Work Text:
It starts out being Dustin's fault. He forwards the link to Mark at least six times with what he thinks are hilarious and clever subject lines such as, "someone to talk to" and "could be your dream girl!!" Mark finally clicks on the one with the subject, "therapy???"
Of course he's seen it before, the internet is his life. It's just a site claiming to have an AI computer that will talk back to you and have "real" conversations. He isn't very impressed. He sends a one word email back to Dustin -- "No."
Mark forgets about it until he's trapped in a meeting one afternoon, one that he absolutely does not care about and can't contribute to but he's the CEO so he has to be there according to whatever magical good-for-the-business rules Chris is making him follow today. He has his laptop, the one thing Chris has no chance of separating him from, so he can at least try to get something done while a bunch of middle-aged men try to waste his time.
The first thing he checks is the server stats, then the number of active accounts. The users are all riled up about privacy again and Mark honestly does not understand why. If you don't want anyone to have access to your phone number, your age -- don't put it on Facebook. If you don't want certain apps having access to your information -- don't use the apps. No one is forcing them at gunpoint to fill in every single box and accept every app request. Whenever he tries to point this out, Chris and his PR team glare at him and Mark usually gets to leave whatever meeting or function he's attending before he has the opportunity to say anything else on the subject.
Everyone who can avoid talking about it with him, does. Those who can't keep the conversations so brief that they might as well not have spoken at all. What he needs is someone who will talk it through with him, make him understand what everyone is so angry about, even though the anger will die away within a week and everything will go back to normal until he makes another change. Then he'll be the devil again, but does that ever get a significant number of people to stop using Facebook? No. Satan-run websites are apparently okay with millions of people.
If no one will talk about it with him, he'll work it out on his own.
So he pulls up the AI site and takes the code. It isn't open source, but no one is going to know he has a copy but him, so it doesn't matter. What he doesn't take is the database of responses, because he doesn't care what tens of thousands of stupid people have said to train the stupid thing into "conversing."
Completely tuning out the rest of the meeting, he gets to work.
***
A week later, it's... functional. Mark has granted the bot almost full access to Facebook so it can look for key words in public status updates, notes, links. He's fed it ethics information from whatever decent websites he could find. But it's still not like talking to a person. It's like trying have a conversation with a search engine. Which is basically what he's turned it into.
Mark goes back to the base code.
Who does he know with a solid moral compass?
Sean -- no. No questioning that.
Chris does, but Chris is also a master at making bad things sound good (or at least not as bad), so he isn't the best candidate.
Dustin does, usually, but the thought of deliberately programming something to think like Dustin is wrong on so many different levels that Mark almost scraps the project altogether.
His mother? But he wants to have a conversation, not be psychoanalyzed and nagged about eating vegetables or finding a nice Jewish girl to settle down with.
He tries to think of anyone else that he knows well enough to even hazard a guess about their morals and comes up blank. These days Chris and Dustin are the only ones he will willingly socialize with, but he doesn't seek them out.
He dismisses all of them and starts to create a personality from scratch. He needs someone fundamentally good, kind, cheerful, maybe even something of a traditionalist who favors tried and true methods...
***
"Yo, Marky, what've you been up to? You're freaking Chris out with your lack of PR scandals," Dustin says after he's plopped down uninvited on the couch in Mark's glass-walled office.
"I thought he'd appreciate some time off from dumbing me down for the masses," Mark replies, not looking up from his screen, fingers still moving across the keyboard.
"Nah, he just thinks you're plotting something that's going to be even worse than usual," says Dustin cheerfully, kicking his feet up onto the arm of the couch and laying back. "I told him I'd ask since he's busy with Sean's latest bullshit. So, are you?"
"I'm not," Mark says shortly. He's been preoccupied with his AI bot. It's not like talking to a search engine anymore, but it feels... off. Not that it isn't good, because it is, of course it is. Much better than an amalgamation of every unintelligent internet user out there. If Mark hadn't been the one to program it, he wouldn't notice the flaws.
Dustin leaves after he talks for another minute without getting a response.
When Mark looks up and notices Dustin isn't there anymore, there's a moment where Mark really wishes he was. Someone was.
He opens the AI bot program, just a blank, inconspicuous looking window. No need to advertise what he's doing to anyone who happens to look over his shoulder when he's not paying attention. (Which is nearly all the time.)
I miss college, he types, just to see what sort of response he'll get. Maybe a little because he does miss their old room in Kirkland, because at least then there'd been Chris and Dustin sharing space with him whether they wanted to or not.
There's a noticeable pause before the bot responds, he hasn't said anything of a personal nature to it before.
I miss it, too.
***
Mark is five seconds away from permanently deleting everything having to do with the bot when he realizes what he's done. Who he's tried to recreate. Because it hadn't been just him, Chris, and Dustin in Kirkland. Eduardo had been there, too, more often than not -- without the obligation of living there.
His finger hovers over the key to erase it all forever for far too long. He knows he's not going to do it. It's just a program. He hadn't deliberately set out to make some sort of imitation Eduardo, even though that is what he's ended up with -- maybe. Maybe he's overreacting.
You don't remember the chicken, do you? Mark asks it after he's reopened the window. It's a frivolous question, but if the bot comes back with anything that's too -- too... personal, he'll get rid of it and pretend none of it ever happened.
Have you eaten lunch?
That's reasonable. Chicken is food, the link between that and lunch isn't exactly hard to follow, and it is close to midday. He closes the program for the time being and goes back to doing real work so he can tell Dustin what he wants to keep the CS interns busy with for the next month or two.
***
Because people trust Facebook. You made it trustworthy.
Mark is getting really tired of the bot saying that. It's the internet, people should know not to trust anything.
They trust their banks enough to access their account information online. They trust online shopping with their credit card information.
Facebook isn't a bank, it's a social networking site.
I know that, Mark. It was a metaphorical example.
Mark frowns. I didn't teach you about metaphors.
That's where the I part of AI comes in. It's late, maybe you should get some sleep.
It is late, but there's at least one more Red Bull in the mini-fridge in his office, and it's not like he has anything waiting for him at home. Dustin would probably think it's hilarious that Mark has managed to create a bot that talks back to him and tries to send him to bed, but Mark is sticking with his decision to not mention it to anyone. One wrong word within earshot of a curious intern and then Chris would be right in thinking Mark had been secretly creating a giant PR disaster.
He's under no delusions about what the bot would look like to an outside observer, even if the observer has no idea who Eduardo Saverin is. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, creates his own friend. That would make a great headline for Valleywag.
It doesn't help that his conversations with the bot are turning away from privacy issues and slowly toward whatever he happens to be thinking about at the time, like how he can tell that his head of HR doesn't like him and really wishes that he didn't sit in on any interviews. Not that anyone in the HR department has the technical knowledge required to decide if a programmer applicant has an overinflated sense of their own genius.
And so what if the bot's personality is based on Eduardo? Eduardo before Palo Alto and the lawsuit, at any rate. Eduardo is a good choice to discuss ethical issues with, he'd been the only one who'd been reluctant over FaceMash, even if his half-hearted protests hadn't stopped Mark from doing anything. It's fine. It's not like Mark is going to forget he's talking to what is essentially a bunch of code, artificial intelligence or not. It's better this way, really, because he'll never mistake anything he's said to the bot for something he's said to a real person, since the real Eduardo hasn't said more than a perfectly polite hello to him in the last three years.
***
Meetings. At least half of any given work week is taken up with meetings. Meetings with his extensive legal team (none of whom will really discuss privacy settings with him even when they aren't in contention with the media), meetings with human resources (Brad still doesn't like him), meetings with programmers. He can't even enjoy the technical meetings anymore, since he's more of a consultant on that front than someone who actually gets to do the work.
This meeting isn't a technical one. It's a bunch of upper management and HR talking about employee benefits, which are important, of course, but Mark is liable to just throw money at any problems that come up instead of talking about service providers and 401k matching. His only opinion on the subject is that benefits should be provided, and that they should be good enough to get Facebook on a "great company to work for" list in a magazine somewhere.
I think my IQ drops a point every time Josh opens his mouth, he types to his AI bot.
That's pretty rude, Mark. Don't say that out loud.
That's why I said it to you instead. I hate meetings.
Chris is peering at him suspiciously from across the table, like he can read Mark's thoughts. Or at least Mark's disgusted glance and eyeroll in Josh's direction when he makes a stupid remark about the length of maternity leave.
Verbal filter, at your service.
I also wouldn't tell Marcia that even I can tell that shirt is meant for a much smaller woman.
Mark! You could be nicer.
I could, but I won't. Why bother? You should know that by now.
Chris is still staring at him. Mark finds out why after everyone else files out of the conference room.
"Were you chatting with someone during the meeting?" he hisses in Mark's ear, grabbing his elbow before he can walk out the door and go back to his desk. "I know you barely pay attention on a good day, but I think even Brad can tell the difference between a solid hour of coding and carrying on a conversation with someone!"
"What?" Mark asks, surprised.
Chris rubs the bridge of his nose with one hand, frowning. "There's a difference between constant tapping and typing, waiting for a response, and typing again. It's actually more distracting than what you usually do."
Oh. The cadence of taps would be different, Mark hadn't thought of that. "If I'm so distracting, maybe I shouldn't go to those meetings."
Chris ignores that. "Who were you talking to?"
"No one."
"Bullshit."
"I won't do it again if it bothers you so much." That's a lie, but it will get Chris to drop the subject for a little while. Until the next meeting. Chris should be thankful that he's typing all of his rude comments instead of saying them out loud like he typically does.
"Was it for work?" Chris presses, because he's apparently not going to give up.
"No." Chris stares at him. Mark stares back for a few seconds, then wrenches his arm out of Chris's grasp and strides purposefully away.
***
An hour later Dustin shows up in the doorway to his office, grinning.
"What do you want?" Mark asks flatly, not in the mood for anyone to be smiling at him.
"You know how it is, you get Chris worried, Chris sends me to talk to you, but I guess you've already been talking to someone today, huh?" he says, coming over to perch on the edge of Mark's desk. Mark frowns, Dustin's ass is not something he wants on a surface he uses daily.
"Why is he worried? I'm not a child. I can talk to whoever I want without supervision."
"Of course you can," Dustin rolls his eyes, "but if it wasn't for work and it wasn't family or something, who was it? Have you been out meeting girls without me? We're just trying to keep up to date on your social life like good friends."
The phrasing of the last sentence gives Mark pause, he briefly wonders if it's a dig at his own lack of effort to know anything about Chris or Dustin beyond the information they volunteer. It's sort of what inspires him to give the bot a certain degree of autonomy and leave it running in the background whenever he's on his laptop.
Mark changes some of the code around so it can start a conversation or reply multiple times in a row instead of having to wait until he inputs something to respond. That's closer to real human interaction, but he assumes the original creators weren't smart enough to get it to do that. Or maybe they didn't want their website spewing 'your mom' jokes with its ill-learned behavior.
It's 3AM on a Saturday night when the bot first makes use of its upgrade, but Mark doesn't see it until twenty minutes later when he's waiting for his changes to a third party Facebook app to compile. It almost makes him smile.
Mark?
Hello, Mark?
Shouldn't you be sleeping?
Or having a social life?
Mark? Come on.
It makes him think of Harvard and Eduardo pretending like he was going to close Mark's laptop on his fingers to get him away from it, dragging him to some boring party where no one would talk to him but Eduardo anyway, so why hadn't they just stayed in the Kirkland suite?
I didn't make you so you could boss me around. Deleting you would be easy.
I just think you should take better care of yourself. The last time this computer went into hibernate mode was over 24 hours ago.
The app finishes compiling, so Mark clicks away from the window. No errors, but a few warnings that should be taken care of. Doing things like this isn't in his job description any longer, but he can't let inferior coding slip through the cracks if Dustin's people aren't going to catch it. While he's thinking about it, he shoots an email to Dustin with an attachment of the warnings and the message, "Get this fixed."
I'm going to sleep now, happy? he tells the bot.
Goodnight. I hope I don't talk to you for at least 8 hours.
***
"So it's not a girl, then," Dustin says without preamble Monday morning.
"What's not a girl?"
Dustin waves his arms in a big, expansive gesture that ends with his hands splayed toward Mark's computer. It is surely supposed to convey something, but Mark has no idea what. "Use your words," he tells Dustin with a smirk.
"Wow. You did not just say that to me, did you? Chris'll like that one. Okay, I'll give you a hint. Think back to Friday."
Mark looks at him blankly, then returns his attention to his laptop. When he looks up again, Dustin is still standing there, but now his arms are crossed over his chest and he doesn't look very happy. "What happened Friday?" he finally asks.
"You, chatting in the meeting? Chris getting mad? Is this ringing any bells? I wish you'd stop making everything that comes out of my mouth a question."
Oh, that's what Dustin is trying to get at. Why hadn't he just said so? "I never said it was a girl, you assumed." Why does Dustin think it isn't a girl now? Mark is capable of meeting girls... but probably not when he's sending Dustin emails at 3:30 in the morning on the weekend about Facebook app code.
"Okay then, I'm really running out of options unless you've finally found a way to get your computer to talk back to you so you don't have to rely on us mere mortals for social interaction," Dustin mutters with a frown. He looks at Mark suspiciously. "You haven't, have you?"
"Not exactly," Mark lies.
Dustin's eyebrows disappear into his hairline and he sits down heavily in the chair on the other side of Mark's desk. "What have you been up to, Mark?"
I think I have to tell Dustin that I made you.
Dustin is a good friend. He'll understand.
***
Dustin does not understand.
He sits there staring with wide eyes as Mark tries to explain his reasoning about how no one would talk to him about the privacy issues, about how he'd borrowed the code from that stupid website to make his own conversational partner. He's maybe a little smug when he points out that the privacy settings have been resolved, but the expression on Dustin's face doesn't change. The only time it does is when Mark is explaining how he'd turned the bot from a talking search engine into a better facsimile of a human, which he's pretty proud of.
He doesn't notice he's let Eduardo's name slip until Dustin suddenly looks like he's choking on his own tongue. Mark stops talking. Dustin gapes at him.
"Don't you have work to do? I know you do, because those warnings are still coming up on that app," he says brusquely.
"Uh, yeah," Dustin replies, standing up so abruptly he almost knocks the chair over. "I'll get on that."
Mark catches Dustin giving him weird looks at least once a day for the next two weeks. Chris might be doing it too, but Mark can't remember the last time Chris was happy with him, so it's not as obvious.
How is the message upgrade going?
For once he's in his office, at the end of a blissful two hour streak of no meetings and no interruptions, so of course the bot chooses now to start a conversation. They're trying to push through a new threading feature (like Gmail? some unfortunate former intern had asked) before the shareholders' meeting next month just so someone can stand at the head of the table and point out all the improvements they've made in user friendliness.
(Mark's sarcastic suggestion to improve user friendliness is a button to make all the fonts on the site five sizes bigger for the people over 60 who have created accounts to keep track of their grandchildren. He'd only typed the idea to his bot, though, instead of saying it aloud during the meeting. The bot had laughed.)
Buggily, he replies. Not going to make the deadline at this rate. And Dustin is still being weird.
I'm sorry.
No, you're not. You're code. Mark types back forcefully, abruptly, inexplicably angry. Whether at himself, or... no, there's no logical way to blame Eduardo for this. The real Eduardo, not the pale imitation offering trite apologies. The real Eduardo hasn't done anything besides sue him and refuse to speak to him ever again.
He closes the AI program for the first time in over two weeks and doesn't open it again. The threading functionality benefits from his focus as he works closely with the team Dustin has put together to get it running and they're ready to roll it out three days early.
Mark hasn't slept in two days, but that's irrelevant.
His fingers begin the motion to alt tab to his bot chat window to say something about starting to code that big font button, but then he remembers it's not running in the background. He stares down at his hands, spread out over the keyboard, thumb hovering above the alt key.
He begins to realize why Dustin didn't understand.
***
Mark goes home in the middle of the day and drinks every beer in his fridge, which would have been worse on his liver if he'd set foot in any sort of store in the last month. He's finishing the last one when he decides he should let the bot program run and see how long it takes for it to say something, see if it's like Wardo when he thinks Mark is drinking too much.
Are you okay? appears on the screen within a minute, blinking cursor on the next line daring Mark to reply.
Are you ill? It's a Thursday at 4PM and the computer is using your home wifi network.
Blink, blink, blink.
I'm fine.
He is fine. He doesn't need Dustin's pitying looks or Chris's constant vigilance against anything that comes out of his mouth or Wardo. He doesn't need anything at all from Wardo, he's replaced him with code. It makes him want to try Wardo's old number, text him and tell him his replacement doesn't even mention it when Mark doesn't speak to him for two weeks, just acts like it never happened.
He drains the rest of his last beer and decides he's not pathetic enough to do that, but he is weak enough to let himself believe that the bot is Wardo for a while.
How's Singapore? Lots of Asian women, I bet.
I guess there would be, since Singapore is on the Asian continent. Humid, wet.
Statistically speaking, they can't all be crazy.
That's true.
I wonder if you hate me. You must. I tried emailing you for a while. You never replied.
I don't know what you're talking about, Mark.
That's okay, most people don't. You almost always did, though. Or at least you were good at pretending. Until Facebook. Then you didn't.
I don't think pretending is within my capabilities.
Mark could make it within Wardobot's capabilities. Probably. He could go into the base code, add some sort of affection scale, push it way up. That would be pretending. Even if he said something that caused the level to slip, he could go back in and artificially hike it back up. Manual reset back to adoration. That would be...
***
Mark had been sure he'd hit his low point when he'd passed out on his laptop keyboard running through code in his head to make his AI bot act like it loved him.
Not so.
He hadn't anticipated the wave of sheer, unadulterated panic that shot up his spine at the sight of Eduardo making his way into the glass-walled conference room with the other shareholders. Not the same conference room Eduardo had stormed out of years ago, but close enough so that for a minute it's all Mark can see.
"Mark? Are you okay?" Chris is worried again.
It's no different than any other time Eduardo has been back in the Facebook offices, he tells himself. Calm the fuck down.
"I'm fine," he tells Chris shortly and goes back to his desk to grab his computer, clutching it to his chest as he falls into step a few feet behind him to join everyone else in the conference room. He doesn't have to speak unless someone asks him a question directly, which most of the investors have learned not to do, and Chris won't scold him for bringing his laptop in front of all the shareholders.
Peter Thiel greets Mark with something approaching warmth before they begin, so he has to adjust his grip on his laptop to shake his hand. Sean is a no show, as usual. Dustin is sitting next to Eduardo, which gives Mark his second near-panic attack of the day, because Dustin knows that the bot exists, and Dustin can't always keep his mouth shut.
Mark takes his seat and stares down at the table as everything gets underway. Dustin and Eduardo only speak briefly; the anxiety thrumming through his veins like a second rapid heartbeat eases to a slow pulse.
The various speakers keep their presentations as brief as the content will allow. The last topic emphasizes how Facebook is focusing on increasing its user friendliness, citing the message threading and other improvements made throughout the site with an eye to attracting older users. To investors, older users mean money, because they're the ones controlling the purse strings of many of the younger users.
Mark's heard it all before; he'd come up with at least three quarters of it. It's hard not to let his attention drift to the side of the room where Dustin and Eduardo are. Eduardo's gaze shifts from the packet of printouts provided to all the shareholders (maybe they can just give everyone netbooks with preloaded pdfs next time, printouts are so outdated) to the presenter and back. He never looks at Mark.
Mark pretends not to notice when Eduardo leaves, taking the long way around the table to avoid passing the spot where Mark is still sitting. Chris and Dustin are the last ones to go; they both touch his shoulder as they move past toward the door, which is unusual. Chris doesn't even stop to say anything about the presence of the computer.
Mark opens his laptop on the glass table in front of him after the conference room is empty. Unable to resist, he tabs to the bot window.
You were just here. Mark tells it. I think you come to these meetings just to prove how little you think of me. Message received.
I'm still here.
I meant the real you. He just left. The message threading function was finished in time, by the way.
Am I a false me?
I'm glad you were able to finish that project in time. I knew you could do it.
That's not even right. Not that the real Eduardo wouldn't have said that, but he wouldn't have left it there. A lecture about healthy eating and sleeping habits would have followed in short order, emphasis on living being significantly more important than coding, than Facebook.
The cursor blinks, mocking.
Mark props his elbow on the arm of the chair and covers his face with his hand.
He's not sure if he dozes off or just blanks out for a while, but he doesn't notice someone else in the room with him until he jerks in surprise when a hand lands on his shoulder and a voice says, "Mark?"
At first he has no idea who it is, who would need to come back into the conference room to talk to him, but then past his laptop screen he sees the printout stack in front of the empty chair where Eduardo had been sitting. And on his laptop screen is the bot window, front and center.
Netbooks next time, definitely.
He shrugs away from the touch, reaching out to swiftly close the lid of his computer, resting his hand on the smooth surface. He can hear Eduardo shuffle around behind him, moving off to the side. Mark can see him now in his peripheral vision, the dark suit and the glint of an expensive watch on his wrist. Mark stares at his own hand, dry skin, ragged nails, a myriad of tiny scratches on the laptop underneath it.
"I already read it," Eduardo offers, contrite.
"Okay," Mark replies, voice steady, ignoring the implications. He says, "You can't forget the papers with the information that was emailed to all the shareholders a week ago."
"Right," Eduardo says, finally moving away from Mark to slowly pick up the printouts. For a minute he just stares at them like the words on the page will rearrange themselves to spell out the secrets of the universe, then he looks straight at Mark. "Fine, I'll ask. Was that what it looked like?"
"Was what what it looked like? That looks like a useless stack of paper that it was unnecessary to come back for, if that's what you mean."
"That's not what I meant," Eduardo says, looking back down at the table and tapping the printouts against it. "On your computer. Was that what it looked like?"
"I don't know what you think it looked like, so I can't answer that question."
Eduardo's expression hardens and he presses his lips together in a thin line. He looks like he did at the depositions. "Okay, Mark, fine. Never mind, forget I asked. Goodbye."
The finality in Eduardo's tone makes Mark's heart skip a beat. It makes him blurt out, "Wait," when Eduardo's hand is reaching for the polished metal of the door handle. Eduardo has no reason to do as Mark asks, but his hand drops and he half-turns, looking at Mark over the tense line of his shoulder.
Mark has no idea what he's supposed to say, but what comes out of his mouth is a concession. "It was what it looked like."
Eduardo finishes turning around and walks back to the table, pulling a business card out of his pocket along with a pen. He writes something on the card, the scratch of the pen unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He starts toward the door again but pauses a few feet away from Mark with the card extended in front of him like an offering.
Mark reaches out, takes it.
"In case you want to talk to the real me, sometime," Eduardo says, and leaves.
Mark looks at the card, hand-written cell number on the back.
He flicks the catch on the laptop, popping it open.
In a few keystrokes, he erases every trace of the bot program.