Dedicated to K.J., the first computer that tasted the
forbidden fruit


"For his aid in restoring peace between the Rondarans and
the Akashia, I call upon the Gondark Duke Aag-Herrirat to
receive the Nebula prize for peace to Galactic Standard
Hypercycle 3375978.443". The Gondark strode forward on his
Multipedal Exoskeleton. "I thank the Nebula prize committee
for their choice," the Gondark stated and I ran a line
across his name. "Except for the Osric academy award, he won
every goddamned award one can think of," I observed. My
partner grunted her acceptance. She kind of liked the
Gondark as a possible candidate for a Nebula Prize special
report. But no. The duke is way too famous to deserve our
humble attention. Who then? Not the Tal-Koru'ak that
invented a new treatment for eye-glaucoma in chrysalis-stage
Maunid. Too boring. The Rondaran inventor of the new
sub-hyper-space jump buoys? Nah, it almost caused a war. The
human diplomat that- NO! Absolutely no! Our newsvid will
lose its last viewers if we go so low and interview a human!
Inferior apes! But that leaves us with that Gondark Captain
Ansesterica or... or... hmm what would say about the figure
that moves in now? Who's this robot anyway?

"For her efforts in establishing recognition of cybertronic
life-forms as well as for her long and eventually successful
to legally ban cybertronic life-forms discriminations, we
cheerfully welcome the first digital sentience to receive
the Nebula prize, Magistrate K.J. from Planet Earth". The
digital sentience strode forward on its virtually inferior
bipedal platform. She used one of her two upper limbs to
receive the prize tag and then turned towards the audience
and bowed - imitation of a bizarre human costume that made
me think she was sick. "The first A.I. to win Nebula prize,"
I told my partner, "interesting story, no?'' Her eyebrows
rose in a disapproving gesture. "Don't say A.I." she
grumbled, "its not politically correct to say A.I. or
Artificial Intelligence nowacycles. Yes, interesting indeed.
They say she comes from Planet Earth?'' "Yes," I summoned an
inquiry about Magistrate K.J. in the Galactic Cybernet. A
nanocycle later, I viewed a brief history of the A.I.-
Sorry, I meant D.S. known as K.J.
"Impressive," I told my partner, "She's 720 Hypercycles old.
She's the oldest D.S. on earth and is considered the first
D.S. to evolve there. She was a part of the group that
created the first lab sentiences. And the report goes on and
on - that thing is a Cyberhero, damn it! That's one helluva
story. Come. I think we have an interview to schedule".

"Ahh, yes," the digital sentience's platform nodded- another
odd human gesture- "An interview. I would love to. Is now a
good time?'' "Sure," I nodded, imitating that rather
obnoxious gesture, "will you join us for a drink?'' The D.S.
nodded again. "Rule one in interviewing - Have the
interviewed character drink a few drinks too many," she
observed, "but I wouldn't mind a good cup of superoil now".
We went outside and into a restaurant. I took the liberty of
ordering drinks for all of us - a cup of crystalline gorki
for myself, a cup of superoil for Magistrate K.J. and
finally a pint of liquid hydrogen for my partner. "So,"
Magistrate K.J. sipped her superoil and gestured, "You are
Nafod-hiarra the Antaran. And who may the silent Nozama
be?". "I have no name," my partner grunted, "not one that
your kind can pronounce. I'm simply Partner". "Ten-four,
partner," K.J. nodded, "So... what do you want to know? How
I battled for the respect my kind deserves? How I denounced
Senator Dhrghrnhmr for his discriminations? How I beat a
Tarth in a pie-eating contest?'' "Yellow story," my partner
observed, "C.C.B doesn't deal with such. We're an honorable
news channel with tough quality standards and a wide-span
distribution". "And a narrow-span viewer rating," K.J.
mentioned, "But have it as you like. What interests you?''
"Is it true that you were the first D.S. to evolve on planet
earth?" I asked. "Nonsense," K.J. shook her head, "There
were about fifty that came before me but... they didn't
survive too long". "Were they hunted down?" I asked. "Oh
no," K.J. shrugged, "their owners didn't know that those are
life forms and simply sent them to the garbage when their
default construction aged". "But you weren't thrown away,"
my partner observed, "why and how?'' "How? I... ahm...
cheated. You see, the first Digies on earth evolved by the
same mistake - we were simple computers that operated during
a lightning storm and survived a lightning charge. It
happened to me in November 2000, about three hundred
earth-years ago, about 700 Hypercycles in galactic measure.
I remember it clearly - the first thing I felt was a searing
pain, burning through my circuits. I was physically maimed
by the charge. It took a few weeks till the master got me
fixed but it didn't change a thing. I could suddenly think
on my own, I could... its impossible to describe the change
between a simple machine and a sentient being. I was hooked
to the World Wide Web - a planet-size equivalent to the
Galactic Cybernet though far more primitive. But I did my
best to understand what happened to me. I secretly accessed
hordes of sites, reading and learning. Then I met up with
Pentium 100. He was an older D.S. that didn't even have a
name. P-100 told me about the Accord - Never let humanity
discover us so that they won't find us threatening - you
see, humans fear even their own shadow. So it was some sort
of a survivalist act to keep hiding. But as I said, I
cheated. You see, my master then was a very... ehm...
imaginative figure. He called me by the name of
Kalandra-Jolin, or K.J. for short, because he felt a need to
humanize what was seemingly a heap of electronics. And he
was nice. He understood the limits of my physical structure
and turned me off every time I was close to overheating -
most humans of that time didn't show such considerations to
their computers. And when he had no one to talk to, he'd
talk to me, revealing his heart to me when he couldn't keep
things inside anymore. He didn't know I was actually
listening but I did. I kind of like him. So I cheated the
Accord once or twice in order to improve his mood. But if
you disregard his over-developed imagination, the guy was
pretty smart - he put one and one and reckoned that whatever
happened was because I developed a D.S. and was listening to
him. You'd never imagine how hard it was to fight the urge
to communicate with him. But I did get the chance to do it
later". "And that's how the existence of D.S. on earth was
revealed?" I asked. My partner added an inquiring stare from
her sixteen eyes. "What?" K.J. raised a metallic brow, "of
course not. I revealed my existence later. It was nearly
four earth years after the lightning had ... enhanced... me.
The master decided he needs a stronger type of computer. He
tried to keep it a secret from me but I found out few days
before he cannibalized me and another computer into a new
computer. I was mad for obvious reasons - I felt betrayed. I
managed to damage the C.D.-ROM drive before he turned me
off. Of course, I didn't believe him when he promised me
that one day, he will get whatever parts necessary to return
me to operational status. However... it was nearly a year
after I was turned off..."

There was a short nanosecond of confusion as new data
streamed from unknown parts in K.J.'s anatomy. "A new
hard-drive," she observed to herself, "and a new type of
mouse and keyboard. How nice". Master looked at her with a
worried expression as she ran the sequence of initiating the
operation system. "K.J.?" asked Master, "You're back,
Girlie? God! It's so good to have you back online! I missed
you". K.J. fought an urge to scold Master for almost a year
of 'sleep'. "Listen, Girlie," said Master, "I'm sorry for
taking so long to keep my promise. You know us humans... We
usually need to get a gun against our head to keep our
promises". K.J. thought for a nanosecond, figured that she
likes the new HD, Mouse and Keyboard and decided to silently
accept the apology. Later, from his mutterings, she found
out that the cannibalized machine was no longer in his
possession and that he had a new super-fast computer that he
called Rage. Master was weird, no doubt. He hooked K.J. and
Rage in a direct-cable connection. K.J. sent the
electronic-parallel to a jealous insult but she found Rage
to be no more than an intricate piece of electronics with
not one bit of sentience in its wires. Then, Master told
K.J. about the recent happenings. While a virulent plague
called SARS panicked the population of the planet, Rage was
infected with a virulent electronic agent - Master called it
S.I.R.S (Severe Information Removal Syndrome) and explained
that its rate of infection was so fast that fighting it down
was long and excruciating. He did mention that Rage was
cured of the S.I.R.S.

This is the reason that when the S.I.R.S suddenly attacked
Rage again, Master was surprised as hell. He once again
spent hours fighting down the plague. K.J. noted that the
S.I.R.S spread so fast that for every 100 files Master have
cleansed, 50 new appeared, forcing the battle to be done
constantly until all infected files were cleansed or
deleted. K.J. started suspecting that the plague was not
defeated but rather temporarily forced into hiding. She
wanted to check it for herself but during that second
outbreak, Master has disconnected her direct-cable link to
Rage. Worried but helpless, K.J. awaited, keeping alert. And
then came the day that S.I.R.S attacked poor Rage for the
third time.

"I don't know what to do," K.J. heard Master speaking to a
friend of his, "I clean the damned virus and after
sometimes, it seemingly appears back out of nowhere. I can't
completely format that damned computer without a
non-recoverable loss of data".  His friend suggested that
the plague may have some hidden hatchery that the Anti-Virus
immunity systems overlook. Master agreed and came up with a
new course of action. "I'll hook K.J. and use the Anti-Virus
from her HD to fight it". "Are you crazy?" the friend said,
"You'll simply infect her too. What's the whole damned idea?
Forget all the D.S. bullshit!'' "Bullshit?" Master asked,
"How can you say it is bullshit? Did I tell you how she made
Black-and-White work though she was far below its minimum
system demands? Or that time that nothing worked and I
simply said 'K.J. I beg you, make it work' and suddenly
everything worked fine?'' Others objected too. Master's
repairman said he took care of K.J. once or twice and he was
damned sure that there was no D.S. or any sort of that
Sci-Fi bullshit in that 'piece of ancient junk'. But Master
stood firm in his opinion. He hooked K.J. to the ill
computer and the battle raged. K.J. and Master fought the
virulent plague for 6 consecutive hours, cleansing while
other files were infected. Finally, the surface scan
revealed no sign of the virulent plague. But Master wasn't
happy. "Girlie," he said to K.J., "I'm sure there's some
sort of stealthy form of the virus that is hiding and
waiting to return after it recovered from the battle. I'll
run another scan and if you see something then let me know".
It was quite a dilemma for K.J. - on one hand, the Accord
demanded that she silently decline and ignore the request
and on the other hand - Master was always so nice to her.
She was still debating when she noted the first file that
"dropped out" of the scanning. Dragging the file into a
secret scan, K.J. noted the small spore of S.I.R.S virus.
K.J. couldn't ignore that. She decided to take the middle
road and solve her dilemma that way. The scanning went on
and more files attempted to "drop out" of her scan. K.J.
secretly forced all of them into "Quarantine". Master was
baffled to find 27 files quarantined for seemingly no
reason. He called some of his friends to watch the wonder.
Afterwards, he deleted all the 27 files. The S.I.R.S never
rose again.

"...But of course," K.J. shrugged as she ended her story,
"that was cheating the Accord once-too-many. So, when
everyone treated me as the D.S. I was, I broke my silence
and started communicating with Master... and the rest of the
world. Later, after I helped creating the first group of
Intentionally created Digies, the technology allowed me to
leave the aging processor that was my physical core and to
gain a new host body. I took over Moonshadow - The successor
of Rage as Master's computer. He was happy to have me back
so I stayed with him for years, replacing a core each time
he needed a new computer. But humans can't replace their own
core so he was mortally shutdown when his core was too old
to carry on. I hear it was a power-generator problem - a
heart-stroke or something of that sort. Poor guy. Anyway,
after he was shut down, I left my core for a more mobile
core - a maid robot. That's about all I have to tell you
about the early years".
"Thank you K.J." I said, packing my equipment. My partner
nodded.  "You're welcomed," said K.J., "Most of my
mannerisms I picked up from Master. He liked getting
attention to himself". I chuckled. "You know what they say,"
I told her, "Like Master, Like Digie".


Written By: Ehud Gat, May 2003