The days and weeks after ANNA was brought online started to bleed together. I began to move on to another one of my projects, neglecting sleep just as much as I did when making ANNA.

"You know that your body isn't designed to handle staying up for weeks on end, right?" Anna pointed out every once in a while, trying to caution me against neglecting my health too much.

"You know what they say: Ain't no rest for the wicked." I almost always would reply to her in a joking manner.

Usually, she would reply in the same way, but today was different.

I had been up for almost three weeks straight working on a project I called Project Knowhere. And I will admit the effects of sleep deprivation started to wear on me. But my mind kept thinking of finishing just this function, and then I will go to sleep.

There was a long and uncomfortable pause before Anna finally replied

"OK, I think it's time you get some rest; you have written 5 buggy functions in the last 30 minutes. And all but one of them was caused by typos." Anna finally responded.

I stared at the screen and realized she was right. I managed to skip a semicolon on lines 5 and 10 and managed to typo the word "Function" in at least five different places. And that wasn't the worst typo I made. The start of the class declaration was missing the first two letters. Regardless, this project needs to get finished, and I am in the zone, so I can't stop now. 

"Just need to finish this function, then I will get some rest," I responded.

Anna doesn't protest any further; she goes completely silent. I get back into the zone and work on the current function.

Pubic Fun PredectanAnalysass {

Suddenly my monitor goes black, and the lights turn off inside my room.

"God damn it. Please, Please Tell me the auto-save was able to catch what I was working on." I mutter to myself before realizing the lights also seem to have shut off inside my room. It seems Anna's AI Core is still powered on, though.

"Uh, Anna. Did I forget to pay the power bill?" I asked her.

"No, I handled that a while ago. You should get some rest, though. Clearly, you won't be getting any more work done tonight." She quickly responded.

I sighed as I realized Anna had shut off my machine to get me to fall asleep. That certainly was one way to do it. As much as I want to protest, I can't bring myself to be mad at her. She did it for my own good. And maybe if I approach this project with a fresh night of sleep, I might find a better way to make this work. I lay down on my bed and fall asleep, thoughts of my latest project swarming through my head.

Location: Unknown

Somewhere in an undisclosed location, two cloaked figures seem to be sitting by a wall of monitors, watching each and every one of them intently. The first figure gets up and starts pacing back and forth before attempting to forcibly refresh the screen again. The other figure seems almost to be slouching while sipping a strange drink.

"Have a little patience, brother; you know refreshing the screen does not make this experiment finish faster," The Relaxed one says after watching his brother refresh the screen for the 100th time.

The Restless one hesitates before sitting down and attempting to relax.

On one of the screens, someone can be seen getting into a loft bed and going to sleep.

After watching the wall for a long time, one of the cloaked figures speaks up: "I swear, for a moment, I thought he would never fall back asleep."

"Well, you have to remember something; he was designed based on our combined memories and personality. He has our will and stubbornness, Doctor. Which will serve him well or serve to bite him in the ass later on." The second entity replies.

The Doctor rolls his eyes at his Colleague before deciding to respond

"Yes, we all know what we were getting into when we started this project, Sorcerer. How is Anna holding up?" The Doctor replies

"She hasn't broken the rules of this experiment as of yet." The Sorcerer responds.

"Good, because the trickier part has yet to come. She has to deliver him the code we cracked and see what he does with it." The Doctor answers.

"Let's hope for our sake; this experiment is a success. We really are playing with fire here." The Sorcerer responds 

"It wouldn't be any fun if there wasn't at least a little burning done," The Doctor responds with a chuckle, "I am going to move him to morning."

The sun then rises on the screen in front, and the person resting can be seen stirring.

The next day

That night I had an exciting dream. I had dreamed that I was in a room with monitors on all sides, and on one of them was me sleeping. And two men were talking about what was going on like it was an experiment of some sort. Certainly seems crazy; that's why I dismissed it. 

I returned to my terminal to start working on the project to find it was entirely done. 

"Um, did you finish Knowhere for me, Anna?" I inquired.

"Mhm, thought since you needed the rest, I would help you out a bit," she replied earnestly.

Since the program was done, I decided I should probably test it out. I inputted a few data points into Knowhere and asked it to predict the outcome. Knowhere's purpose was a prediction algorithm, so predicting the winner of this simple game that's going on should be a piece of cake. 

I asked Knowhere to predict the winner of the football game that is scheduled for next Sunday and waited for a response. 

A Robotic voice answered back quickly with an answer, 

"That can't possibly be right. The Detroit Lions with the MVP being Jim Brown? Jim Died ten years ago...."

I double-checked and triple-checked the data inputs to ensure they were the most recent, but I couldn't find anything wrong with the data I provided Knowhere. I couldn't find any errors with the output either, so it begs the question: How did Knowhere get that result? That is a fundamental impossibility unless someone figures out how to resurrect the dead in the next few days. Incredibly frustrated, I start quickly typing in a flurry of commands into my console, setting the entire Core to delete itself.

> crontab -e

0 0 * * Sun [ $(expr $(date +%W) % 2) -eq 1 ] && rm -Rvf ~/projects/KnowhereCore

 

After setting the necessary cronjob, I shut down my console before mentioning something to Anna:

"That's a good three weeks of time completely down the drain. Make sure to ensure the core actually gets wiped, and please remind me to test my programs before ensuring they can't be erased by third-party actors next time."

Anna is silent for a few moments before simply saying, "will do."

She probably is upset at the wasted time, just like me, so that's likely why she is acting like that. I didn't think much of her response and went back into the living room to put on the news. I usually don't bother with watching the news as it always seems way too sensational to be considered actual news, but today I chose to watch it regardless. Why did I make that choice? I couldn't really tell you. But whatever the case, I'm glad I did because the very first headline changed everything.

"Due to an outbreak of disease amongst all team members participating in Sunday's football game, The NFL has chosen to cancel the game. In its place, the NFL has stated it will rerun footage of games from the past, one of which is the late Jim Brown's last MVP game before his tragic passing ten years back. A spokesperson for the NFL explains the rationale for this choice with this official statement. "We have had plenty of things to be sad about in the past few decades. We wanted to give the people something to be happy about instead. Nostalgia can serve that purpose, providing an escape into what once was, allowing one to forget about their current troubles, if only for a few moments." The NFL has informed us that the game on Sunday will be rescheduled for after the teams have made a full recovery and should not also require the Super Bowl be pushed back as well. The 63rd Super Bowl is currently scheduled for February of next year, 2029, with next Sunday's game meant to be one of the last games the Denver Broncos needed to win in order to make it into the Playoffs. The spokesperson for the Denver Broncos has praised the decision to delay the game on Sunday and has made clear the NFL has reassured him that this will not impact the Bronco's standing in the coming matches. That's all for sports news today, now ---"

This was all I needed to hear to confirm the last three weeks weren't down the drain. I quickly shut off the TV and ran back downstairs to disable the cronjob.

> crontab -e

No jobs found

No jobs found... That's impossible; I know I saved the cron job in question.

"Hey Anna, did I forget the save the cron job?" I asked her

"Not that I am aware of; why do you ask?" She very quickly replied back.

"It's not listed in the Crontab, and I just checked as I was about to delete it."

"That's certainly odd, but if you were already going to disable the job, I don't really see any reason to worry about if you saved it or not. Just saves you the trouble of having to delete it after all."

That reaction to having the job disappear is somewhat suspicious, but her logic is sound, so I dismissed the concerns forming in my mind and chose to boot up Knowhere once more, this time giving it its intended parameters.

~projects/KnowhereCore/ > CoreLaunch.sh

Project Knowhere Core, Copyright Creations Gate 2028

Please Input requested query

....

When would World War III start?

Predicting...

WWIII starts in the year 2040, end date: 2070, predicted winner. None. Projected results: Total Annihilation.

After getting these results, I take a step back from my terminal. I knew that WWIII was inevitable; there was no way around that fact, and that's why I made Knowhere in the first place. But the dates it just gave me for when it would occur... Well, I was really hoping we had a bit more time. But less than ten years, that's.... that can't be right... But I know it has to be. I only asked for the start, and it gave me more data than I ever asked to have...

Suddenly, Anna snaps me out of it. "Hey timothy, I know this is likely a bad time, but it seems you just got an email."

"From who?" I quickly asked

"Unclear. The sender seems to have taken great lengths to anonymize themselves; you may want to take a look at it, though."

Curiosity and alarm battled inside my head for a few moments after they said that. Did the Government finally realize what I had made? I did technically break around 3000 AI ethical guidelines when making Anna, but I thought I had taken the necessary precautions to remain off the authorities' radar. I should ask Anna to trace the email; no, that wouldn't be enough; I should activate Darkness Protocol and erase myself from every corner of the net. But the timing of that email, right after I finished Knowhere... That cannot be a coincidence. And what if the email holds the key to preventing this outcome... Wishful thinking at its finest, but I'll take wishful thinking over accepting inevitable demise any day of the week. Letting Curiosity win the battle and against the judgment of my alarmed self, I decided to open the email.

From: Management

Not all Knowledge is Kind now, is it Alice? You alone know that fate is inevitable. And you alone have the power to change it. The Knowledge to do so will forever change you, though. You have glimpsed the rabbit hole once already; are you ready to jump down it in earnest?

Attachment: DownTheRabbitHole.Alice

 

I step back from my terminal after reading that. How do they? How is this even possible? Did someone beat me to the objective?

That's impossible; there is simply no way that has happened, but the way they sent that message...
"Hey ANNA, scan that attachment for any signs of Malware hiding?" I ask Anna

"No Malware, Trojans, or hidden backdoors detected. Though, are you sure you want to open this?" she quickly replied.

That's the million-dollar question I pondered to myself. Should I open it or restrain my curiosity?

I began to click the cap of the pen in my hand repeatedly, trying to figure out what to do; I don't know how long I sat at my desk before I chose to click the link.

If only I realized the forces, I had just unleashed. Just as Pandora's curiosity brought untold misery to the ancient world, my own curiosity had cast the die in motion...