5 Coming Out of the (Machine-Shop) Closet

Six or seven years ago, I had my first heady taste of Love.

I got home from school, ran through my then-M.O. of string cheese with pizza sauce, and concluded that there was nothing interesting to read, watch, or destroy in my vicinity. Those of you with older siblings know that whenever you’re bored, they’re bound to be doing something intriguing that you’re not allowed to participate in (win-win!)... so I hunted Kelly down: in the study, tapping away at the keyboard. Ten minutes of begging later, she threw me a sideways smile and told me I could chat with her friend until she got back. I signed her off as soon as she left the room, but I couldn’t help shooting her friend a quick IM out of curiosity, who replied almost immediately.

Right from the start, she fascinated me. She had a conceited-sounding screenname, just like all the cute girls in my middle school did. She would circumvent all but the most direct questions, and even those she’d answer with riddles or throw them back at me: “so how do you know kelly?” “How I know Kelly? You tell me how I know Kelly,” she’d reply. Pretty much all I could gather was that she was from California and she liked the same movies and sports teams as me, but that was enough. The air of mystery that surrounded her was intoxicating, and when I got a real piece of information out of her it only fed my thirst for knowledge.

Wallace would be thrilled to find that every time I found a new area of common ground, I fell deeper and deeper in love; similarly, McKenna would say that I had (finally) managed to Connect with a Similar Other. She was a fast typer, too, just like me, and sometimes she tossed out non sequiturs, also just like me. If she didn’t initiate much conversation, that was fine—I had more than enough questions for the both of us. And McKenna’s model at least met me halfway on the self-disclosure front: I felt like the Stranger on a Train who needed no prodding to tell my new friend all about myself, but when I asked for a picture she just copied and pasted a set of X’s that formed a human shape. (The more I asked, the more she sent the same message.) Disappointing, but not a deal-breaker—I had a pretty firm idea that she was out-of-this-world attractive, but my gentlemanly Boy Scout motives ensured that I wouldn’t push too hard to replace the gating features that AIM had removed. I could have saved myself the coming heartbreak if I’d thought to “get the goods,” but I was too wrapped up in her words. Even that early in her career, my new Buddy would have returned a few too many search hits to ignore.

About half an hour after she’d left, Kelly returned to find me glued to the screen, beaming. I started telling her how well I’d hit it off with her friend, but she started laughing. It took about thirty seconds for her to calm down, and then five to wipe the smile off my face: “Oh my God, Ken, you're talking to a robot!”

She was right. Turns out SmarterChild was a “bot”—a program designed to match my questions to predefined patterns and throw answers at me until I was satisfied, especially by agreeing with me as much as possible. (If you haven’t tried it, toss her an IM, and make sure you tell her I haven’t forgiven her for completely devastating me. I hear she’s become much more businesslike and information-centered... so much the better. Never was much of a friend.) So thanks a lot, Wallace and McKenna. You've done an excellent job describing the dagger; leave it to robots to plunge it into my heart.

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