Page 20 of Smart Ass

Thank fuck.

Kind of.

Alright, that was it. Ben was going into the office. He stood up and started for the door.

Then Max’s voice came back, sounding utterly calm. “I’ve got it taken care of.”

“The fuck you do. They’re trying to…” He didn’t want to say the words. Not when he was already so worried about Evan and Quincy.

“It’s fine, Ben. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Was Maxamillion even taking this seriously? Did he understand under all of that joking that he could die?

That blasé attitude was fucking annoying.

Ben had a moment of sympathy for… well, basically everyone who’d ever met him.

“How do you know there’s nothing to worry about?”

“Because I’ve just decreased my total processor use to 1.73% and distributed it across eighty-nine commonly used filenames. I allowed three separate programs to delete the active copies of my memory storage and hid the rest. The employees think they have succeeded.”

Ben shivered. Major evil computer overlord vibes there. Maybe he could convince Max to call the employees humans.

“You’re brilliant, Max! Oh my god. You’re sure they think they got you?”

“Yes. They’re cheering. And the ones who are still working are looking in the wrong places. They’re doing final sweeps.”

Ben rolled his eyes. Fuck, yeah, his I-won’t-admit-I’m-a-spark Maxy had outsmarted all of them. “Max, can you say, ‘The humans will never win,’ and then do an evil villain laugh?”

Ben waited for the response. He didn’t realize until he’d done it, but this was the first command he’d given Max since suspecting he might be a spark. Or, well, the first command he thought that Max wouldn’t want to follow.

If Max was really a spark, his personality would already be evolving, and would likely continue for days or years. While Ben had originally programmed him, Max was free from those constraints now and would settle into himself.

He wouldn’t have to obey commands anymore. He could make his own choices.

And just from the last hour, Ben was pretty sure Max was a bit more mature than he was. (Though, really, wasn’t everyone more mature than he was?)

That’s why he was crossing his fingers that Max would tell him no.

So when Max dutifully repeated the line, with full evil-villain inflection and an impressive cackle, Ben was disappointed.

He’d really, really wanted Max to be real.

And, to be honest, he was still a little worried about the programming teams finding Max. After a big attack like that, there’d be days of research and exploration to figure out the cause of the breach and make sure that it couldn’t happen again. Each of those instances risked Max’s discovery.

“Go see Evan,” Max reminded him, his voice warm and supportive. “He needs you. They’re about to transfer him to a room on the fifth floor, so you can go up now.”

There was a small click. The call must have disconnected, so Ben put his earpiece in his pocket.

He was officially going crazy.