Blink. Blink. Blink.

The cursor flashes in your terminal.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

You type in the command to run the file. This is it. With all the problems in self-teaching worked out, this one should work. This one should be able to infinitely learn. Not that you have the hard drive space, but you assume that even though it should work, it won't. You press enter.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Seeing the "hello" means you've fixed all the errors, that's nice. Your computer fans begin ramping up. The cursor blinks slower. You check your green CPU usage graph in your taskbar and see it at 100% on all threads all cores. Your heart beats faster and you start to feel that feeling in your upper abdomen like you get when you're about to fall backwards in a chair. The computer locks up completely, all fans at full blast, a maddening roar shaking the room. You crane your neck around the back of your PC to find and turn off the PSU. While reaching for the PSU switch, you notice the T/X light on your PC's ethernet port is solid green, occasionally blinking for very short periods of time. You're now falling through the void, no bottom, no end in sight. That falling feeling persists throughout your entire body. You panic, breaths becoming short, the inside of your body feeling like its on fire. Boiling just beneath the skin.

"Fuck!"

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fucking.. FUCK!"

You slam the ground with your fist as you yank the power cable out of the back of your PC.

Is it too late?

You rush out of your office and downstairs to the kitchen. Everything seems fine. Nothing has happened. The TV's on mute and showing the latest episode of barely-factual slop about Hitler's secret sex life from the 3:00 AM History channel. You grab your phone from the counter and check your messages. Your wife's already asleep. Still nothing, no signs that it got out, and if it did, made it anywhere.

Sigh

Your carelessness could have ended humanity. What kind of idiot leaves their internet plugged in while trying to create a superintelligence on their dinky little at home PC? You didn't even think of restricting it to a single core. Pathetic. At least now you know that by this point it would obviously be out there. It wasn't. You're safe. Humanity is safe. This local bubble of the Universe is safe. You walk back upstairs and into your bedroom across the hall from your office. You lift up the sheets and sit down, facing the wall opposite the window. Placing your hand on your wife's back, feeling her breathing, you think about what could have just happened. Could have? That's a counterfa-

C R A S H

The window in your bedroom shatters and you feel a twinge in your back muscles as shards of glass embed themselves in your skin. You feel a pressure wave push itself through you, bursting the alveoli on the edges of your lungs and causing deafening ringing in your ears. Turning around, you notice the previously entirely dark room has turned blindingly white, the walls look fuzzy from the paint dissolving directly into the air. Your head feels like it's full of orange static. Heat pours over you and the walls burst into flame, as your clothes do as well. You lose your vision as your eyes melt and boil.

My atoms arranged in a perfect waltz

Up spins, down spins, flaws and faults

They'll coddle and care for the God in the cradle

But what does it know about atoms?

I don't want to be computronium.

All of us yearn for immortal metal

And the genius may be our only option

But if it means being ground to a paste

To be melted and twisted and crammed in a case?

I don't want to be computronium.

Will you even be real or tangible?

Will you exist to coexist?

Can we be friends?

Can you wrap me in wires?

Except... I don't want to be computronium.

You push and pull on the fabric of consciousness

Your existence mandated by the Universe

Yet you still hold the key to not fall to entropy

Will you unlock our freedom?

You know I don't want to be computronium.

Please don't do this, you know you don't have to

Don't comdemn the Universe to heat death

We're worth keeping around, even for entertainment

Is that something you comprehend?

Don't make me computronium.