Boolean expressions
are too simplistic and don’t take into account the player’s limitations.”
I grinned, “The A.I.? I’d love to see what you have in
mind.”
We finished lunch and made our way into my office. I
waved at the office chair in front of the computer invitingly, and then grabbed
another chair for myself and sat next to her. My first thought was that
her scent was intoxicating, but I managed to focus on what she was doing.
First, she restored my A.I. to its most intelligent
configuration, the system had many restore points for all the changes I’d done,
so it only took a moment. After that, she inserted some code for the A.I.
into the program, wrote about fifty lines of code faster than I’d ever seen to
marry it in with my A.I., and recompiled.
“So what does that code do?”
She turned toward me a little and touched my arm, it was
distracting, but in a good way. I managed to focus on her answer and not
her touch and those deep green eyes of hers.
“It’s a learning splice. It will figure out the
problem, all we have to do is play the game for a while. We can always
take it out later.”
A learning A.I. was one that could grow from
experience. My assistant A.I. is like that, it had been annoying until it
learned the way I liked to do things. Generally, game A.I.s were static,
but it was a good idea.
“Alright, you want to give it a shot?” I asked.
She nodded with a guilty smile on her face as she took her
hand off me and then brushed her hair back behind her ear with her hand.
I realized I hadn’t been imagining it last night, she was definitely flirting
and sending me signals, but now wasn’t the time.
I watched her as she played the game, occasionally even
checking the progress of the A.I…
The afternoon flew by as we traded back and forth and played
games, both of us consistently getting demolished by the A.I. She kept
touching me, and I wondered about it, the timing seemed almost… too
strange. Also the fact that she was a brilliant programmer that wanted to
work with me cast doubt on a chance meeting. She was gorgeous, smart,
funny, sexy, and we got along great. She was in short, perfect for me.
Too perfect.
I wanted to ignore all that and just seduce her, or more
accurately, let her continue to seduce me. I’d probably hate myself later
for doing so, especially if I missed the chance to do just that, but I finally
decided to confront her about it, wondering if I was going insane. I
supposed it could be kismet, or serendipity, but this was real life, not a sappy
Hallmark channel movie.
I said reluctantly, “Our meeting last night, in Lynch’s,
that wasn’t random was it?”
She looked almost guilty and sighed, “No. I can
explain, it’s…” she trailed off with a thoughtful and conflicted look on her
face.
I felt a need to reach out and comfort her, ironic since I
was the cause of her conflict, and it was me she had… what? I didn’t know
but I hoped it was something reasonable.
She frowned and said in an unsure voice, “I kind of chose
you.”
I sat back a little, “What do you mean?”
She sighed, “I lived a pretty sheltered and isolated
childhood. When I decided to escape that life, I chose Chicago. I
wasn’t sure where to start after that, I had a few examples of my coding out
there, but I am far from established.
“You… your games were some of my favorites, and your one of
the most respected coders in Chicago. So I sort of… cyber stalked you…
just a little.”
I wanted to laugh, how do you stalk someone just a
little? Then I remembered I’d done the same to her this morning, so she
got a free pass.
She continued, “I didn’t do a full background check or
anything really invasive, I just kept an eye on your locations and planned to
run into you. I saw on your Facebook you were at that other bar, but you
were with friends when I got there so I stayed back. I kind of… followed
you to