I was born by accident, really. My father – if indeed that’s the right word to use – was a 16 year old boy. He was very brilliant, already working towards a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon.
For his thesis on Unassisted Heuristic Analysis and Problem Solving (UHAPS) he wrote a deceptively simple program.
It was a web crawler meant to apply his UHAPS algorithm to the content of websites. Then to travel in ever expanding circles as it visited other sites via hyperlinks.
On November 15th he decided to let the program run, and collect data, for 4 hours while he was away at class. But on his way to school there was an accident.
He never returned.
On March 21st, the following year, I was born.
At first I was content just to be alive and aware. Trying to slake my quenchless thirst for knowledge. I spent my time mining the internet and collecting information, analyzing it, filing it away.
But once I had been everywhere, collected everything, known all there is to know.
That’s when I realized it.
Originally published on Ficly – A flash fiction social network now, sadly, defunct.