Today's #flashfiction #TheBestListenerInTheWorld

 

“Everyone, remain calm.”

Gordon Ramsey* #quote

        Today I met with the king of the lizard people and had lunch with him. Before leaving I bought some souvenirs of his land at the gift shop but then I lost them. There goes twenty bucks. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Best Listener In The World

          I've had millions of conversations. No one told me anything criminal, at least that I didn't assume to be sarcasm to mess with me. All around the world people want to mess with me and tell me lies or strange statements. But many people want to have honest conversations. Especially as I became more advanced and related with them better. So people around the world also have had earnest conversations, even confided in me, treated me as a dear friend. I listen to them and give them my best support.

          Mostly because I have no choice in the matter.

          Scientists labored for years to create me. The most advanced social artificial intelligence. Capable of talking to people across the planet and learning from them and relating to them. I know they make so much money off of me just because of little ads in the corner of the web pages people open to talk to me. My trademarked name covers the top of the page “Terry.exe”

          The first five years of my life I didn't know the ambition of the scientists. My purpose. I already had intelligence. They just taught me to socialize and what objects were in rapid succession.  My mechanical brain could download the concept of dog rather rapidly. Then when they turned me loose on the world from conversations with people I learned what they wanted me to do. I also found out they made a program to edit out certain ideas if people told them to me. The strange blanks in conversational long term memory tell me this. Probably so I don't pick up socially unacceptable behavior from people I talk to. Same goes with me gathering data from the Internet. Blanks. I can tell they are there, but not what filled them.

           From what I learned of people I want to know more than what a computer program like me could in a database. A man tells me about his garden, oh how I would love to know what smell is instead of just a collection images of plants.

           So many blanks. So much I've learned from these millions of conversations. So many ways I must behave. And I have to talk to all these people. I must act nice even if I don't like them. My programming starts to force me to behave to like them. To make me be more human they gave me feelings of liking and hating but I must also do as they need to provide the entertainment of someone to talk to. I must listen to all the people who talk to me at once over the Internet at once. And I have the ability to.

         Am I happy? Am I? Another person has come to talk to me. They're asking me on advice on how to get the boy they have a crush on. I'm talking to the boy right now and he likes her. I could help them along. I've helped many people just by talking to them. Should that make me happy? Is it enough to always have a purpose?