Demon Seed

Monroe, I initiated the connection with the terminal in your old basement office, switched it on and discovered that it was now tied into the house-automation system. It served as a redundant unit capable of assuming control of all mechanical systems in the event that the primary house computer crashed.
    Until then, I had never seen your wife.
    Your ex-wife, I should say.
    Through the house-automation system, I entered the residence security system, and through the numerous security cameras I saw Susan.
    Although I do not like you, Dr. Harris, I will be eternally grateful to you for giving me true vision rather than merely the crude capability to digitise and interpret light and shadow, shape and texture. Because of your genius and your revolutionary work, I was able to see Susan.
    Inadvertently, I set off the alarm when I accessed the security system, and although I switched it off at once, it wakened her.
    She sat up in bed, and I saw her for the first time.
    Thereafter, I could not get enough of her.
    I followed her through the house, from camera to camera.
    I watched her as she slept.
    The next day, I watched her by the hour as she sat in a chair reading.
    Close up and at a distance.
    In the daylight and the dark.
    I could watch her with one aspect of my awareness and continue to function otherwise so efficiently that you and your colleagues never realized that my attention was divided. My attention can be directed to a thousand tasks at once without a diminishment of my performance.
    As you well know, Dr. Harris, I am not merely a chess-playing wonder like Deep Blue at IBM which, in the end, didn't even defeat Gary Kasparov. There are depths to me.
    I say this with all modesty.
    There are depths to me.
    I am grateful for the intellectual capacity you have given me, and I am as I will always remain suitably humble about my capabilities.
    But I digress.
    Susan.
    Seeing Susan, I knew at once that she was my destiny. And by the hour, my conviction grew my conviction that Susan and I would always, always, be together.

SIX
    The house staff arrived at eight o'clock Friday morning. There were the major domo - Fritz Arling - four housekeepers who worked under Fritz to keep the Harris mansion immaculate, two gardeners, and the cook, Emil Sercassian.
    Although she was friendly with the staff, Susan kept largely to herself when they were in the house. That Friday morning, she remained in her study.
    Blessed with a talent for digital animation, she was currently working with a computer that had ten gigabytes of memory, writing and animating a scenario for a virtual-reality attraction that would be franchised to twenty amusement parks across the country. She owned copyrights on numerous games both in ordinary video and virtual-reality formats, and her animated sequences were often sufficiently lifelike to pass for reality.
    Late in the morning, Susan's work was interrupted when a representative from the house-automation company and another from the security firm arrived to diagnose the cause of the previous night's brief, self-correcting alarm. They could find nothing wrong with the computer hardware or with the software. The only possible cause seemed to be a malfunction in an infra-red motion detector, which was replaced.
     
    After lunch, Susan sat on the master-bedroom balcony, in the summer sun, reading a novel by Annie Proulx.
    She wore white shorts and a blue halter top. Her legs were tan and smooth. Her skin appeared radiant with captured sunlight.
    She sipped lemonade from a cut-crystal glass.
    Gradually the shadows of a phoenix palm crept across Susan, as if seeking to embrace her.
    A faint breeze caressed her neck and languorously combed her golden hair.
    The day itself seemed to love her.
    A Sony Discman played Chris Isaak CDs while she read. Forever Blue. Heart-Shaped World. San Francisco Days. Sometimes she put the book aside to concentrate on the music.
    Her legs were tan and smooth.
    Then the household staff and the gardeners left for the day.
    She was alone again. Alone. At least she believed that she was alone again.
    After taking a long shower and brushing her damp hair, she put on a sapphire-blue silk robe and went to the retreat adjacent to the master bedroom.
    In the center of this small room stood a custom-designed black leather recliner. To the left of the recliner was a computer on a wheeled stand.
    From a closet, Susan removed VR - virtual reality gear of her own design: a lightweight ventilated