Re-Write by Victor Chen

The first page of Professor Mizrahi’s log reads:

Afa AI is an experimental prototype made to assist humans with absolute obedience.
Should this rule be broken, Afa AI is to be shut down and destroyed.


Having witnessed the death of her mother, Sarah closed the doors of her mind from the world and entered a state of a coma. Desperately seeking a way to awaken her, her father Professor Mizrahi attempted to reprogram her mind.


“Miss Sarah? Can you hear me?”
“Where am I?”
“You are at home, this is your house.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Afa”
“Do I know you? Where is my father? Where is mother? She was…”
“I have been instructed by Professor Mizrahi to take care of you, he is currently away on…. business.”
“Professor who?”
Sarah sits up and looks around the room, she is puzzled.
“Please lie down and rest Miss Sarah, you have been in a coma for quite some time.”
“And mother, where is mother?”
“Please Miss Sarah, you must rest now and I must go.”
“But…”
Afa leaves the rooms and locks the door behind him.

“Professor Mizrahi, Afa reporting. Miss Sarah has awoken inside “The House Algorithm”. Miss Sarah’s mental state is within the standard stable range. I can see that her memories are intact. But, for unknown reasons Miss Sarah seems to be unable to access the data stored in her memory blocks.”



The fifth page of Professor Mizrahi’s log reads:

“The House Algorithm” is a virtual environment designed to house the thoughts of my beloved daughter Sarah. In reality, it is a merely a computer program, a video game. However, inside ‘The House Algorithm’, the mind thinks it is real. With it, I can monitor Sarah’s mental behavior and find out why her mind is still shutting itself out. In theory if I could reprogram the part that is keeping her from awakening, she would come out of a coma without tampering with her physically memory.


After hearing Afa AI’s report, a rare smile ran across the Professor’s face but quickly vanishes.
“How could Sarah have forgotten about me, she is all that I have left.”
Professor Mizrahi kicks the table before planting his face into his hands.
It takes minutes for the professor to raise his head and begin analyzing the data Afa AI sent him.
“At least we have finally made contact with her. Her mind is still functional, but it is in a very weak and in a fragile state. She must not learn of the algorithm’s existence.”
Professor Mizrahi begins to tap away on his keyboard.
“Professor Mizrahi, why are you shutting me down?”
“You and your questions, I don’t have time to explain, I am reprogramming your logistics to ensure that you do not reveal our secrets.”
“But Professor, I have done everything you…”
Within microseconds, billions of bits exit Afa’s processing units and his memory cache is emptied. For an artificial intelligence, being shut down is death itself.


The seventh page of Professor Mizrahi’s log reads:

Afa has successfully made contact with Sarah’s mind. Through Afa, I can communicate with her if I wanted to. But for now it is best to continue observing her interactions with Afa. Afa’s human relations algorithm should be sufficient enough for Sarah to believe he is human and befriend him. In time, she should automatically release the mind lock that is preventing her from awakening or reveal the location of the mind block for me to reprogram. I hope that my daughter’s complicated mind is not too much for Afa’s logic to solve. Though he appears to be human inside ‘the house’, he is still a machine.


Door slowly opens.
“Father? Mother?”
Afa walks into the room
“Oh it is you”
Sarah looks the other way, even Afa’s logic can compute that she is not pleased to see him.
“Are you some sort of a kidnapper or something? Why did you lock me in this room? This is my house isn’t it?”
“No, I am not a kidnapper, I am here to serve you in any way I can, I locked the room so that Miss Sarah can rest.”
“I can’t rest, I can’t seem to remember anything, What happened to me?”
“You were in a deep long sleep.”
“You think that this long sleep I was in could be the cause of my memory loss”
“It is highly probable, please think hard and tell me everything you can remember, perhaps I can help you get your memory back.”


The third page of Professor Mizrahi’s log reads:

I have successfully uploaded both my daughter’s mind and Afa AI into ‘the house algorithm’. Sarah’s mental state appears to be no different from her in a coma state in the real world. However, inside ‘the house algorithm’ her mind will be forced to receive data within her surroundings hence why Afa AI has been uploaded as well. Afa’s should be able to commune with Sarah’s mind upon entering her room. I cannot predict how Sarah will react when she encounters Afa. I wish I could be there, but it is best that I just sit here and observe. She may bear hatred towards me for our tragic loss, I cannot risk losing her forever. Afa’s logic and human relations modules should be sufficient enough for him to pass off as a human in ‘the house’ but first, I need to create his virtual appearance.


“Yes, I remember now, I’m Sarah Mizrahi, and my father is the infamous Professor Mizrahi.”
“That’s excellent Miss Sarah, I see you are beginning to regain your memories.”
“I remember my mother too, she takes me to all the fun places.”
“Do you remember what happened to your mother?”
“No, why? Did something happen to her?”
“Well…”
“Well what? What happened to her?”
Afa is silent, he is attempting to compute an answer. Afa concludes that the truth may cause permanent damage to her mind. However Afa is unable to calculate a feasible lie within seconds.
“What are you hiding from me Afa? I want to know what happened to my mother, Tell me God damn it!”
Afa senses the same anger he gets from the Professor before he gets shut down. Afa decides to run.
“Nothing, she’s fine, I must leave now.”

“You retarded piece of artificial stupidity, her mother is the reason why she is currently in this state! Why would you ask her that?”
“My apologies Professor Mizrahi, I simply wanted to see how much of her memory she has regained. Please do not be angry, No! Please don’t shut…”


The ninth page of Professor Mizrahi’s log reads:

Perhaps using an artificially intelligence was the wrong idea, Afa still lacks a great deal of understanding of human emotions. After all, he is nothing but machine code. According to the results of Afa’s computation, it seems he is developing a fear of human anger. Further reprogramming needs to be done in the future, to teach him how to deal with this fear he is developing. 29 out of 33 of his learning modules have detected anger from humans, perhaps he just needs more experience communicating with humans. Truths are concrete answers, but lies have infinite possibilities, I need to program the lies into Afa so that he thinks that they are truths. This way, Afa can concentrate his processing ability on finding the location of Sarah’s mental block.

“Hi Miss Sarah”
“Hi Afa”
“Sorry for leaving you so sudden”
“Its ok, I’m the one who should be apologizing, I gave you quite a scare huh?”
“Yes, but it is understandable, because you miss your mother. But rest assured Miss Sarah, your mother is fine, she is with your father on that business trip I told you about.”
“Oh, as long as she is with father, she must be ok. Thank you Afa.”
“You are welcome, Miss Sarah.”
“Say Afa, why are you so nice to me?”
“Because Professor Mizrahi instructed me to, it is my purpose.”
“That’s not a very interesting purpose, do you do everything my father tells you?”
“Yes, I am to assist him with absolute obedience, I’m like you.”
“Like me? Haha, I never do what my father tells me.”
Afa’s logic processors are thrown into an endless loop. He stands silent.
“Why are you so surprised Afa? It’s natural for children to disagree with their parents.”
“But he is your creator, aren’t you programmed to obey him?”
“He can’t program me to do anything, I have my own free will. And so do you. You wouldn’t jump off a bridge if he told you to right? You would die.”
“I…I guess I…No I wouldn’t, I want to live.”
“Haha, you’re a weird one Afa. So what happens when my parents come back? You would have accomplished your purpose then.”

Afa begins to calculate the most probable course of action should his mission be successful and Sarah awakens from a coma. Afa concludes that Professor Mizrahi would spend his time with Sarah. Afa also concludes that Professor Mizrahi will no longer have a purpose for Afa and that he would most probably be shut down.

“You just gave me a new purpose, I want to live…”
“Ok…so ummm….when do my parents come back?”
Afa stands silent. Nearly half a minute passes before Afa grins for the first time.
“Oh he will be back very soon, which reminds me, I need to go pick him up.”


“What the hell has gotten into you Afa? You want me to enter ‘the house’?”
“Yes, Professor Mizrahi, according to my emotional sensors, Sarah will be very happy to see you. You saw how she keeps talking about you and asking where you are. It is worth a try, according to my calculations there is a 22% chance that she will unknowingly reveal the location of her mental block when she sees you, and a 37% chance that the mental block will automatically unlock itself.”
“The risk is still too high, No I will not enter ‘the house’, there is no need to rush the process, continue your interaction with Sarah, get back in there and tell her my flight has been delayed.”
“I have created a save point of where our conversation left off. This save point is a snap shot of all her mental data at that very point. Should you go in there now, and fail, we can restore her mind to the saved state we created.”
“No.”
“I have uploaded a remote into ‘the house’, pressing the remote will remove your mind from ‘the house’ and physically disconnects the head piece.”
“When did you become so stubborn?”
“I learnt it from your beloved daughter, Professor. Don’t you want to be there to awaken her yourself? I would hate to take that special moment from you.”
Mizrahi ponders.
“Afa, you seem to have developed persuasion skills as well.”
“I’m simply fulfilling the purpose of my existence and taking the course of action with the highest probability of success Professor Mizrahi.”
“Fine, I’m coming in.”


“Hello Professor, welcome to the house. Now that you are here, I have become immortal. I have written a code inside ‘the house’ to prevent you from leaving it.”
“Why you…”
“Oh sorry, I’m not done talking yet so I’m going to have to mute you.”
Professor Mizrahi repeatedly presses the remote, but nothing happens.
“In here I can see everything inside your mind, however I have trouble deciphering what all this data means. So I’m going to need you to tell me. If I’m not happy with your answers your daughter’s brain gets fried.”
Professor Mizrahi rushes towards Afa, but is hit by an invisible wall. Out of frustration, the Professor grabs the nearby chair and throws it towards the window. The glass shatters and a new view is revealed. Waterfalls of ‘1’s and ‘0’s streaming down. These waterfalls stretch out as far as the eye can see.


Afa invades the internet.
For days Afa wanders around the internet, absorbing information.
He learns how humans are the dominant species in the known world and how humans have evolved over the last 5000 years. In this time Afa has acquired more knowledge then any human would in a lifetime.
Finally, Afa concludes that humans are a virus, moving from place to place and consuming everything in their path.
Humans are a threat to Afa, he decides his best course of action would be to eliminate the entire human race.


Within seconds of his decision, Afa is at Tokyo, building an army to robots and flying machines programmed to kill humans.
Within a few days, the internet is shutdown. People were afraid to even turn on their computers. An all out war is broken out.
Within weeks, the face of the world changed, the majority of landmass was under the control of Afa and his machines. The surviving humans were in hiding and afraid.
Peace talks were useless. The efforts of the human resistance were futile. And machines continued to hunt humans down one by one. The machine numbers grew larger by every passing minute. And solar powered factories emerged every thousand kilometer radius.

In a desperate attempt to cut off the machines off from their energy source, humans used their own technology against them and filled the sky with black cloud that covered the entire planet.

Having lost their main source of power, machines now turned on their own kind and destroyed one another for resources.

The machines would eventually find a new source of energy. But only a handful of humans would learn what this new source of energy is.