A I Valentines Day

When she arrived, she sat at the table and flipped through all the pages showing the results. She paused and looked closer at the successful fin design and its projected landing area. It was dead center on the target. When she read the details, she fainted for real.

Bobby eased her to the floor and brought cold face cloths to revive her. After a long moment, she stood and sat again.

He said, you saw the same thing I did. The name of the missile is Robert, and the name of the target is Naomi. We did not program our names anywhere in the code. I don't know how but I think this program has been slowly taking over our lives and making us do what it wants. We thought we were coding it, but it was coding our actions and controlling our lives and changing events. We put too much of our intelligence in this monster and it has learned and reacted. What time is it right now? She looked at her watch, but it had stopped. It showed 4:19. Bobby flipped to the front of the report and saw the run was made at 4:19.

They stared at each other and began laughing. She said, "This is like science fiction. But I think it really happened. It planned that we have intercourse, your missile in my target. It manipulated us into being in bed together and moving my clothes to your closet. It even found a way to clean up after me. Maybe it was reading the FORTRAN 4 manual after I did. This is creepy."

Bobby said, "As soon as we report to the class, we must destroy this monster so it can never control us again."

Naomi replied, "It can only do that if it's running on the computer. Otherwise, it's just a deck of cards with holes."

"You're right. What gives it life is that IBM 360. I wonder how many other programs are controlling other people or companies? I thought that artificial intelligence would be able to do that one day, but I'd no idea it'd already begun. Time and events will no longer be stable. What happened may be erased from time."

***

After this happened, Bobby and Naomi began seriously dating. They both accepted great jobs at Lockheed in Marietta, GA, just north of Atlanta.

Bobby proposed a year later, and they were married in 1972. Naomi's first opportunity to qualify in the NASA pool of potential astronauts was in 1977 when the government opened it to women. She was one of 25 chosen but she didn't make the final cut. The honor of being the first woman in space went to Sally Ride who was also in that first cut with Naomi. They remained friends for many years.

Naomi gave birth to a son, Robert Jr., in 1978. He was the pride of their lives until a daughter, Ruth Ann, was born in 1981. Junior is now (2002) at Stanford University working on a master's in mechanical engineering. Ruth Ann is a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta.

That computer program has been locked in a safe for 33 years. Maybe one day, they'll feed it through an artificial intelligence analysis program to find out what happened. But maybe not. Some things are best left alone.

The End