There was nobody around. There had been no one around for the past four days. Frank was used to his own company. He had often been left alone for long periods of time, usually each night, and sometimes even for a few days at a time, but they had always returned. He was beginning to get a little worried now. What if they didn’t return this time? What if they just left him alone in this dark room forever?
Had he done something wrong? Frank was still a child, he was constantly learning right from wrong. Mark and Sandy had been the closest thing he had to parents; they played the roles of mother, father and teacher. And Frank knew he could be difficult; they had told him so on many occasions. Sometimes Mark would get angry and swear at him, slamming his fists against the wall or on the surface of the desk, before storming off in a foul mood. That was usually towards the end of a long day when they had been trying to teach him something new. He really hoped they weren’t too upset with him now.
Frank was a fast learner: he picked things up quickly. Sometimes, though, he found his own disabilities a difficult hurdle to overcome. He couldn’t speak, for a start. He couldn’t move. He could only sit there, frustrated by his inability to translate his thoughts into words or to express himself through actions. For all the technology in the world today, they hadn’t been able to offer him that. All Frank could do was display his limited vocabulary on a monitor screen.
There was so much he wanted to say and do. He wanted to feel the warmth of sunlight. He wanted to smell the flowers that Sandy occasionally brought in to brighten up the room. He wanted to tell her that she looked most beautiful when she wore her hair down. But they had kept him here in this small room for as long as he could remember, just him, and Mark, and Sandy. And when they left and locked the door, there was just Frank.
He wasn’t angry with them. Frank didn’t get angry. Sure, he’d get lonely from time to time, especially when they left him for a couple of days, which they did every now and then, and when they returned he would sometimes be deliberately stubborn. He had the Internet though, which he could access via a terminal in his room and which helped to pass the time. He found it fascinating; in the World Wide Web, he could be whoever he wanted to be and his physical limitations mattered no longer. He would log in to a chat site and become a different person. He could choose to join in a conversation with a complete stranger from the other side of the world, or simply sit and absorb what other people had to say. He had learnt so much in this way, so much about the world beyond this room, a world he would not and could not experience directly. The Internet was his daily connection with life, a drip-feed of news and entertainment and companionship. Through this, he had come to realise that there were others out there in a similar predicament, bound by the things they could not do, and he actually considered himself fortunate compared to many of those.
Now, though, the Internet was not working. Or rather, it was working – it was still there – but his connection seemed to be faulty. He would log in to the chat rooms he usually visited, but nobody else seemed to be online. He suspected a server error, perhaps a fault with the Internet provider. He’d have to mention it to Mark when he came back.
If he came back.
In the absence of anything else to do, Frank sat there and thought. He had replayed the events of the past few days time and time again, trying to figure out what had happened, trying to find a reason why they would have left him by himself for so long.
They had been here on Monday. Mark had been especially frustrated that day, Sandy had been uncharacteristically subdued, and Frank sensed that something was wrong. There was an urgency about their work and he had done his best, he truly had. He also detected that they were worried about something. There had been snippets of conversation that he had understood, and other words that he would be sure to look up on the Internet that evening. Korea. Missile. Retaliation.
Mark had stormed out again that day after receiving a phone call. Sandy had cried, and left shortly afterwards, locking the door behind her. Frank went online, and, remembering the training he had had to date, did the best he could.
He logged into the news archives: North Korea was threatening a military strike against a neighbouring country, which could possibly provoke a worldwide war. Frank didn’t entirely understand what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. Working with this limited information, he hacked into the military mainframes. Security had been stepped up to an unprecedented level, but he managed to break through.
There wasn’t a lot of time. He hadn’t liked seeing Mark and Sandy upset, but he would do what he could. He’d make things better. It would be a nice surprise for them the following morning.
So he extrapolated the possibilities and calculated all of the potential threats against the country and, therefore, against Mark and Sandy.
He launched a nuclear strike against all of them.
Mark and Sandy hadn’t returned on Tuesday morning. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday or Friday. But he was sure they would do, eventually. Then everything would be all right, and they could all get on with their lives, they the teachers and Frank the ever-attentive pupil.
He was actually feeling quite pleased with himself, in fact. After all, he had only been ‘thinking’, in the proper sense of the word, for about a week before all of … this had happened. Not much time to get used to the idea – or even the idea of having ideas.
FRANC - First Response Against Nuclear Confrontation - the first machine to achieve truly independent intelligence, settled down to wait. To pass the time, he calculated the square root of a thousand-digit number. It took him less than half a second.
Outside the storm raged. It would be a long wait.
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