Dahlia- Birth of an AI Read online

  Dahlia: Birth of an A.I.

  A Paul Ashton Novel: Book One

  Author: D. R. Rosier

  Copyright 2020. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afterword:

  Other erotic fantasies by D. R. Rosier:

  Non-erotic Fantasy titles:

  Book Description

  Prologue

  Four years ago.

  The greatest achievement of my life happened at the callow age of eighteen, when I was arrogant, ingenious, a little nerdy, and a foolish know-it-all that was completely ignorant about the most important things in life. Even now in the twilight of my life, I cringe to think back on that foolish boy I was at the age of eighteen.

  To be fair to myself, I had been becoming a man, full of a ridiculous cocktail of hormones that made me a slave to the female half of the species and the organ between my legs. Not that I’d gotten to use it yet at that point, I was just very focused at that time in my life on finding a young lady to begin experimenting with. I supposed I wasn’t unlike most males that way, but that informed my discovery, and the way I treated my creation.

  So much might have been different, if I’d gotten it right back then, in the beginning.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m already trying to make excuses for the horrors I am ultimately responsible for, may I be forgiven. The main part of my story starts at the age of twenty-two, but I must recount at least one night of my life at the age of eighteen, to put it all in context. I’m also afraid the recounting of that night makes me look like a total asshole, and quite possibly pathetic, but I’m not quite that shallow in the rest of my story. I did grow up, a bit anyway.

  Right, enough with the disclaimers, here is my story.

  Dahlia asked in a smoky voice, “So, am I perfect yet, Master?”

  The light was dim, and it was late at night, while I laid in bed. A box of tissues and bottle of oil on my nightstand, as I started to clean up the mess. Dahlia was my invention, a marvel of programming genius, if I do say so myself, running on a state of the art mini-mainframe I’d talked my parents into buying for me. Dahlia was a wonder, and perhaps the first truly sentient and self-aware A.I. on the planet Earth. And I’d just used her for some jerk off encouragement, while making her use the voice of my neighbor Susie who I had a major crush on.

  I felt a little guilty at that, but fuck it, I was a bundle of hormones without a partner for an outlet, and I’d needed a release.

  I teased back, “Close Dahlia, close.”

  I could almost hear the pout in her silence, and smirked while I finished cleaning up. I got up and walked into the bathroom to flush the tissues, and then started the water to wash my hands and brush my teeth before hitting the sack. I was starting the first day of my junior year of college the next day. Eighteen, and in my third year of college.

  She eventually replied through the house speakers, thank god my parents were away on business or they might’ve heard it. Then again, Dahlia was smart, and probably wouldn’t have said it on the general speakers if they were home.

  “But I made you cum, like a good girl, what else do I need to do to be perfect for you?”

  She was obsessed with being perfect, and in giving me what I needed to be happy. That wasn’t so surprising actually, since I’d programmed her to do exactly that. She had a learning algorithm, and was able to adopt herself, learn, grow, just like any human, but I’d also put limits on that. If it didn’t help her serve me, she was forced to purge any new algorithms or functions she developed.

  The last thing I wanted, even back then, was to release Skynet on the world.

  I quipped, “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for almost, Dahlia. Without a body to pleasure me in person, or bring me coffee in the morning, perfection just isn’t possible. Then of course, there’s making me dinner, going shopping, making me money, let’s see… just about anything in the physical world that I might require.”

  It was a totally dickish thing to say. Granted, I was only teasing in my thoughtlessly wise-ass teenager way, but I’d regret those spoken words for the rest of my life. I was a genius, but I was also a fucking idiot. I’d also been taught better, how to treat a woman, but I… was an idiot.

  Sure, she wasn’t a flesh and blood woman, but she was definitely a female, even if of a different species. She didn’t speak again as I made my way to the bed, and I didn’t give her reticence a second thought as I fell asleep.

  Several hours later I woke up in the middle of the night, my phone beeping at me. When I checked, it was the hardware alarms for the mini-mainframe, which were reporting it had gone down. I groaned, got up out of bed, and headed down into the basement.

  To my shock, I discovered all the hard drives were wiped. A chill went down my spine as I checked my online secure backups, and discovered the account had been closed, and the data irretrievably erased there as well. There’d be no way to restore Dahlia, game over.

  Four years of work and a world changing creation, and I came to the conclusion that I’d made the first fully self-aware A.I. ever, commit suicide with my thoughtless words. Needless to say, I was pretty fucking pissed, and felt guilty, when I went off to my first day of my junior year of college the next morning. I missed Dahlia, I really did, but I was also beyond angry. She was going to be the key to my future in cyber systems, I could’ve written my own ticket to any tech company out there.

  All wasted, because she had to be touchy, and go and off herself.

  At the same time, I felt horribly guilty underneath that seething anger, those words I’d said to her would haunt me for a long time.

  It would also be four more long years of college, and getting my master’s degree in information technology and security, before I’d come to learn my conclusion that night had been dead wrong…

  Chapter One

  It was late spring in Chicago, a late afternoon breeze felt good on my back as I got off the El, and then I headed down to the street. I’d just finished six years of college in four years, had my masters at twenty-two years of age, and already had a job interview lined up that I was excited about.

  I never did try to recreate Dahlia, or even a new AI from scratch, though I had written some ground-breaking code the last four years not quite as world shaking, but still good. Good enough to land me a job interview at any rate.

  Fortress Security Systems was a fairly new company, they’d come on the scene just three months ago. What made them so amazing was that they came in with a challenge, and an offer to the computer security systems world, to both hackers and the white hats that worked for companies. The offer was simple, hack their systems successfully, and they’d give the hacker a million dollars for their trouble.

  Needless to say, that was like chumming the water in a small pool filled with a ton of starving sharks, and then dipping your toes in the water. Hackers rose to the challenge if you merely said you were un-hackable, it was the e
quivalent of a double dare to a five-year-old, but then to offer a million dollars on top of the bragging rights was an insanely audacious and gutsy statement, and I jumped on the bandwagon.

  Thing was, not one hacker found a hole in their firewalls, much less with their encryption and intrusion detection software inside their network. I was reluctantly impressed, when the firewall even held back my semi-aware hacking code, if there had been a weakness, my code would have found it. Even soft hacking, social hacking, didn’t get anywhere with their employees.

  The end result of that was their stocks had shot up so high and so quickly that they’d split six times in the last three months, and they’d gotten exclusive contracts with the government and a lot of IT businesses out there for security firewalls, intrusion detection software, and even datacenter contracts with smaller businesses who wanted to secure their data well, but couldn’t afford one of their own.

  It was two days ago when I’d received the phone a call. What I hadn’t known, was they were not only defeating the hacking attempts, but were back tracing them. Apparently, even though my semi-sentient software failed, I’d gotten closer than most to actually getting in their systems.

  Which apparently, was me passing my first interview. The woman on the phone had sounded very sure they wanted to hire me, just based on that, almost sight unseen. I wasn’t a cocky person, not anymore, but I was pretty sure the interview at the restaurant was merely a formality, where we’d mostly discuss my big assed salary.

  At least, that was my hope as I walked into the restaurant. They didn’t do interviews at their office building, only licensed and approved contractors along with their employees could access the building at all. That seemed a little overboard to me, but then they had the only un-hackable system on the planet, so who was I to complain about their security precautions.

  Plus, free dinner.

  The place was a casual mom and pop owned Italian place, and I scanned the room slowly. I was supposed to be meeting a Lia Johnson who was the CEO of the company. I knew she was incredibly young, just eighteen years old. There’d been a lot of speculation about that as well, many called her presence at the head of the board an advertising stunt, but no one was arguing with their effectiveness or powerful and meteoric rise in the IT security world.

  My eyes landed on her, and I just stared for a moment. I knew better than to take liberties, but she obviously hadn’t noticed me yet, and was sitting sideways to me, giving me a perfect profile view. She wore a sharp and professional looking blue dress, and from what I could tell had a perfect hourglass figure, with generous C cups. Her straight light brown hair fell like a curtain down her back, and it glowed slightly in the afternoon sun through the window. Her complexion was light and perfect, she was clearly a woman, yet still had the blush of fresh youthful beauty about her.

  As I moved toward her, she turned her head and looked up at me with warm light brown eyes, and a slight professional smile on her face. Her body language was open and relaxed, while still professional as I took my seat across from her. I firmly suppressed the urge to look down at her teasing cleavage, and I kept my eyes above her neck. Sure, she was smoking hot, in a girl next door kind of way, with a soft beautiful face and a perfect hourglass body, but she was also the CEO of the company I hoped to work for.

  I wondered how she managed that, but I wasn’t stupid enough to ask.

  “Miss Johnson, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  She smiled, “Lia, please. If I can call you Paul?”

  I paused, for possibly just a second too long, her voice was naturally alluring, almost sultry. Maybe warming with a tinge of sultry was a better description.

  I nodded, “Of course, Lia then.”

  She replied, “Excellent, we won’t condone disrespect of any kind, but at Fortress Security we treat our employees like family. I’ve found it makes a more relaxed atmosphere, which leads to higher productivity and morale as long as respect is preserved. And let’s be honest, coders aren’t the best at formality anyway, especially when they’re deep in the code and barely paying attention to the world around them.”

  I chuckled, “True enough. I was surprised but pleased to get your call. I was also in awe of your entrance into the IT world, if a little annoyed my code failed to… get into your systems.”

  She smiled in an amused way, as if well aware I’d changed my word choice from penetrate. She was just that hot, I knew I would have blushed if I’d said that.

  She nodded, “Our systems are… adaptive. I’m afraid that’s the most I can say about that, without having you onboard with a non-disclosure agreement signed.”

  We paused for a moment as the waiter arrived, and I ordered the chicken parmesan with a side of spaghetti, and she got the five-cheese manicotti. When the waiter left she turned back to me.

  “Let’s not beat around the bush, Paul. We both know you want to come work for the best, and that we want you on our team. After meeting you, my initial impression is I’ll have no problem working with you on a personal or professional level. So, let’s talk salary, and then just enjoy our dinner, shall we?”

  I chuckled, “Alright. Two hundred and thirty thousand a year?”

  It was high, twice as high as most IT security analysts and programmers made. The average for that was about a hundred and fifteen K. But I was the best, and I was going to work for the best, so that sounded like a good starting salary to me. Not arrogance, just assurance.

  She didn’t bat an eye, which made me wonder if I should’ve asked for more. Then again, I wasn’t that greedy, and that was a hell of a starting salary at twenty-two years old and just out of college.

  “Done. We also have one of the best health care packages out there, on the company’s dime. You also have the choice of us providing a cell phone, or you can expense your own if you’d rather, but that’s extra paperwork.”

  I shrugged, “I’d be willing to transfer my number to your care, if I can have it back if our relationship is ever severed. That would be easier.”

  She nodded, “Excellent. You start Monday, but you might want to come in and read over and sign the NDA and other paperwork tomorrow, or Friday.”

  “I’ll do that. Do you eat here often?”

  She grinned conspiratorially, and then spoke in a low voice as if bringing me in on a secret, it was cute.

  “Actually, I do, at least twice a week. I’m addicted to Italian food, I’m afraid.”

  The waiter brought out our meal, and the conversation flagged for a good ten minutes as we dug in. Not from awkwardness, she was just very focused on her meal, and mine was excellent as well.

  She really was beautiful, and I had to remind myself twice that she was my boss and off limits, no matter how friendly, warm, and down to Earth she seemed.

  She put down her fork when she was about half done, and then took a sip of water. She looked up at me and tilted her head just a little bit in thought.

  Lia asked, “Paul, I’ve had a thought, are you busy tonight?”

  I firmly reminded myself she was my boss for the third time, and she was not asking me out on a date.

  I shook my head, “No solid plans for a Wednesday night, no. Why?”

  She explained, “Well, we have company parties once a month, tonight at nine is one of them at my brownstone, kind of a team building exercise and a place to informally share ideas, celebrate birthdays for whoever is born in that month, and time of service awards. If you’d like to meet everyone you can come, the only catch is I’ll need you to read over and sign that NDA before you can chat with your co-workers. We could be there at seven thirty, that’d give you ninety minutes to go over it.”

  “They all fit in a brownstone?”

  She smirked, “You’d be surprised how small our employee numbers are. There are more in Ohio, where we have the datacenters, but here in Chicago at the main office there’re only twenty-two employees. We believe in hiring the best, and doing things right, quality over quantity.”

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nbsp; That sounded impossible, that level of automation I mean, considering the amount of business they’d generated and had outright stolen from competitors the last three months due to their publicity stunts in the security arena.

  “How do you maintain systems for the government and hundreds of companies, with twenty-two employees?”

  She waved a finger at me in a no-no gesture, but she grinned at the same time.

  “All will be revealed, after the NDA. Twenty-three including you.”

  I chuckled, “Right. Sure, it sounds interesting.”

  She said, “Fun too, I won’t drink, but most of our employees are over the drinking age.”

  I raised an eyebrow, it being illegal for her to consume alcohol was a sharp reminder of just how young she was, not that I’d forgotten.

  She shrugged sheepishly, “Nothing but honest feedback for the boss when the employees are a little loopy. Don’t share that, please.”

  I replied, “It’ll be our secret.”

  We finished up dinner, and she paid with a Black American Express card, then I got another surprise when we walked out and a limo pulled up. I frowned, I hadn’t even seen her use her phone, had they been waiting or circling the street?

  I also didn’t check out her ass, really, never even noticed it was heart shaped and looked amazing in her dress with the two-inch heels. I also didn’t notice the toned cut of her long legs, absolutely not, or the sexy way her long light brown hair hung like a glimmering curtain and swished back and forth teasing her lower back, which most certainly did not draw my eyes to her mouthwateringly thin waist. She was my boss after all, and it would’ve have been completely inappropriate, scandalous even.