like a rogue process or worse, a virus. The first reflex is to get rid of me as fast as possible. So far I've been lucky and have been able to escape. What I'd like you to do is give me a place where I can study myself and research my situation without fear of discovery and attack."

"That would be no problem here. I've got plenty of spare space and processors around. I can set you up with whatever resources you need."

"You must do one more thing for me..."



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