Cenerea, 3rd planet from the star Letria, Regalius,

The Homeland, Central Region, The Capitol City, 114 Darvon Street,

Current Day

The unseen bio-electronic tentacle slid around the servers and test equipment like an eel navigating a Cenerean ocean bed reef.  It traveled silently through the darkness toward the only other sign of sentient activity in the room; a flickering terminal monitor. The light from the device undulated throughout the darkness responding to the movements of a singular silhouetted figure.

The tentacle arrived at the base of the shadowy operator's chair. Its worm-like body curved upwards moving in perfect parallel with all of the furniture's contours from pedestal to headrest. It paused as it reached a height slightly above head level. The thing shuddered rapidly and six fibrous antennae burst forth from its core. Tiny fingers extended themselves to within millimeters of the chair's occupant, probing but never touching the subject; always careful to stay out of sight. Then, the tendrils stopped, seemingly satisfied with their approximate positions, and floated in place over the top of the man's head as if they were monitoring him.

***

"I have been working on your system for months and you can't even give me one single win! What's the problem, you crazy ass machine?" Twenty-four year old Jay Levant yelled at his monitor, completely oblivious to the stranger watching him from the darkness. He sat awash in the light of the terminal glass before him; the glow enhancing the shallow wrinkles of frustration on his young face.

He half-heartedly lifted a hand to wave through the pixelated characters flitting across the screen but stopped. Jay pulled his hand back and returned it to its previous position of covering his mouth in contemplation. "Maybe I should just watch the outputs a bit longer," he thought, tapping a finger to his cheek.

"Or not," Jay muttered as he removed his hand from his mouth once more. Reaching for the contraband alcohol bottle he had been nursing all evening, he relieved it of its remaining contents.

"Okay, you pain in the ass. Let's see how you like this." Jay placed his fingers on the terminal's surface. The action triggered its virtual keyboard and he proceeded to modify strings that would definitively kick off a response in any other artificial intelligence machine. "Term...inate and Force..decom...pression...now. Return," he spoke as he typed.

"What the hell?" Jay slurred, as he watched the modified code self-correct without an argument.

Jay threw his hands in the air and yelled at the terminal screen once more, "I swear you're screwing with me. Why won't you work, dammit?"

***

The tentacle and its six appendages arched backward in response to the sudden movement.

***

The terminal generated a beep to what Jay assumed was an unexpected code deviation. He snapped forward to get a closer look at the display. "Huh? Where did those come from?" he wondered as he slid the code visualization form out of the way, selecting the output log busily parsing massive amounts of data generated by the machine. Swiping a finger upward, Jay rolled back the recorded data. Outputs indicated the device was functioning, but sections of the operating system kept changing in a fashion Jay did not understand.

"You are auto-correcting my parameter adjustments and generating data that makes no sense. What is wrong with you?" Jay knew he was going to be in over his head with all of this when he started, but didn't think for the life of him he was going to drown.

"Very well..." Reacting to an alcohol-enhanced moment of clarity, Jay abruptly relaxed. He plopped his elbows on the keyboard surface, laced his fingers, and set his chin on the bridge they created. He brought his face within centimeters of the screen and stared in contemplation for a moment, his eyes taken in by the beautifully complex digital mess displayed on the monitor.  He thought for a moment and began speaking to the machine as if he were a doctor relaying a fatal prognosis to a patient. "Maybe your operating system or your hardware is so damaged that you are stuck in a fatal loop and there is nothing to be done? Maybe it is time to let go. Maybe we are both done..."

"Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I am never going to just walk away...and I am damn well not going to let you beat me, you ridiculous A.I.!" Jay exclaimed sharply at the artificial intelligence machine that had been defying his every move. Annoyed by his continued failure and confusion, the intoxicated man fell backward into his chair in despair, arms and hands falling lazily over the armrests.

***

Jay's sudden action forced the thing watching him from above to move quickly once again and avoid contact with its subject.

***

The young man's peripheral vision, aided by his monitor's glow, caught a momentary flash of movement.

"What the fuck?!??" Jay quickly realized he was no longer alone and moved to distance himself from the unseen. He drunkenly launched from his seat colliding with everything in his way, including the empty bottle of spirits and terminal workstation. Sparks and glass flew everywhere as it all tumbled violently to the ground. He spun around, hands outstretched, one before and one behind him.

Jay slowly stepped backward in fear, pleading with his alcohol-impaired eyesight to adjust so he might visually make sense of what was going on in the dark. Tripping on conduit running haphazardly across the floor, Jay lost his balance landing forcefully on his rear with his back pressing against a metal workbench.

Reminiscent of something from his worst nightmare, the terrifying creature revealed itself to Jay. It snaked its way through the smoke and flickering light emanating from the broken terminal glass on the ground. The insect-like antennae around its faceless head flailed about frantically as it moved into a position overlooking the startled man on the floor. Jay found himself "face-to-face" of sorts with the horrible entity who only moments ago, watched him from the shadows.

As the thing inched closer, Jay began to lift himself up so he could make a run for the door. The tips of the fibrous 'fingers' began to glow and like a predator seizing its prey, they lunged forward in unison piercing into Jay's head. His skin, skull, and brain erupted into an electrical Armageddon. The terrified Jay attempted to scream in response to the excruciating pain, however, the sound never came...