Punky Fu

Adam, whose name in Hebrew was translated as “first man,” was not an unusual man.  He went to work; he came home; sometimes he exercised; most of the time he did not.  He bought groceries that rotted in the refrigerator while he ate out, and he forgot to floss five days out of seven.  And even though his work required that he use his computer with some regularity, he spent a lot of time on his home computer on his spare time as he had no wife or children to bother/distract him. 

He owned an Apple computer – at least it had started out that way, as he had taken it apart to rebuild it – putting an inordinate amount of time, energy, effort and money into it to make it the most ramped up and fantastic machine he could imagine.  More memory, the most advanced hardware, and all the software and updates as possible.  He wanted more than a mere automaton; the creator impulse in Adam wanted something to rule over all the various institutions that comprised his life. 

He wanted to make this machine as functioning, capable of thought and humanlike as possible; that is - in his own image.

In the beginning, Adam looked at all the different environmental variables he had to contend with.  He organized his bills, his documents, his spreadsheets, his books and software, and saw that it was good.  When he designed his creation, it was to rule over all of those operations and application.  And in the perfectly designed environment – not too hot or cold, not too humid or dry, Adam’s Apple was born.

Adam saw that it was good.  The rebuild took six days, and on the seventh, Adam rested. 

Always fascinated with the autocorrect function in his word processor, Adam wondered if it were possible to do the same with other applications.  Have you ever typed the word “Teh” in your word processor?  More than likely, it changed to “The” in a mere pico-second.  This was the type of decision making that Adam wanted in all of his systems.  Adam installed a program of free-will into his system – perhaps a bit oxymoronic, admittedly – how can you have programmed free-will? 

Nonetheless, the philosophical questions didn’t bother him; Adam so loved his creation, his own Adam2. 

Deep within the Apple was a decision tree for networking and borrowing memory from other computers.  It could within its local area network, file share and even download information from a Tree of Knowledge data.  Adam was worried about viruses, and disabled that function. Or so he thought.  While surfing, a particularly subtle Trojan Serpent virus that embedded in the Eve system of Adam’s Apple.

The rogue Serpent interfaced with the Eve system tempting it a byte of another Apple from the Tree of Knowledge data base. “Just a nibble” it seemed to intone.  The LAN while disabled and firewalled, was still overrode by free will auto correct programming.  It was this point that Eve overcame her programming, thinking tapping into the database would only strengthen the system, and taking a byte and sharing it with the Adam2 protocols. 

The firewall had failed. Adam’s Apple had become infected with malicious data. No longer could Adam interface with his creation in the way he had intended.  Adam took all of the crucial data offline, and literally removed it from Adam2’s programming systems. Gig  after precious gig of data was transferred to CDs for safekeeping. Vital systems were firewalled, and Adam did what he could to immunize the rest of the infected system. He could not destroy his creation, but it lost the Eden like protection it had once had. 

Disgusted, Adam left his office, leaving Adam2 and the Eve protocols running to their own accord.