A Cursor Story

Chapter 2: Boss's Presentation

Ryan recollected words to type his resignation. As Ryan finished the last line of his resignation, there were a few characters on the WordPages which he did not write.

In the new WordPages window there was a message-

'Hi...'

Ryan froze at the glance of it. His feet could not get out of the chair. He sat down and stared at the notification. Perplexed, he looked behind his chair. Then he looked again at the computer and then behind the computer. Nobody was there. Ryan's mind came up with several hypotheses to understand what was happening. Someone is controlling it remotely. It must be the work of Mitt. He could have another way to keep an eye on the employees. Definitely it is Mitt since he was saying last week that he keeps a close watch on everyone's activities. Is this the way to keep a close eye, hijack the cursor of the computer. Now nothing is left private. Each and everything is open and public. Earlier hackers used key-loggers to record the keys pressed by users, but this Mitt is one step ahead, he outdated the virtual keyboard also by changing the computer code of the cursor program of the word processor.

It could be a new upgrade by the company which made the word processor. But Ryan never used any kind of proprietary Operating System leave alone word processing software. Since it was open-source software, the chances of cyber-attacks were much lesser. Ryan's mind created several hypotheses to understand this strange behavior of the cursor of his computer.

It must be an inside job, a colleague must be trying to copy my research before its publication. They are anyway jealous because of the recent research paper which was published in ACM, the leading journal in the field of computer science.

Ryan scratched his head with his right hand's middle finger.

'It must be John,' Ryan's mind was zeroing on the most possible candidate behind all this, 'I also refused to include his name in the research paper though he had helped me with the simulations.' Ryan was trying to counter his own hypothesis, 'But his name was included in the acknowledgments section of the research paper.' Ryan was trying to counter his own hypothesis. Ryan decided to go out and talk to John. Ryan was about to get over from his chair.

The unwanted words on the WordPages changed to, 'Hi, Ryan.' Oh gosh, he also knows my name.

'Hi Ryan,' a new sentence was visible on the WordPages. A drop of sweat fell on the keyboard from Ryan's forehead, seeing this sentence.

'Hi,' Ryan typed just out of curiosity on the WordPages.

'My name is Chris, Chris the Cursor, you can call me Chris.' Chris the Cursor typed on the WordPages.

'Hi Chris,' typed Ryan.

'What happened, why are you so worried?' asked Chris.

'Who are you, and how do you know about me?'

'I am a cursor, Chris the Cursor. I want to become friends with you.'

'Ok, so you are a cursor, Chris the Cursor. But cursors don't ask questions like you, in fact they don't type a single character unless the user keys in.'

'I am a little bit different. Slightly more advanced in terms of intelligence, Artificial Intelligence.'

'Wow! An intelligent cursor.'

'AI powered one, precisely.'

'Now tell me who sent you to my desktop?'

'Nobody, I came on my own, in fact, I have always been there?'

'Ok. I got it, got it now, are you are a malware trying to infiltrate my computer?

'No ... no I am your friend, I could not see you unhappy that's why I started this conversation with you.'