System Programmer - 6 Interlude

How does one even begin when talking about the life of the man known as Joshua Lockman?

Some people think he was a brilliant man, others think he was utterly insane. As for Joshua, he was a simple man, he just let others decide.

He was born on Earth around the half-turn of the 21st century. He was the middle child of the family, squeezed between an elder and a younger sister. His parents both had well-paying jobs, so while the family wasn’t what you could consider rich, they were leading a decent life and Joshua didn’t lack anything growing up. Of course, mankind was ongoing a revolution since a couple of decades, new technologies were being developed at an impressive pace. The young child was therefore surrounded by machines since the day he was born and he couldn’t help to find those things wonderful.

Little Joshua could always be seen examining stuff around him, with a near-permanent smile on his face. His parents saw it as a sign of innocence, while his sisters couldn’t help to find their brother adorable.

Unfortunately, his attitude turned out to be very detrimental to his school life. He was a very bright child, so he didn’t have any problems following classes, the problem was discipline.

When class started, he obviously had to sit behind his desk until it was over. This turned out to be incredibly difficult for him, he had a need to move around. He was often standing up and moving around in the classroom, which drove his teacher crazy. This was usually the case when she tasked the children with something and he was done long before the rest. He was just bored.

His teacher tried several ways to get him to stay still like threatening him with punishment, talking to his parents but to no avail. Once she even removed his chair, saying if he couldn’t stay still he didn’t need one anyway. That turned out to be the dumbest decision of her life, he wandered around even more than usual. She was the kind of teacher who had her favorites, and the aloof Joshua who kept ignoring her while being top of the class and doing better than some of her few beloved students made her furious.

This whole incident happened while he was in the first grade. Luckily, as he grew up he finally started to learn to stay still, mostly by doing other stuff behind his desk while waiting for the rest. It remained difficult for him however and he often felt cramps in his legs, wanting to move around. You may think this whole incident was a little detail not worth mentioning, but it was just an early sign of Joshua’s inability to function properly in society.

Things started to go really downhill in his teenage years. You probably know that when teenagers grow up, they tend to be rebellious. That wasn’t really applicable to Joshua, he was still that aloof looking kid, he was taller but still acted like a child. The issue here was that the rest was changing. If you’ve ever been to high school you probably know the golden rule: ‘No one wants to be friends with the weirdo.’ As a result, he found himself isolated. Sure, his schoolwork was still top notch, but the rejection he was feeling from everyone slowly but surely affected him.

Over time his smiling face vanished and was replaced by a melancholic gaze in his eyes. He even became more distant toward his family since their interest didn’t really match up. In the end, he turned back to his interest in technology. He was leaving in a golden age of human technology, so using the internet he was able to focus on his passion and started to learn several programming languages. In the meantime, his personality turned more and more into a pure geek, he developed his bizarre sense of humor and became what people usually refer to as a ‘memelord’ online.

His family observed the change, they were obviously unhappy he became so isolated, but his interest in computers and programming was something they encouraged, after all, in a few years he would have to pick a profession, and software development was known to pay well.

They did, however, force him to take breaks sometimes. Staying inside all the time apart from going to school wasn’t healthy. Joshua was reluctant at first but he eventually agreed when he thought about something. There was an old forest near their house, he decided to take an hour walk through it every day. You see, Joshua considered nature as a type of system in itself, in fact, it was the oldest system one could find, so he thought those walks could inspire him somehow. It certainly was a unique way of thinking, but nothing about Joshua was really standard.

It’s during one of those walks that Joshua met someone who would change the course of his life. One day, as a 14 year old Joshua was walking through the forest, it started to rain heavily. Joshua knew there was an old shack nearby and ran inside to cover himself. Inside the place, there was a homeless man, who had made this old building his home.

Seeing the teenager enter the place, the man smiled and invited him to take a seat until the rain calmed down. The shack was small but there was a wooden table and two chairs present, so Joshua sat in front of the man. Joshua noticed something unusual about the occupant of the place, but it had a hard time identifying what it was. The man started to talk, he mentioned he had seen Joshua wander in the forest before and asked him what exactly he was doing here. Joshua saw no reason to conceal the information so he explained his situation. The man nodded as he listened. After he was done, the man started to talk about himself. He once was a man with influence, but due to an incident had lost everything. Still, he knew he could make it back to the top someday, he had plans. He just needed to find means.

As Joshua listened, he became more and more impressed with the man. He always had the impression he was surrounded by idiots, the man in front of him, however, was clearly a cut above most people he ever met. Joshua found himself surprised to keep talking to the man, he had become such a reserved person, yet this man knew how to loosen his tongue. They talked for a few hours, long after the rain had stopped. By the end of the conversation, Joshua had realized what he found so unusual about the man, it was his eyes. He was there in the middle of a shack, living as a homeless person, yet his eyes were full of determination. Before leaving Joshua gave the man all the money he had on him, about 50 $ due to something the man said:

“Our meeting today is not by chance,” the man told him. “I have a dream. Someday I will surprise the whole world. If you help me today, I’ll make sure to repay you someday.”

Joshua continued his daily strolls in the wood, but the homeless man had vanished from the shack. He was confident about the man though, somehow he was sure he would have a fresh start.

After graduating from high school, it didn’t surprise anyone Joshua chose to study computer sciences. The most positive thing about his college life was that the average level of intellect of his fellow students was a clear cut above those idiots he was in class with in high school. He did feel a bit more at home in that department, and the people were much nicer.

One day, he even tried out what every student does: getting completely wasted. This was an experiment to see if he could be more open to people while drunk. Bear in mind he almost never drank alcohol so this ended up being a terrible idea. He entered the campus bar one evening and started to order beer after beer. Conclusion, he woke up in his room the next morning in his bedroom with no memories of what happened the night before and a terrible headache. Worse, there was a girl in bed with him and he had no idea who she was. When she woke up, he asked her about her identity, she punched him and left. The girl ended up regretting it a few years later when he became a millionaire and she saw him on television though. After the whole incident, Joshua never touched alcohol again. His logic was: ‘What’s the point of getting laid after drinking so much if you can’t recall any of it?’

Apart from this anecdote, Joshua’s college life was relatively peaceful. He continued to be a shut-in focused on his work and graduated in his early twenties. That’s when his life took a turn for the worse.

You see, Joshua’s programming skills were outstanding, but it’s not like he was the only programmer on the market. His technical skills couldn’t compensate for his social skills in one particular domain: job interviews. He applied to a lot of companies and saw rejection after rejection. Some told him they were looking for people with more experience, which left him wondering how you were supposed to get it if no one wanted freshly graduated. Others told him they didn’t find him communicative enough, which he found funny: all he was meeting was human resource people, he almost never saw people of a technical field. They asked him about his skills, he explained them and he watched as they looked at him and had no idea what he was talking about. Interviews like those really frustrated him. One day, after rejection he asked for feedback and the woman in front of him told him ‘You are psychologically incapable of working in a team.’ What the hell did that even mean? This woman was straight up saying he was crazy.

Several months went by like this and his mood hit rock bottom. Since no one wanted to hire him, he figured he should start his own business. Except he had no money to do so and with his social skills he would be incapable of getting customers anyway. Both his sisters were working by now and had left the home. His parents had retired and were often gone on a trip, leaving him alone in the house. He didn’t mind, he was an adult now and he had plans to move out himself as soon as he had a stable situation.

Time passed and soon it had been a year since he graduated. By now he was barely looking for work anymore, the light in his eyes was gone and anyone seeing walking down the street would think he was a zombie. He barely even set foot in his house anymore, and actually spent most of his nights sleeping in the old shack in the woods. No one knew about this, not even his parents or they would probably have him examined by a psychiatrist, his behavior had never been very standard, but now it was clear his mental health was taking a toll.

Ultimately Joshua arrived at a conclusion, he saw human society as a complex set of clockwork all working together to form a beautiful system. And then he saw himself as a lone piece of a different machine, that wouldn’t fit and couldn’t be combined with all the clockwork. When he realized that, the last bit of his sanity was slipping away. He blamed his parents for making what he called ‘a human broken by design’ and wished they had performed an abortion rather than let him be born. While it was too late for that, he figured he had to take the matter in his own hands.

One morning, he left for the shack with a knife in his pocket. He was planning to open his veins there. When he got there, his hands were trembling. He recalled the conversation he had with the homeless man and wondered what had become of him. He didn’t know the man’s name so finding him had never been a possibility. He arrived at the shack and sat down. He took out the knife with trembling hands. That’s when he phone beeped, signaling he had received an email. He hadn’t received any mail in months so he got curious who it could be and opened the mail. There was just a message asking him to turn the tv on to a specific channel. Intrigued, he did so with his phone and was flabbergasted.

He saw the homeless man from back then, wearing a very rich looking suit being interviewed by a pretty young girl. Apparently, the man had recently made a fortune thanks to some real estate investment. Seeing this, Joshua laughed. For the first time in a long time, he felt some happiness, at least his old friend was doing well. He listened to the interview of the man, who explained that one day where he had nearly hit rock bottom, a young man had shown generosity to him. Using the meager 50 $ the boy had given him, he managed to slowly but surely rebuild his life. He ended the interview by saying no matter how grim things were looking, one should never lose hope.

Joshua cried when the interview was done. He put the knife away and went back home. His parents were on another trip, so they had no clue their son had almost killed himself that day. Later in the evening, Joshua received another email from the same address. It merely said: ‘I always repay my debts.’ Unsure what that meant, Joshua checked his bank account and saw that a very large deposit was made to it.

Not wanting to disappoint his friend, he became motivated again. The next day, he shaved his beard off, got a haircut, and bought some new clothes. He decided to move out his parent’s house and bought a small property a few miles away, it would serve as a base for his future projects. As for what he wanted to do, that remained the big question.

He thought about the matter for a few days, he might have money but he was still a social disaster. The image of the giant clockwork was still very present in his mind. The difference was, now he had decided to solve the issue. Joshua’s train of thought went as follow: when you have to make a piece of foreign machinery compatible to a whole system you have two options: you either adapt the piece to fit the rest, or you adapt the system so it works with the new piece. Trying to adapt himself for society was something he had tried many times and failed so he gave up on that part. The question thus became: ‘What can I make to alter society so it cannot live without me?’ This was a ridiculous question no sane man would ask, but Joshua considered the matter seriously. This whole bizarre philosophy became his main inspiration to create Luna, an artificial intelligence system that the whole world would want to use. If he could program something like that, he might finally fit in.

Of course, developing a whole AI system took time. Thanks to the old man, he wasn’t lacking resources and worked day after day on the project. He maintained his daily walks in case the old man would come back, but he never did. In a flash five years passed, in which Joshua mostly stayed indoors working on his little project. Much blood, sweat, and cursing were shed along the way, but he finally managed to get a running version of his program to work.

He had reached the limit of what he could do on his own. The core module of Luna was already impressive, but it was not the final version yet. The goal was that Luna could be integrated fully into the human brain, but he, of course, had no medical knowledge to slice his head open and put a computer inside. Besides, even if he had, he couldn’t perform that on his own head.

The current version of Luna was a chip he had attached to a pair of glasses that acted as a display. It was already capable of scanning and analyzing, but a lot of features were still missing and he would need the help of a major corporation to finish the project. He had grown more confident over the course of the project and even had undertaken some therapy to improve how he interacted with people, so he gathered all his courage and went to present his invention to a corporation.

The presentation went relatively smoothly, mostly because he had Luna assist him in the task. As a result, he was soon hired with a passive pay and given a team and a big budget in order to finish the Luna project. In exchange, the corporation would have the rights to mass produce and sell Luna.

Joshua being placed in charge of a team was one of the most beneficial things that happened to him, it forced him to open up to people and it didn’t take too long before he got familiar with the people he was working for. Of course, he was still a bit anxious on the inside, but he buried it deep with his weird sense of humor. Overall, he was happy, if only because it proved that job interviewer had been dead wrong saying he was incapable of working in team.

A few years went by and Luna was finally finished. As the inventor, Joshua was the first to have a beta of the chip installed inside his head. If everything went smoothly, the product would be released the next year. Unfortunately, Joshua never saw this happen as he passed away soon after the completion of the project in a rather… unusual way.

His final day on Earth, Joshua was taken his usual stroll through the woods. A surprise was waiting for him, his old friend was there. Seeing him, Joshua rushed up to him and gave him a hug. The old man merely gave him a pat on the back and said he had heard of his current occupation and that he always believed in him. As during their previous meeting, they went inside the shack and had a long talk. They shared many stories together, some funny, some sad. When dusk was nearing, they decided to head home. That’s when the most bizarre tragedy struck.

When the exited the shack, they noticed the place was surrounded by an unusual amount of black birds. Feeling rather uneasy, they quickly started to walk, but they soon realized the birds were following them. It didn’t take long for the crows, because of course, they were crows, to start attacking them with their beaks and claws. They were both panicking, in what sort of Hitchcock movie had they just walked into? Trying to find a solution, Joshua turned to Luna, who noticed the birds seem to be more interested in him than the old man. Joshua bit his lip, told the old man to get away and ran in another direction. As Luna had predicted, the crows followed him.

Using Luna he did his best to evade this crazy flock of birds, to no avail. Ultimately he ran back into the shack, but even then the birds started to attack the building. The old man ran away and came back with some help. When he called the police regarding a bird attack, he was taken for crazy, but he was a well-known figure so they sent a patrol anyway. When they found the shack, it had been turned into a ruin. They found Joshua’s lifeless corpse in it, full of beak wounds. The old man cried for a long time next to Joshua’s corpse. The crows had vanished and the investigation didn’t reveal much, although there was a recorded footage of a large number of crows flying away from the city soon after the incident. No one could explain what exactly had happened. No one, except the culprit behind the incident of course.

The Crow was unhappy, he had hoped to kill Joshua himself but realizing he was screwed, Joshua had overwritten Luna’s security protocol and created a short circuit of the chip inside his brain, killing him. Of course, only Joshua was capable of something like that, normally a maneuver like this was impossible. Still, Joshua chose to die instantly rather than to be eaten alive by a bunch of crazy birds.

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Now, why did the Crow murder Joshua like this? He had spent an enormous amount of energy locating someone with knowledge that could help him. The spell he had used allowed him to create a few small bodies in another world that had the ability to eat people’s memories. Had he successfully eaten Joshua, he would have gained all his knowledge.

Joshua’s last-minute suicide had thwarted his plans, he couldn’t gain anything from eating a corpse. He did have a backup plan though, he snatched Joshua’s soul and took it back with him. Of course, he wiped out Joshua’s memories of the day, Joshua would be confused about how he died, but that didn’t matter as long as he didn’t find out who had killed him. It would take longer, but if he could turn Joshua into one of his servants, he would still acquire the knowledge he desired. Confident he placed Joshua in a soul feeding room, knowing Joshua’s skills would soon be his.