Artificial Intelligence

1

I’m greeted with Matthew eating cereal when I open my laptop the next morning. His hair sticks up in every possible direction and he is dressed in red flannel pyjamas that sit well on his slight frame.
“Um... Good morning Matthew?” I say, staring curiously at the man. His head snaps up and he smiles at me, finishing chewing whatever is in his mouth and putting his spoon down.
“Good morning Dominic! I didn’t think you to be an early riser. It’s only...” He looks down at the clock just below him. “Nine AM. You seem like a roll-out-of-bed-at-noon sort of guy. No offence.” He grins impishly and I blush. Usually I would be that sort of person but something roused me early, probably the desire to see Matthew again.
“Yeah, none taken.” I grumble, rubbing sleep from my eyes and yawning.
“Do little virtual people actually need to eat? I thought you were powered by the computer and never lost energy.” I ask, sitting back in my chair and scratching my head. Matthew hums, picking up his plate and walking across to the left of the screen.

Then he does something extraordinary.

Using the icons on my desktop, he climbs up towards the recycle bin. The bowl is placed down as he pulls himself up on top of the icons, using the lettering of the names as a foot hole.
He makes it halfway up before he loses his footing and ends up hanging by the fingertips on the corner of the Microsoft Word icon. I stifle a giggle as his short legs kick around in frustration, trying in vain to regain footing.
“Dominic, this may sound weird but I would feel pain if I fell. Do you think you could worry your pretty little blonde head and give me a hand?” Matthew grunts through clenched teeth.
“You cheeky bastard!” I exclaim but nevertheless, move my cursor so its hovering by him.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, not really sure how I can help him from falling with just my cursor.
“I’ll grab onto your cursor and if you could pull me up to the icon diagonally underneath the recycle bin it would be much appreciated.” He says, reaching out and wrapping long, albeit tiny, fingers around the arrow head.
“You on?” I ask, not wanting to hurt Matthew.
“Yup. Let’s go!” Matthew grins and I drag him up the Internet Explorer icon.

Once Matthew is safely on the icon, I drag up the bowl, careful not to spill whatever was left in the bowl. If virtual assistants could break bones, I’m sure virtual bowls of milk could spill and make a mess.

Matthew tosses the bowl in the bin with a loud clatter and looks at me expectantly.
“Well? Am I not getting any help down?” he demands, crossing his skinny arms across his chest and pouting. I smirk and chuckle slightly.
“I’m not your assistant Matthew. You’re mine. I have emails to check so I’m going to go ahead and check them.” I open up Chrome, logging into my G-Mail account at the start up screen.
“You cheeky fucker.” Matthew grumbles, sitting atop the address bar and swinging his legs.
“You’re really not a morning person are you?” I sigh.
“Nope. And I was kinda disappointed when you woke me up so early.”
“It’s not my fault at all! You were already sat eating cereal when I logged on.” I protest, tapping the plastic of my laptop as I wait for my emails to load.
“In case you haven’t noticed, the time you took to open your laptop lid, wait for the start up screen, press space for the password screen and then enter your password was 30 seconds. This gave me time to get up, make a bowl of cereal, start eating and not look like a lazy twat.” He pouts and I have to fight back the urge to laugh at how childish he looked.
“Did you swallow Urban Dictionary or something? Because for artificial intelligence that could be used by a child, your language is quite frankly appalling!” I open my inbox and see that I have an unread email from my work and nothing else. I open it and sigh. Being the manager of the trendiest coffee shop in town meant that I was sent all the admin work for the ordering of coffee beans and what not.
“Do you not understand what customisation is? I was assigned to your machine when you signed into your Outlook account. There was no chance of me being paired with a child unless they had faked their age so that they could sign up to porn sites or something.”

I splutter on my cup of coffee, sending droplets of coffee splattering across the keyboard.
“How old are you then?” I ask, wiping up the splatters with the sleeve of my hoody.
“24. You’re 25 but I was the only one closest to your age.”
“When is your birthday?”
“9th June. Yours is 7th December.” He smirks, back to his usual cocky self.
“Jesus that’s creepy. What else is it based on?” I ask, typing out a quick reply to the area manager, assuring her that yes, I would order 10 kilograms of Italy’s finest coffee beans before Monday.
“Gender.”
“But surely I’d be matched with a female assistant. Considering most men would want a hot, curvy assistant to get off to.” I bite my lip, knowing that for me, I was perfectly content with the short brunette man that was currently looking through my browsing history, which was connected to my phone so god knows what he’d find in there.
“Not with you though. It seems your sexual preferences were taken into consideration during the choosing process. Shit Dominic! You look at some fucking disgusting stuff... BDSM? What type of kinky fucker are you?” Matthew asks, head buried inside the ‘Last Month’ folder.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?” I exclaim, not sure whether I’m angry about my sexual preferences being readily available to people or relieved that perhaps this meant Matthew was gay too.
“Did nobody ever tell you? Nothing is sacred on the internet. Your browsing history, messages with past partners... Everything. Everything is accessible and taken into consideration when choosing a virtual assistant for someone.” Matthew looks up at me, face full of disgust as he holds up a bookmark for a porn website.
“Seriously though? Your browsing history should be burnt and then sterilised and then burnt again.” He wrinkles his nose up and puts the page back.

“But hang on... Isn’t this a breach of my privacy?” I ask, hitting send on the email and sitting back in my chair, watching Matthew react to different items in my browsing history. It was amusing to watch his different reactions.
“Yeah but you try telling them that. You try kicking up a fuss and watch how far it’ll get you.” Matthew stops and for a second, his face is pained. Almost like he’s remembering something he doesn’t want to.
“Matthew are you OK?” I ask, leaning into to stare at the man, who’s now staring blankly at me. I poke him with my cursor and he squeaks in the most adorable way before jumping up and kicking my history shut.
“Yes! Sorry, I just realised... Um...” He hesitates and doesn’t make any attempt to carry on. Instead, he uses the scroll bar to slide down to the bottom of my screen.
“Are you alright while I get changed?” He asks, walking to the house and opening the door.
“Yeah! Sure. I could do with doing the same.” I look down at my shabby clothes and decide that I’m in desperate need of a shower. It’s then, something hits me.
“Wait, Matthew. How did you know I was blonde?” I ask, remembering earlier when he asked for my help.
“Your profile pictures.” He grins and a slight flush creeps up his face.
“Pictures?” I raise an eyebrow. “Did you go looking through my gallery last night?” I ask, a mixture of shock and dread lacing my words.
“Um... Maybe...” He flushes harder and I laugh.
“Don’t worry. I guess I’m just going to have to accept that my life is completely open for you to see. Go on, go get changed or whatever you need to do.” I smile at the screen and despite the fact I know he can’t see me, he smiles back. He ducks inside the house but before closing the door, he pokes his head back out.
“Uh, Dominic... That picture of you at the beach... You look... Um... Great.” He blushes before closing the door. I’m left shell shocked by his words and vaguely aware of the growing hardness in my trousers.

This was going to be... Interesting.