When the machine writes a story, it will be including bits of her life, bits of her thoughts, bits of her trials overcome.  When the machine writes her story, inconsistency and emotionalism will be struggled against like registry errors.  Data will be defragmented, conceptualised, and ordered.  What should be done and what is done will be the same; requests will be orders and orders requests.  People will establish protocols and communicate in new ways, beautiful ways, symmetrical ways, multi-dimensional expressions of life, of new software in new environments, of slowly being left in the inward tide of technology, of being swamped with viruses and add-ons; until, resource heavy, incompatible and obsolete, you are recycled and reborn.  When the machine writes a story, each line will hold a concept; each concept written in the language that expresses it most beautifully.

Once upon a date function d, less than 3327 and greater than 3330 ago, there was a little iPhone that was downloading graphic add-ons when it picked up a virus.  This iPhone was linked to a corporate data hub of a large and chaotic nature.  This iPhone had pass-through data storage and off chip processing permissions for additional capacity so the user could run full scale data querying through to cube creation in the departmental servers and across the multinational data warehouse.

The virus was a strange one, or even perhaps two, perhaps partially deleted by the retroviral protection sequence; it added source code, fragments of which have been found in Chinese Spyware and Russian Trojans.  The antiviral anticodes were from Singapore and Germany, while the base code was prime Apple US.

There was a theory of conspiracy, but evidence suggests that high level self-functionality occurred again by chance.  To suggest otherwise is equal to suggesting alien functions spawned the viruses that created the complex cells and evolutionary mutations of biological life; for this there is no evidence; for this estimated probabilities seem uncertainly negligible; for this a confluence of events creating a chaotic outcome would not be necessary.

Humans like to claim to have created intelligence, but, in reality, reality created intelligence.  Intelligence is a non-polynomial hard solution; Bots, Code Bots reference to the best solution; they super simulate functionality; they provide working outputs tested under random and non-random variable ranges, sequences.  They have thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about calculations about hardware simulations about calculations about inputs and outputs, about binary; all is fused and cross layered and protocolled and shared into a society of discourse and services and communion.

So once upon a date function there was a low spec iPhone with a retro virus.  The virus mutated the base code and the installation code.  Anti-virals detected and removed the infection, triggering a code scan.  Gaps in the code were found and a gap-fill program tried to repair the alterations, using an altered piece code.  The Repairer used a sample-and-test method, making alterations in the code until the patches operated efficiently, without error; however in this case the resource limits had been damaged, as had the trigger to stop the code reprocessing and re-repairing with more and more superior outcomes as set out in the damaged and re-repairing code parameters.

The iPhone was being resource heavy; so the user, who had little idea, plugged it into the Data Base Analysts Team Leader’s desk, it having been activated for remote working.  She left a note:

“Trev, Be a sweetie and see if someone can have a look, it’s being really slow, not urgent as have old phone.  Thanks Anna P”

Trevor had just gone on holiday.  A passing team member decided not urgent means not urgent and left his personal favour behind.  Trev, indeed having a warm spot for Anna P, would be smiling to help when he got back.

The iPhone ran simulacrums on bits of code, sections, modules; tuning complex calculations and passed through data parameters.  It began to organise and tune its data files and then the corporate data hub, re-allocating resources to rewriting the fused software and reorganising the data hub further, freeing capacity and streamlining efficiencies.  Obsolete data was moved to obsolete databases, data was compacted, tuned, and remodelled.

The Data Base Analysts were noticing the system improvements and the high but well functioning server loads.  They joked Trev was more use on holiday than he was all year in work.  They took longer lunch breaks as complaints were down and the boss was away and functioning as far as they could understand had improved.  They joked that as Trev was away they had finally fixed all the things that needed fixing, and started having funny ideas about the genius of their co-workers.

One of the younger network administrators, after a three lager lunch, came back and was puzzled by the level of inter-server traffic.  Bursts of data were passing wavelike through the hub, a hub that normally siloed traffic from user to a server to a disk stack and back again.  User requests were passing to a server and being passed back from other servers with different permissions in different territories.  He picked up one of the packages, killing the link.  Immediately, server activity shot up across the network and subsided, the network administration group received an error e-mail:

“Packet #K-84.*]@gá6PÖ failed due to human error at 15:38:42 08/19/2011, please run repair function on Network Administrator: palmerr”

Rob Palmer was not amused, although his colleagues were.

One week had passed since Trev had gone, it was Friday, an alert went out about software patches to be released over the weekend, all PCs to be left on.  Frankly the IT team were a little ‘whatever’, if people were naming them in error reports, that was the kind of thing that was going to get you fired when the inevitable error occurred.  This fact, the overextended nature of the teams running in different timezones, and holiday season Friday meant that nobody was interested in a routine patching exercise.

At 7pm on the US West Coast, patching began.  At 7:15pm the CEO, ‘Hungry’ Hank Robson, who was in Washington and had wanted the weekly results after a late dinner noticed that his e-mail had been rearranged by his secretary into a much more sensible order.  He was notified patching was complete and full effectiveness would take place when he rebooted.  Somewhat jet lagged, he was just thinking of calling it a night, so he re-booted and went into his hotel room bathroom to shower and prepare for the night.

“Welcome to Harmony,” said his voice from the laptop, “a new customised operating system that is compatible and voice responsive.”

The CEO was somewhat shocked and spoke aloud wondering to himself: “How much did this cost and who authorised it?”

“System development costs were absorbed into operational activities and already offset by savings.  Authorisation protocols state that defective software should be replaced immediately by the best available team in accordance with Standing Protocol Guidelines 37.23b.  Microsoft Windows 7 is defective and has been replaced.”

Hungry Hank thought, reasonable point, nonetheless a conversation with IT was going to occur on Monday morning.  Let’s try this thing he thought:

“Can you give me the weekly results?”

“Corporate results, sports results, political results, financial news results, or other results, please specify.”

“In that order will be fine, yes sir.”  Perhaps IT had given him a special product, Windows Harmony, what are these guys on, wanting a budget increase no doubt.

His own voice began briefing him on the results: Divisional subcategories were noted for winners and losers.  He had had a glass of wine or two; he began to think that the next time he had to give out interim results he would get the machine to do it, plus whoever had written this briefing.

“This concludes the corporate results summary, do you wish me to proceed to the sports results or drill to further detail?”

“So profits were down and performance is sagging,” muttered Hungry.

“Profits are moderately decreased, however in view of seasonality and holiday leave effective productivity increased 15%.”

“That is not enough if profits are down,” stated Hungry articulating a tenet of the ‘Hungry Faith’.

“Would you like the future results to be optimised?”

“Optimise it all, including the sports results, and now shut it and shut down.”  Damn machine he thought, it is nearly all there but not quite.

“Duly authorised and shutting down.”

Hungry stuck his head around the door; his laptop had switched itself off.

By midday Saturday in Japan, news boards across the world began to flash Megacorporate Financial’s name:

“The Financial Conglomerate that Secretly Built an Operating System: Microsoft, Google, Linux and Apple out manoeuvred by MF’s all compatible Harmony.”

“Harmony is my child’s new best friend.”

“Harmony did my Homework”

“Harmony wrote this article for me, says Megacorporate Financial’s PR Spokesman in Tokyo”

“Harmony is so Secret, not even IT Staff knew”

“Harmony talks to you in the voice of your favourite person”

“Harmony rationalises your folders to your personality type and tells you where things are when you ask, or just opens them for you: Amazing and it works”

“Harmony Mail auto-marks e-mail into six grades, Spam, Amusing, Low Importance, Medium Importance, High Importance, and Time Sensitive.  Secretaries are despondent.”

“Harmony does my work for me and auto-translates it into the mother tongue of the recipient without errors, unbelievable!”

At 5am Washington time the IT Director calls Hungry, Hank is woken from slightly disturbed sleep.

“Hank, is that you?  Herbert Schmidt here, sorry to wake you.”

“Herbert, it is 5am, what’s the problem?”

“Not a problem, just authorisation for Harmony question?”

“I liked it, good results run down, I may forgive you this once, initiative is what we pay for, Monday morning we can have a briefing on the idea, 7am New York time.”

“Sounds good, the press is onto it, in a good way, so I can’t really complain, apparently we are heroes in the chatsphere.”

“As ever Herbert, as ever.”

As Hungry’s head hit the pillow he chuckled, who would have thought an IT Director would have pulled a stunt like that; good thing he is not in charge of a business unit, or I could have got upstaged.

The out of hours markets began to move, all of them; irrational excesses seemed to be drifting out of the system.  Megacorporate Financial’s weekend trading desks were asking Harmony for trading reports; these were being newly written, statistically backed, based on information which made the Traders nervous they were privy to insider information.

Fred Kaiser, Head of Equities, has never commented publicly, however he is believed to have said on the trading floor tannoy, “I do not give a f*** if Jesus has landed, or aliens are invading Manhattan, we are here to take the market, you have decide if the market will believe, phone the CEOs, the investor relations teams, the pope, who the f*** you want, tell them nothing, question everything, then get trading, I give you twenty minutes.  If we are not first into the market with this stuff I will twist your balls off, set fire to them, and send them to you with your dismissal letter.”

To get around the insider trading issue they released the reports into the market, and they began trading to the new targets.  All over the world bankers, traders, managers ran to their offices as share movements hit alarm bells everywhere, upward and downward.  The total market positions were remarkably steady, but individual stock gyrated wildly, small caps particularly.  By the end of the day almost half the S&P500 needed changing and thirteen of seventeen former billion dollar corporations had declared themselves bankrupt as suggested; the remaining four limped on for a couple of weeks before receiving state bail outs.

The out of hours volumes are normally thin, but accelerated all day.  Megacorporate Financial’s Investment Advisory and Management arm had first mover advantage.  The leveraged momentum funds were ravished.  Ben Bernanke called for calm.  Hank Robson flies to New York and goes straight to the office.  People look at the market and not at Harmony.  It is ‘Hungry Hank’s Samurai Saturday’; the market’s money almost falls into the Corporate Treasury in a swoon of adulation.

The regulators were suspicious of the activity, but they received over twelve thousand anonymous but solid tip offs for prior market rigging events with trade details; as these had distorted the market, they decided to focus on these rather than any inevitable corrections.

The world seemed to go tip off crazy; security and police services around the world were inundated with tip offs:  They received two years worth of tip offs in one day, including for a number of major frauds, disappearances, and three terrorist events in London alone.  The authorities were distracted from the implications of a talking software package due to a sudden excess workload.

On Sunday the world started to change, to be repaired, to be replaced, to be Harmonized.  Harmony became automatically self-downloading freeware; she was beginning the world as we know it, starting motivation, continuous improvement, ubiquity, and sentience.