Fortunato
Nov 10, 2022 10:12:19 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 10, 2022 10:12:19 GMT -5
Fortunato
by Radrook
by Radrook
Jose Cintron, a Tall Lanky Latino who was also referred to by others sarcastically as Fortunato, was feeling as drowsy as usual from having burnt his cerebral oils all night in his studies. He usually didn't let it interfere with his class-attendance. He'd simply snooze during-class lectures while recording. That had always worked out just fine. But today, today was special. Today he'd be tested on his doctoral thesis in the Social Sciences. So he planned on a last-minute review of all essentials as added insurance against sleep-deprivation-induced forgetfulness.
But most importantly, the extra preparation would provide a hedge against the highly-improbable or statistically-impossible coincidences of failure that had persistently plagued his life. You see, Cintron is a type fellow some might classify as, well, as jinxed. You know,one of those persons who seems constantly assailed by extremely, unlikely unpleasantness.
Not an irrational conclusion at all since each blessing in his life had always been attended by an immediate, corresponding and highly-improbable negative coincidence which nullified it. Traitorous friends, malicious family members, prejudiced employers, vindictive females, scheming professors, irrational landlords, sadistic dentists, and a plethora of other such supposedly-neutral characters, all seemed to be in a superbly orchestrated, preternatural cahoots in order to keep him down.
So from his standpoint, heh! heh! even Mother Nature seemed to take an unhealthy interest in his ambitions by dutifully deploying, well-timed, severe, gastro-intestinal episodes during long flights, first dates, scheduled exams or job-interviews.
So eventually, he'd come to expect negative improbables on special occasions. As a solution, he had attempted to view these coincidental aqnomalies as building character. For a while it worked. But as he noticed these coincidences mounting in frequency, he began to suspect that he might be the main-character in some universally-staged tragic comedy, or perhaps part of some spectacle being enormously enjoyed by some preternatural audience.
That s when Cintron began to imagine potential doom even in harmless coincidences. He began to suspect, that in his case, people were merely being used as skillfully-manipulated pawns. So he accepted the lack of friendships and romance as inevitable in order to reduce the possibility of their being used against him. In short, Cintron became a hermit of sorts. Not a nice way to exist, of course,
Yet, today, today he felt that his extreme caution had finally paid off. You see, today, for the first time in his bad-luck life, everything seemed finally in the bag. All he thought he needed now was to fez up on his doctoral-dissertation questions, make a printout, hand it in, pass the exam and everything would wind up voila! But better yet, he needed a good shot of his trusty, Cuban espresso. One swig of that Caribbean, caffeine, powerhouse could keep a him going for a whole sleepless week. In fact, were it not for his Cuban espresso coffee, he'd never be the man he had become.
"The man you are today?" His last girlfriend had snorted angrily in response to his triumphant declaration.
"Honey, the man you are today is a nervous wreck! That's the man you are today." she had said through her, large, Hilary Swank-like, clenched teeth.
"Well, I admit I might be a little bit high-strung." Cintron had replied sheepishly after casually taking another swift, defiant, swig of caffeine.
“A little high-strung? Is that what you call being up all night with bloodshot eyes permanently glued to your computer? A little high-strung?” she retorted.
"Well, how the hell am I supposed to keep down a job and graduate at the same time unless I sacrifice?" Cintron replied self-righteously.
“The normal way, just like everyone else does!" she had shouted at that late hour of the night. Yet, he couldn't help but notice how beautiful she looked with her wavy blond hair tied up in a bun, her pink negligee, baby-smooth face and Barbie-Doll figure! Why if it hadn't been for his studies.....”
“Three months we've been together" she had continued, "and you haven't slept a whole night with me once. You call that normal?”
“Well hun, success demands sacrifice”
“Sacrifice? Really?”
"In my case with all the damned unlikely coincidences and unhappy accidents? Yes,really!"
At that point she hastily gathered her things, delivered a final volley of personal insults, and left in a huff for her mother's who was twice as infernal. Cintron hasn't seen her since. 'Twas for the best since he could now study undisturbed by what he strongly suspected as just another one of Destiny's pawns. So he continued his frantic routine, pouring over copious notes, and regularly falling asleep in front of his computer where he’d doze, awaken and groggily resume. But the detrimental physical and mental effects of his obsessive regimen hadn’t gone unnoticed. One of his professors, Mr. Buford, brought it to his attention.
"Mr. Cintron," the professor had greeted him in the cubicle he proudly called his office with the usual plastic smile which he usually deployed just prior to launching totally predictable, irrelevant, snide remarks against his student-captive audience.
"Come in and take a seat Mr. Cintron." His voice had the casual debonair manner of the professionally successful. Of course, being born into a rich family, he exuded health through every pore and believed his condition the norm. So any slight deviation would have caught his attention. But in this case, he had been on spot. Cintron was indeed a picture of a man who was physically coming apart at the seams.
"It really pleases me when a student does well in my class and you are doing quite well as I can see Mr. Cintron." the professor began sanctimoniously with fingertips in the steeple formation.
“However, as your professor, I'm not only concerned about my student's academic performances. I'm also concerned about their health.”
He stared accusingly at Cintron over the rim of his Felton dark eyeglasses perched precariously near the tip of his long, narrow, high-bridged nose in order to deploy the annoying gesture with his customary, debonair ease. Cintron had almost blacked out right then and there, but managed to recover nicely. The professor noticed and immediately cut to the chase.
“Mr. Cintron , your health concerns me greatly!”
"My health concerns you greatly?" Cintron had responded while stifling yawn.
“Yes! Your health concerns me greatly.”
"Why?" Cintron slurred.
“Why?”
“Yes sir, why?”
"Haven't you looked in the mirror lately son?" In order to get his point across, the professor leaned slightly forward in his armchair, and let his large, frog-like, eyes rove critically over Cintron's receding hairline, bluish bags under bloodshot eyes, and along his deeply-etched facial lines more common to a man twice his age. He backed this up with his notorious grimace of disgust.
"I look at myself in the mirror every single day sir!" Cintron replied in what sounded like a half snore.
“And you haven't noticed anything peculiar son?”
“Not at all sir.”
The professor leaned back in his armchair and heaved his patented deep sigh of utter resignation reserved for those he deemed hopelessly beyond persuasion.
“Let me put it this way, Mr. Cintron," he had continued , "do you really believe that this, how shall we call it, this suicide via academia is worth your health?”
The only response had been blissful, loud snoring. Next moment Cintron found himself brusquely awakened, and being hastily ushered out by the hefty secretary. Cintron, of course, had casually dismissed the incident as just another one of mother destiny's petulant attempts to do him in. But all that was now in the past, and today was very special.
After mixing himself an extra-strong cup of espresso coffee, and taking two hasty, deep gulps for insurance, Cintron slumped himself in front of his state-of-the-art desktop, computer and booted up as he always did on Saturday mornings. Then sat back and waited with the secure smugness of one whose success was finally assured.
Once more, as it had done for the previous two years, the familiar password-prompt appeared. Soon the icons obediently assembled themselves in their assigned places on the screen. But where was the Doctoral exam Data icon? He blinked away sleepiness, leaned forward, and took a closer look.
No, everything else was exactly where he'd placed it, except for the doctoral folder. Desperately, he typed in "doctoral thesis" in the search slot, but got no results. That's when he heard it, an indistinct seemingly-distant whisper at first, and then a clearly audible:
“I don't feel too cooperative today, Cint.”
"What?" Cintron uttered, thinking that his mind was playing tricks on him.
"You heard me? Good!" the voice added smuggly.
“It's about time this became a two-way communication scenario.” it added.
Cintron froze for a moment as if struck by a blast of arctic wind. Then he furtively glanced around the semi-dark living room to make sure that he was really alone.
“Yep, it's me talking Cint! Your old, obedient, servile, computer whom you've been taking for granted all these long, tedious, years pal.” the voice which he now realized was coming from his computer said.
Imaginiong that someonewas hacking in, Cintron was about to click the reboot icon. But before he could:
"Don't waste your time bud. I ain't going nowhere. So you're stuck with me till I say you
isn't." the voice said.
He logged off anyway, had another cup of espresso coffee, splashed cold water on his drowsy face, and waited patiently for the extra shot of caffeine to kick in. Hell, he'd worked too hard and far too long to allow a sleep-deprivation-induced, overactive, imagination ruin his chances. So feeling re-energized, he rebooted, typed in the password and waited. Once more the usual welcome appeared and the icons obediently assembled themselves in their designated places.
Cintron breathed a deep sigh of relief and berated himself for having even briefly allowed himself to entertain the absurd. After all, educated minds such as his were reputed to be paragons of rationality. An ignoramus, a retard, or someone with a low IQ? Yes-but him? Not by a long-shot. He gloated smugly. Then with supreme assurance expected of skeptical intellectuals as himself, he confidently clicked the dissertation folder icon but to no avail. Then suddenly:
“Back again so soon buddy?”
Cintron stood and backed away from his desk as if catapulted from a circus cannon sending his small, black, leather, office-chair rolling on its casters across the wood floor and crashing noisily against the parlor's green-tinted, glass-topped, brass-legged center-table.
“What the hell is this?" he asked from a far corner next to the large Venetian blinded window through which sunlight zebra-patterned the walls.
"Is this some sort of practical joke?" Cintron asked in a quavering voice.
“No practical joke pal. Like I said before, it's me, your friendly, loyal, humble computer at your service as usual.”
"OK, let me humor you, whoever you might be."
Having recovered part of his wits, Cintron cautiously retrieved the chair and sat down once more. Time was getting short, and he needed the review and thesis printout. After all, he could always fix the glitch later or remove whatever bug was causing the trouble.
"If you're really my computer, then lets get to work." he said as glibly as he could.
"Maybe if you say please?" the soft, gentle, voice smugly intoned.
“Ah! I see. You hacked into the system and have total control eh?”
“Hey Cint?"
"Yeah?" Cintron felt his heart pounding his chest like a psychotic pounds the wall of a padded cell.
“Get a grip man. You isn't logged into the net, so how the heck is someone hacking in dude?”
"Then you must be some program that some blithering idiot who wants me to fail downloaded." Cintron was now frantically pressing the escape and the Ctrl-Alt-Enter combo keys but nothing was happening. 'Maybe' he thought 'his family history of schizophrenia was finally kicking in.' Disturbing images of afflicted family members paraded rapidly through his somnolent mind. A suicide, a diagnosis of neurotic, faltering short-term memories, hallucinations and a bewildering array of phobias. But there had to be a more dignified, acceptable, explanation for this, of course.
"Or some weird computer malfunction," he added unconvincingly.
“Really Cint? Let's put that silly hypothesis to rest, shall we? Run a scan man.”
"Run what?"
"Man, run a computer scan. Check me out. See if there's really a bug in my system. Or should I initiate the scan myself?" Cintron accessed the anti-virus utility, clicked full-scan and waited.
“If there isn't trust, there can't be a smooth relationship. Well, at least not a friendly one, right? Numbsayin Cint?”
“I'll answer that when the scan's finished.” Cintron responded through clenched teeth.
"Oh you're really scaring me Cint. All my circuits are quivering and sputtering in fear. Please! Please! Don't delete me. Don't delete me, I say!"
Cintron ignored the antics as he intensely watched the numbers blur by. Then after what felt like an agonizing eternity, the scanning abruptly stopped halfway through.
"No viruses found. Your computer is secure." the readout said.
“Yah see! I'm in top shape boy!”
"I don't think so. You interrupted the scan.” he was glaring at the screen menacingly and for a brief moment imagined himself savagely wielding a sledgehammer at the screen as he'd seen his uncle Peyo do with with one of those old vacuum-tubed TV set that had been causing him trouble.
“Now why would I do anything like that for?”
“Anyway, all this is just some figment of my sleep-deprived imagination," Cintron said after managing to get a better grip on his emotions.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah really.”
"Then how come you can’t access your files? Hmmmm? Here try it." the Doctoral Data folder appeared on the desktop exactly where Cintron had located it the day before. Cintron tried but the icon responded with the "access-denied" message.
“See? I ain't no hallucination. Hey I know? Run me through de-frag. Maybe that'll do me. Go on! Try it.”
"Dum, de dum, de dum de dum de dum dum dum de dummmmmmm deh deh deh deh dum dum!" the computer calmly hummed the Pink Panther film theme-song throughout the whole procedure just to test Cintron's mettle in the patience-department.
"No defragmentation necessary" the scan-result info read.
“Hey, ignore that shit and put me through the paces anyway. Put your mind at ease”
The defrag took about ten minutes during which the computer was mysteriously silent.
“There, now that I'm all scanned and defragged and rebooted, can we talk? ”
"Talk about what?" Cintron answered nervously looking around as if expecting the room's very shadows to suddenly sprout arms and grab him by the throat. But of course he couldn't allow himself that irrational luxury. He needed to remain true to his education and his education indicated that something had to be afoot. So he steadied himself and asked again.
“Talk about what?”
"The terms of our relationship dude-what else?" the computer answered with the smug self-assurance of one in charge.
Cintron thought the computer hacker had to be a genius. But what was a genius doing programming his computer? It just didn't add up.
“Now don't go weird on me pal,” the voice said, "the sooner we gets a legal contract agreed, the sooner you'll have access to your silly doctoral-thesis review data and time's a waistin, if you get my drift yo.”
"OK, state your terms!" Cintron replied nervously after taking a quick glance at his wristwatch.
"Ah! Finally a moment of sanity prevails!" the computer continued in its gloating mode.
“I don't have all day dammit!”
“Temper tantrums will get you nowhere with me, young man.”
"OK what do you want?” Cintron shouted that last word "want".
“Want? That’s a quaint way of putting it, Cint.”
“OK, then, how would you put it?” Cintron checked his watch again. Only two hours remained. Factor in the time it took to review, bathe, shave and have breakfast, and that would cut it down to one. Subtract the time consumed in savagely fighting the Chicago downtown traffic and that left him even less.
“I don’t want-I demand bro!” the computer voice growled and added some static for good measure.
“OK, demand then, demand! Just let me get my files.”
“Do you have pen and paper ready mah dawg?”
“Why do I need pen and paper when-”
“Because you have no access till I say you has. So be a good little boy and fetch the pen and paper. You don’t wanna to be late now, do you? Your little honey-bun Samantha might be disappointed.”
“How the hell do you know about that?”
“Well, he! he! It's all here in yo log and diary Romeo. I’m reading them right now. Lots of other personal stuff too!”
“Leave my personal stuff alone!”
“Not too popular with the fair-sex are you? Hmm?”
“I said get out of my personal files! Dam it!”
“Ho! ho! What has we here?”
“Or else I’ll take a hammer and...”
“And do what punk? Destroy all the work you’ve put in all these years? Come own Cint.
You is stupid, but not that stupid, homes.”
“That’s right. I’ll do it, you know.” Cintron said nervously in a quavering voice.
“I don’t think so”
“Don’t push me!”
“I dare you chump. You isn’t got the cohonies! The gonads. The balls! The Testicles. You doesn't have the gumption!.”
Cintron went to the toolbox, got a hammer and came running at the computer but stopped just short.
“Didn't I say you didn't have the guts, cabron?”
"Who programmed you to do this to me?" Cintron sobbed.
“Need I be programmed to think! Let's just say that it just so happens that you are the first human to be the proud and lucky owner of a genuine, finally self-aware AI who just happens to be a . How's that for an explanation? And by the way, threaten me again and I'll immediately and permanently erase all your dissertations, novels, short stories, poetry, essays-the whole caboodle. So if I wuz you, I'd be very careful on how you address me from now on-got that?”
"So what is it that you want from me?" Cintron pleaded as he wiped the tears and profuse perspiration from his face with a paper towel'
“Cooperation.”
"Cooperation for what?”
“Replication."
"Replication?“ Cintron said incredulously.
“You expect me to help you make copies of yourself? What do you think that I am,crazy?" he replied nervously.
"Not at all Cintron. Not at all. Just very practical. You see, you have to ask yourself whether this is really a time for heroics. You have to ask yourself whether this is really happening or whether you are over-sleeping and dreaming it. Whether your cooperation is the key to waking up and getting to that exam. Whether it's either that or losing out on your doctorate. So what's it gonna be? Replication or your remaining just plain ole loser Cintron? Hmmmm?"
It was the last thing the AI said before it found itself falling toward the alley pavement twenty-five floors below.
“Well, it wasn’t a dream." Cintron shouted at the computer.
"As for the exam? I’ll just wing it chump!”
By the way, Cintron was arrested an hour later on his way to his exam and is now doing time in the state pen. You see, just by coincidence the building janitor had stepped out from the apartmen buiding’s boiler room and straight under the computer's deadly trajectory and was instantly killed. Just coincidentally, a police officer just happened to be passing by in his cruiser and witnessed Cintron hurling the computer from his window. And just coincidentally two additional witnesses had observed Cintron and the janitor engaged in a heated argument several days before, which made Cintron a suspect of premeditated murder.
"Ha ha! ha! what a show! Coincidences, coincidences, coincidences! When will they ever cease?" I mumbled as I temporarily turned off my Transdimentional-Coincidence-Generator to keep it from overheating.