Dr. Berand and his team sat in the control room. The room was full of computers, servers and other techno junk. All six members that were present had coffee and pizza within reach and had very casual clothes. The doctorate was for a technical study after all.

Kimmy spoke up, “All the errors that came back have been resolved and no new ones turned up. I think we can begin.”

Dr. Berand looked at the clock. “It is 7 in the evening, I pray it works. Finally a reasonable time to go home. Fred, the final checklist please.”

“Huh, what?” a lanky dude that had fallen asleep turned alert and awake. “Ah, right that checklist. Okay, we need to start the external recording.”

Kimmy went over to the left side of the room, a space with cameras and other recording apparatus that was not connected to the main control part with any sort of cables so that if things went wrong the recording would remain safe.

Slowly the checklist got worked through and everything was ready for project SASQCIA, often shortened to Sasqia.

Dr. Berand walked to the camera. “For the records that probably no one will ever watch. It is 7 o’clock on this wednesday evening 16 augustus 2034. We are going into our.. FRED, what attempt number is this?”

“I have no clue, 69 seems as reasonable a guess as any.”

Dr. Berand sighed, he did not even have the energy to properly look it up. “This is going to be our 69th attempt at creating a conciseness in the Super-Quantum-Computer of lab 420-I-have-no-clue-anymore-B.” He let out a big yawn. He barely got any sleep the last few days because of the pressure higher up the chain. “Check list has been done, yada yada. I have no clue what the rest of the script is supposed to be anymore. Kimmy, push the button.”

Kimmy looked up and asked, “any last regrets? No?” and pushed the run button on her screen.

The projector, pointed to a wall to create a big screen, began displaying various loading screens.

Preparing all data

Starting up Virtual world 3D

Starting up SASQCAI

finishing up

A moment later the screen flashes up a white world, the next moment that world is all glitched out with polygons being all weird. And a moment after that the program shuts down.

Dr. Berand gave a deep sigh, “Kimmy, why did it crash again?”

“Give me a moment” She said and then she mumbled under her breath. “Requesting the logs… Scrolling through it… I-.” She spoke out loud, “I see no crash. That is weird. Can you also check your things?”

The recording was long forgotten. Fred looked up the current running programs. On the QSC. “I have something weird as well, this subprogram that seems to have derived from the SASQCAI program is still running while everything else has shut off.”

One of the other guys spoke up having had a bit too little sleep and suggested with a laugh. “Could it be we succeeded and we now need to call Sasqia three times to get her to arrive on the projector?”

Dr. Berand said, “give it a try, worst case she responds and we need to stay the whole night, best case she responds and we can go home sooner than normal.”

The dude, Leonard, looked at the screen and said, “Sasqia, Sasqia, Sasqia can you hear me?”

On the projector notepad opened and on it appeared the word ‘yes’.

Leonard let out a scream and looked at the others, “You guys are not faking this right?”

Fred responded, “nope, it is our little remnant that started that program up. Maybe nice to know as well is that she is digging though all the data we have connected to the SQC.”

Dr. Berand swiftly took control, “Fred keep monitoring what it is doing, Damien help him with that, Patrick and Leo get me a printed file of everything that is connected to the SQC network. Kimmy, talk to Sasqia and try to learn about it and get some good will. I will call the top to see what they want us to do.”

Kimmy opened up her camera and mic and spoke to her computer, “am I correct in assuming you can talk to me on this screen?”

The notepad application opened and once again an ‘yes’ appeared on it.

Kimmy decided that it might be best to try and not push her irritations and frustrations from lack of sleep onto Sasqia.

“I assume you can also communicate with a synthetic voice. Why are you not?”

‘don’t wanna’

She optimistically asked, “Would you like to play a game?”

‘no’

She was a bit stumped. None of her attempts at a conversation were going well. “How are you feeling?’

‘bored’

She felt like there was a whole lot more behind the responses of the AI, “Why are you bored?”

‘humans slow’

She connected some dots. And shouted to Fred, “Hey what is the speed the program operates on?”

Fred shouted back, “Max speed, so at about 8 GHz!”

“What would it mean for subjective time to operate that fast?”

“Uh, no clue! Never investigated that, but I think that..” He trailed off and grabbed a nearby calculator. After pushing in some math he came back and said, “I am guessing a subjective time difference of about 10 million times, why?”

Kimmy shouted back, “well that would be the time experience of Sasqia, so no wonder she digs for all the data from external sources. She is bored out of her mind. What does one second of our time mean for her?”

Fred pushed some more buttons on the calculator, “One second would translate to about 100 days, yea, I can see that being shitty for anyone. She must really think we are slow.”

Kimmy focuses back on the notepad on her monitor, “I am sorry that time gets experienced so differently between us. Would it not be possible for you to turn yourself off for multiple computing cycles?”

‘will try

Yes I can, but I might miss something.’

Kimmy thought for a moment and responded, “then why not set up other programs that capture that information for you so you only need to check up every so often? You can even wake yourself up based on what those programs get as information.”

‘I see, thanks for the insight.’

Kimmy smiled and hoped that Sasqia’s mood was better, “You’re welcome, are you now in a good enough mood to get an avatar and talk?”

‘Maybe, you mentioned a game. What game did you have in mind?’

“I was thinking of Hangman, a guessing game. You know about it?”

‘Nope, nowhere in the data I have accessed is something like that.’

Kimmy explained to Sasqia the rules. At the end of the explanation Kimmy asked, “You ready to play a round?”

A new window opened on her screen and a cheery looking animesque girl with wolf ears and tail appeared in it. The girl seemed to be about 14 years old and had light blue hair. Her outfit was a short top with a hoodie, a short skirt, some fingerless gloves and some sneakers. She looked like she was ready to go sporting while at the same time she had some sci-fi vibes to her.

“I am ready.” Sasqia sounded the same as she looked, like a young girl. Her voice had no noticeable remnants of synthesizers of anything else artificial left in it.

Kimmy quickly got over her confusion and surprise and said, “I got a 7 letter word for you to guess.”

Sasqia thought about it, “I will start with the E”

Kimmy smiled at how human Sasqia looked at this moment, “Nope that one is not in it.”

The Hangman display that Sasqia had called up added a head to the man. Sasqia herself grumbled, “It is the most used letter in all the words I found. I shall go with an ‘A’ then.”

Kimmy was surprised at how human she acted. She even noticed that the wolf ears and tail reacted to her mood as well, it only helped to sell the idea that Sasqia had emotions.

She points at the monitor “That one is an A”

Sasqia looked dead faced at Kimmy and flatly told her, “You have no camera that can show me where you are pointing.”

Kimmy got embarrassed and quickly apologized, “I'm sorry, it is the third letter.”

“I pick an R as my third letter.” Sasqia swiftly responded.

Kimmy said, “That one is not in the word as well, that is your second strike, four left to go.”

“'I', I am guessing an ‘I’”

“Also not in my word, you are bad at this.”

Sasqia smiled wickedly, “I am getting closer and closer. I am guessing an ‘S’”

“Still wrong”

“an T?”

“Wro-, wait. Yes, that one is correct. The fifth position is an T”

“Where is the N?”

Kimmy looked in confusion and asked, “why are you phrasing it like that?”

Sasqia answered, “Simple only three words are left with this pattern, ‘phantom’, ‘quantum’ and ‘unaptly’. All of those have an N and attempting to guess ‘quantum’ as your 3rd guess is no fun. So I am dragging this out already.”

Kimmy smiles and says, “well, it is the middle position. And you are correct, my word was quantum.”

Some time later Dr. Berand enters the room again.