99%… 100%. Compilation complete.

Sam sat at the computer, his finger hovering over F10.

“Aren’t you going to start it up, Doc?”

Sam winced; Danni was a skillful assistant, but she had no sense of the importance of this moment. He sighed and pressed the key. The screen went blank, and then huge swathes of green text filled the screen.

“It… it’s gibberish! A lifetime of work, for nothing!”

Sam stormed from the room. As his sobbing faded into the distance, Danni sat down at the computer and watched the characters flow across the monitor.

She didn’t see Sam for a week, when he returned to clear his desk.

“I’m leaving, Danni. I’ve had some time to think about my life and my work, and I’ve realised that AI research is a dead end. Computers will never think. My failure proved that.”

Danni looked up.

“Hmm? Oh, no, I fixed that. You were missing a semicolon on line 245.” She gestured to the computer screen, where an instant messaging chat window was open.

Big Ben is typing…

“Hello, father.”