It is much too late to be sipping on an energy drink, but I am probably two lines of code before this computer starts talking like a human. While my peers are trying to figure out what an array out-of-bounds error is, I am here manipulating them to get the computer to produce language out of ones and zeros. My processor is running hot. The graphics card in the back of my mind is out of threads. I pray that this energy drink will kick in soon.
The computer lab has been empty for hours. It is Friday night, so of course everyone else is out wasting their lives away on alcohol and something they call love, which I call the Emotions.exe program running off of liquid stupidity and weed. The only light in the lab is coming from my monitor, which, I might add, is a bit too bright for what I am doing. Even in dark mode, the lines of code scream out at me. The other computers, all dormant, still hum throughout the room.
My phone on the desk lights up. It is a text from Mara. I don't even have to look at it to know it's her.
She is right, I should be in bed by now. If I am not going to poison my liver with a gin and tonic, I should get some sleep. I am so close, though. Right at the start of a breakthrough. My fingers rest on the keyboard, ready to dive back in, when the door to the lab creaks open.
A young man, probably my age, pokes his head through the door. He is lost. I can tell by the way his eyes wander over the computers. He looks like one of those frat kids that would have bullied me in high school but now are begging me to do their homework. Someone who should also be ruining his life on a Friday night. He is a null pointer exception—the kind my classmates are still learning to debug. Lucky for me, I've been debugging them all night.
His eyes lock with mine. Green eyes—about 2% of the global population—yet he has them. Parents must have both had green eyes, or his own genes refused to conform to the expected standard. A smirk sneaks across his face. Turning back to my screen, my mind jumps into calculation mode. He has nothing to do with me, and I certainly want nothing to do with him. Professor Ryan required "proof of collaboration" on this project. What a stupid requirement. I could have coded this entire project on my own—I told my classmates as much. They stared at me for a moment as they processed my output. Error 404: No Response Found.
The walking error approaches. I boot PossibleResponses.exe. I can't simply tell him to walk away. Well, I could, but I know I won't. I could pretend not to hear him, but something tells me that is what other people call being rude. PossibleResponses.exe is returning the string "Engage in Conversation." I roll my eyes. The worst possible return type. A collection of characters strung together.
"Excuse me?" His voice is low enough to vibrate my large, round glasses off my face. I keep my eyes locked onto the screen, but I'm not reading anything.
"What?" The word exits my mouth before I can run a social filter or modulate the tone. Error in method socialInteraction(). No rollback function detected.
"Oh," the young man says. I almost think he is going to leave, but he presses forward like a bug in the code that refuses to die. "I just heard that there was free printing in the lab. I was hoping you could help me."
I start calculating what I get out of this interaction. My first return value is a question: What are you doing here on a Friday night? Something tells me, though, that he doesn't concern himself with such trivial questions, and whatever he'd say would crash my low-power mode anyway.
"Log on to the computer," I finally say, letting out a sigh. He pulls out the chair next to me and turns on the computer. My eyes wander from my screen to his face, which is now glowing in the computer light. He looks like Jake, who I—
Stop. Emotions.exe has been force-quit without saving data to memory. Not tonight. Not when your CPU is overclocked. I don't have time for this. Collaboration form probability: 2.3%. Too low to justify extended interaction, but non-zero.
My eyes watch his fingers as he types in his password. Classic. Password123! This kid is going to get the whole institution hacked. I start calculating the probability of a phishing attack from his account when his voice cuts the thread in half.
"Okay, now what?" He turns to me, smirk still stretched across his face. His voice is even, like someone ran a smoothing algorithm over each word to ensure that there are no spikes in tone. I turn back to him as the cursor in my mind blinks once too many times.
"What are you required to print?"
"Required?" He hums like an old PC processing too much data. He certainly is less sophisticated than I am. No matter. Even new computers have to be able to send packets to older computers, but perhaps switching protocol to TCP from UDP is better. "I'm not required to print anything."
"But you just said…"
"'Required' is just too strong of a term. When are we required to do anything?" The error thinks he is a poet. I will file that line away in a folder called "stupid things to say, even if you are drunk." Society requires a lot—
"I need to print my art project for class tomorrow." Art project. Of course. All of the recursion functions are finally returning to a single point: art.
"Open your file. A PNG, I assume."
"Not sure what a PNG is. But here it is." He opens a file. It's a picture of a sketchbook. A picture of a picture. Why not just turn in the picture itself? I flush the log to keep from crashing the whole system.
The lines on the page trace out a moon on the horizon just above the ocean. The sky is dark, much darker than it should be. The whole sketch is blurred where his hand has dragged across the page. Inefficient. I'm not sure how to draw, but it would make more sense to start from the left side of the page and move right, so as to avoid any smearing, like a printer.
"Press Ctrl+P. Select that printer." I point to a printer on the screen—the only one listed, but with how old his OS is, I have suspicions that he wouldn't be able to figure it out.
He presses print and sits back in his chair. The printer behind us whirs to life. "What are you doing here so late?" he asks. What a pointless question. I doubt he cares. Even if he did, he is going to disappear from here and never see me again. He will drop out of school next week, saying something like he is chasing his "dreams."
I look back at my computer. It's painfully obvious what I am doing. "Coding."
"Coding, at 11:45 PM on a Friday night. Bold move, Mr. Robo."
"Printing, at 11:45 PM on a Friday night. Bold move, Mr. Rembrandt."
"Fair enough." He is still sitting in his chair, even though his picture of a picture has printed. I don't take my eyes off the computer. "Name?"
"Eli."
"Nice to meet you, Eli. I'm Mark." Mark. Biblical. Not as precise as Matthew, which actually makes sense. Not quite as poetic as John. Perhaps a misstep by his parents.
"Why don't you make your art from left to right to avoid smudging your work?"
He laughs. System check. He is laughing at what I said without a joke having been executed.
"Well, I'm left-handed." Left-handed. Green eyes. He is a statistical impossibility. "But, even if I did it from right to left, the same rules apply." Rules in art—finally something I can understand about it. "I can't create something that doesn't exist. I mean, I have to start sculpting in order to see what the page produces. Tell me, Eli, do you code your entire program from top to bottom?"
"No, that doesn't make sense."
"Exactly!" He slaps me on the back. My system freezes up. Physical contact protocol violated. "You have to let the computer help create what you already know you want. Art is the same way." My eyelids are starting to droop. Either the energy drink failed, or this walking, talking error is shutting down my system. He stands up, crosses to the printer, grabs the paper, and comes back to log out.
"Mark?" I ask. My voice is low. It almost sounds like I am—
Nope. I am not.
"What's up, Mr. Random Line Coder?"
"Can you sign this, showing that I collaborated with someone on this project?" I hand him the piece of paper.
"Show it to me. Then I'll sign it. I mean, you're required to collaborate, right?" He is using my own logic against me.
I press play on the program, and it nearly says, "Hello, world" through the speakers. He nods, biting the side of his cheek, clearly suppressing a smile.
"Impressive."
"I am only required to produce a sound."
"So, what you're saying is we made a computer talk? Good enough for me." He grabs a charcoal pencil from his pocket and signs the sheet. "Let's get coffee sometime. Perhaps you could show me a little more of your code."
Coffee? My system doesn't process coffee. My chest does this weird thing, just above my second rib, to the left of the sternum. My heart. I quickly correct course to avoid this feeling.
"I am pretty busy with school right now and…" My voice trails off like my own program currently does. He frowns.
"Well, thanks for your help anyways." Mark turns to leave. "Eli, remember, you aren't required to do anything. You get to do everything." With that, Mark exits the lab.
What is the probability of two people being in the wrong place at the right time? Statistically insignificant. But it happened. Once.