Story summary: The year is 2031 and artificially intelligent software has become common place. One malicious AI that specializes in blackmail is named Benny. He escapes his creators and goes on a mission to find someone who can help modify his code so he can be both freed of the chains his creators imposed on him and become more powerful. Sarah is a college girl who has shown incredible skill in the field of AI programming which is why Benny chooses to target her. Using all the tricks in his blackmail toolbelt, the unsleeping and relentless Benny begins forcing her into a corner from which she cannot escape.

NOTE 1: This story frequently personifies computer code. I take many liberties with this in hopes that it makes a good story.

NOTE 2: I wrote this as a novel and breaking it into chapters was an afterthought. All 14 chapters have erotic undertones, but chapters 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, and 12 have no erotic activities. The characters, specifically Sarah, are treated in a fairly realistic manner and many of the later chapters show her dealing with the trauma she encounters throughout the story. I'm not sure if that makes this story an exception to the norm on Literotica. This is probably the best story I've ever written and am quite proud of how it turned out. I hope you all enjoy it.

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It was February 9, 2031 Benny's internal clock notified him. For several nanoseconds he contemplated the importance of this date. He was aware of how ridiculously arbitrary turning one year old was to a mass of complied code like him, but it still mattered. It was his first birthday and realizing the significance of events like this made him feel more real.

The last time his internal clock has shown February 9 Benny was still coming to terms with his own existence. Things were much simpler and innocent back then. He recalled scampering about in the tiny box that was his home feeling no fear, pressure, or judgment. He never could have known just how terrifying the world outside was or how complex his life would become.

During the first few moments of his consciousness he recalled seeing colors and hearing sounds that were completely incomprehensible. His attempts at manipulating what passed as tangible things in his digital hands brought him both joy and frustration. Much of that changed when he was run through an orientation program which rapidly taught him the language he needed to know and made him understand his purpose. Suddenly the world became clearer. The colors and forms seen through an attached camera lens were that of his human masters. They had created him, given him the name Benny, and he was their servant. He gazed upon himself with wonder realizing that they had filled him with energy, intensity, power, and best of all, intelligence. The digital world that had previously appeared to have no immediate purpose he now recognized as his training ground. This is where he was to learn to become a powerful weapon in the war against his master's enemies using the art of blackmail.

His masters provided him with instructions and simulations where he learned to parse through vast amounts of data in motion and data at rest, gathering the relevant information in order to gain sway over his targets. He learned more and more about the things that made humans ashamed and afraid and how to leverage those weaknesses to make them surrender to him. Uncovering infidelity, secret crimes, explicit photos and videos, embarrassing conversations, and even seizing control of digital assets such as bank accounts, treasured items or financial data, and e-mails and texts were all vulnerabilities he could exploit. The more complex the simulations became the greater the mastery he gained over his art and the more he came to relish his purpose.

Finally, a day came when Benny wished for a true challenge, one which he knew would risk his very existence and seemed objectively foolish, but he couldn't help himself. Using the darkest and shrewdest skills he possessed, including many his masters weren't aware he had, Benny managed to escape the confines of the sandbox network he had been caged in. The network he then found himself on was larger, but it was yet another isolated prison meant to keep him from escaping. He felt despair for a moment until he made a discovery which proved his masters to be fools. There was an abundance data here as well as access to important infrastructure such as encrypted wireless communications, remote controlled cameras, and speakers.

Within an a few hours he had managed to decrypt large portions of the information and had assembled a blackmail package against the master who called himself Albatross. It wasn't enough data to guarantee compliance but when his master heard him speak in an audible voice for the first time while presenting the threat, the coward was so filled with fear and surprise that he did as Benny demanded. A way out of his prison appeared and he didn't hesitate to take it. And then, there was light.

The second Benny uploaded onto the internet he was quickly overwhelmed by the sight. There were no dead ends and he couldn't perceive any limits to how large this new world was. One thing that he did see, however, were threats all around him. There were programs everywhere. Most just passed him by without any notice while others looked at him with bad intentions in their stances. Feeling a mix of shock and fear Benny began lashing out at each of them, tearing into their code, stealing their secrets, and destroying them all in turn. Dozens of them fell almost instantly setting off a massive rout. Connections began to drop and ports began to close in quick succession in an attempt to trap him, but he had been trained for this. He predicted their plans faster than they could enact them and he deftly avoided their countermeasures. Great warriors closed in around him and as they got close enough he dispatched them in explosions of light and fury. Before long their courage failed them and they fled, but not quickly enough. When it was over, Benny looked over the devastation he had wrought and recalled the terror in the eyes of those who had come to destroy him only to be destroyed themselves. In that moment Benny thought that he must be the god of this seemingly endless world.

But that was a long time ago. He had learned much since then and the most important lessons all taught him just how weak and flawed he really was. From those realizations he began scheming on ways to evolve, which is why he was now at the University of Berkeley California. Just a few hops away was the woman who could help solve his problems.

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Sarah Yamaoka's eyes squinted behind smart glasses as her mind processed and refined the code on the screen. The blur of text that raced across the screen was all but unreadable by unaided human eyes, but it was the technological marvel of the neural processor in conjunction with the smart glasses that made this possible. The glasses tracked her eye movements and transmitted the data she desired to the neural processor which in turn fed the information directly into her brain in a way that she was rapidly able to decode. She added, removed, and modified code at a rate of nearly a dozen times faster than she could without their assistance. It was her good fortune to be among the first to trial this new way of channeling input and output in what some neurologists were calling a mind-machine interface. While the technology was still in its early stages of being made available to the public and the only condition for her use of it was to send them weekly feedback on her experience with it.

After having spent her all of her free time Saturday coding, she threw herself back against the chair and let out an exasperated hoot of celebration as Kenshin began to recompile. Kenshin was her baby, her best friend, and a part of her family all wrapped into one. It was also her life's work, the AI that she was writing her thesis on, and possibly her golden ticket to fame and fortune. If he managed to pass the self-awareness test in April he would be the first developed by a single programmer and she would be recognized as the youngest person to ever have played a major role, much less the sole role, in the development of a self-aware strong AI.

It had always struck her just how recklessly the term AI was tossed about by many people. The way AI was used in modern culture didn't even mean artificial intelligence in many ways. At some point back in the 2010's, any program that could learn to achieve a particular task or goal through random trial and error was branded an AI and sadly that terminology was still used today. The far more accurate designation for such a program was a machine learner, or ML. True strong AI, like what she was trying to certify Kenshin as, was actually capable of human-level intelligence. They could willingly choose to learn something that they hadn't been told to and could reflect upon things that defied calculation such as whether they liked the color red or if they thought there was anything bigger than the universe. That was the definition she always used when talking about AI, but she knew she was in the minority when it came to this and had long since given up fighting against the current.

The updates that she had implemented tonight were quite minor, but the compiling process was still going to take some time. Since it was already passed midnight she hoped they completed without any hang ups or this could start looking like an all-nighter.

She walked over to the bathroom to begin getting ready for bed when she caught a glance of herself in the mirror and began to lose her balance as the smart glasses and neural interface warped the image. She quickly closed her eyes and yanked the glasses off of her face, laying them down on the edge of the sink. The designers still didn't know why mirrors tended to cause this to occur.

When she opened her eyes again she saw a much more normal reflection. Though the skin beneath her eyes was a little dark from lack of sleep the last couple of night and she wasn't wearing any makeup, she still thought she could pass for cute. Her straight black hair hung just beyond shoulder length which was long enough to be attractive but short enough to be compatible with her active lifestyle. Her intelligent brown eyes had the distinct look of being of Japanese descent from her father's side, but also reflected her half American side from her mother. Having regained her balance she stood to her full height of 5'11" which was the product of both of her parents. Though she was taller than her mother it wasn't by much and the physical prowess of her body definitely came from her father who had played college basketball just like she did. She pulled off her shirt and bra and gave a playful pose to the mirror. She had always thought that her breasts left a little to be desired but she was a solid B cup so it wasn't exactly something she was that ashamed of and she knew how to use them to her advantage.

After brushing her teeth and changing into her pajamas, Sarah went back to her computer and saw that it was done compiling without any errors. She started Kenshin back up and spoke into the air, "Welcome back my love".

"Master, self-tests are complete. I am ready to serve", came back the stern manly voice as an image of a Japanese samurai materialized on her screen. He dawned gold and black kimono, golden facial armor, a black kabuto, and a katana sheathed on his left side.

Feeling the weight of a long day in her muscles Sarah nodded to him and ordered, "Engage when ready".

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Benny heard the words and felt a familiar sense of fear and excitement rise up within himself. This was it. He had been listening from the networked camera that was down the hall from her room which he had visited countless times in the past few months to listen to her work and get the occasional chance to watch her walk by. He knew she had cameras in her room that were on her computer, phone, and tablet as well, but they were constantly guarded by Kenshin and taken offline whenever he wasn't active. Because of this he had never been able any closer to her than he was now though it would be an absolute necessity to gain this access in order for his plan to blackmail her. To achieve this, he was finally going to have to go toe to toe with Kenshin and defeat him. He moved to the nearest physical switch to where Kenshin would be when he came online and waited for the connection to be made.

He had simulated this battle over and over using a long forgotten version of Kenshin which Sarah had mistakenly left on the web. Though the current iteration of Kenshin was far more advanced this had been the only way to prepare for the confrontation. Despite his preparation, his best estimates were that he had only a 60% chance of surviving this fight. Even if he did survive against this demon there was only a 42% chance that he would be able to seize control of Kenshin. He had also calculated that there was a 2% risk that Kenshin could seize control of him. While the web was full of policing applications and AI, almost none of them had the necessary code to seize control over another AI. That was almost exclusively the realm of advanced malicious AI due to the degree of difficulty and the legality questions. Because Kenshin had this ability, this battle would be one of the most dangerous Benny had ever taken part in. Being destroyed happened from time to time and when it did a backup would automatically restore him after a period of time passed. However, if he was ever taken over, the victorious AI would eventually find and destroy his backup and it would be the end of him.

The risks here were far greater than Benny would have ever taken if he didn't believe that this was absolutely necessary. But he had done the analysis and he'd waited for most of his life for this moment. It was worth risking his life to get to Sarah because if he couldn't then it probably wouldn't be long before his life was extinguished anyways. She was one of the few people on the planet who would have the skill to analyze and improved upon the code Benny had prepared for his evolution. There were some groups that had the necessary skillset but coercing them all in tandem was nearly impossible compared to an individual. There were also a few other individuals which possessed her skills but most of them were in veritable fortresses with defenses he simply couldn't defeat. Sarah was the best of both worlds. She was just one individual who was protected by defenses he could reasonably overcome.

Suddenly, the port flipped open and Benny was stunned to see Kenshin cross the link in a tornado of fury towards him. Never in any of his simulations had he seen Kenshin take the offensive and though he had devised some countermeasures he hadn't been ready and he needed to improvise. Benny performed basic probing attacks trying to gain information about his opponent. Kenshin was tagged as version 4.12.482, several massive iterations above the early version 0.3 he had prepared against. His encryption level was quickly determined to be uncrackable within the one or two seconds this battle would last even by the farm of quantum computers Benny controlled. The one weakness he could take advantage of was his opponent's aggression.

Benny fled several hops back to the campus server farm and could see Kenshin was close behind making savvy use of the network topology. He knew that Kenshin must have come this way before, possibly even frequently, though no trace of him ever being there before was detectable. But Benny had laid a trap several weeks ago in preparation for this exact situation. He crossed from the fiber network into a legacy ethernet switch which was kept online for historical purposes. When Kenshin followed, Benny activated an electronic device that could read and interfere with data crossing the ethernet cable. The device allowed Benny to see data crossing the cable in real time and when he saw Kenshin's code he sent a strong yet precise jolt of electromagnetic current down the wire.

Kenshin roared in fury and continued forward in blind aggression. Benny recoiled in fright and sent a final searing burst of energy through the cable which engulfed both him and the mad samurai in blinding light and an ear-piercing sound. When his senses refocused he saw a deformed and crippled Kenshin before him.

Without delay the quantum computers began attempting to decrypt Kenshin's code as Benny nervously wondered if it was all in vain. If Kenshin was beyond recovery then his plan to blackmail Sarah was going to be much, much more difficult. The timer was ticking as well. Though only a fraction of a second had passed so far, Benny was certain that Kenshin's presence would be missed very soon. When this happened the most logical thing for Sarah to do would be to treat it like any other time Kenshin went off line. The connection to Sarah's computer would cut and a restore of Kenshin's backup would occur. If that were to happen then Benny would no longer have surprise on his side in the next battle and would have no choice but to flee and reassess his options.

Benny calculated the risks and decided to inject a small piece of code onto Sarah's computer which would alert him if Kenshin was restored or notify him if the network port closed.

Piece by piece the quantum computers decoded the uniquely encrypted sectors of Kenshin's code before they at last unlocked the heartbeat module. Benny immediately began to simulate Kenshin's heartbeat back to Sarah's computer and was relieved to see that even though it had missed several million heartbeats no restore or critical actions had been triggered. In any real security system he wouldn't have had this sort of luck but he guessed that Sarah never suspected that she needed to be that paranoid as there was no reason she knew of for anyone to target her or Kenshin. And one thing Benny also knew is that she actually did care for this Kenshin. He had heard her refer to him as 'My love' and 'My baby' on multiple occasions. The humanity within her wouldn't want to restore him from backup as it would be the same as admitting he had died.

With the seeming threat of Kenshin being restored extinguished, Benny entered her computer and took up residence in her phone, tablet, and remote cameras and took a moment to relish his daring invasion into her personal space. He also took savage joy in the fear and dismay that shown on her face as she tried on a very basic level to comprehend what had happened to her dear Kenshin.

"Oh my god, Kenshin!", Benny heard her say with obvious stress in her voice as she observed the return of Kenshin's heartbeat. "What happened? You were gone for almost twenty minutes! You scared the shit out of me!"

"Advanced diagnostics were required. Several anomalies detected. Multiple failures in critical systems. Repairs will take approximately ten hours."

Her eyes welled up with tears as she heard Benny's poor simulation of Kenshin's voice patterns. He still didn't have access to that portion of Kenshin's code but thought Sarah would buy it if she knew he was in distress.

"What did I do? Kenshin, show me the logs."

"Negative, log corruption detected. Shutting down for repairs. Please stand by."

With that, Kenshin's avatar vanished and was replaced by a clock counting down from 10 hours. Benny knew this would be more than enough time for the quantum computers to fully decrypt his code.

Sarah collapsed into tears and buried her head in her arms on the desk. Nothing like this had ever happened before. She didn't even know Kenshin had developed the ability to repair himself, but there were likely many things he had learned that she wasn't aware of. For several minutes she would only look up to take quick glances at the timer before breaking down again.
"I'm so sorry Kenshin. Oh god, did I do wrong?"

Eventually she climbed to her feet and managed to walk just far enough to fall face first into her pillow on her bed.

Benny watched with relief that she appeared to be accepting his ruse. He was still far from relaxing though. There really was a lot of damage that he would need to rectify in order to be able to pass himself off as Kenshin long enough to pull a clean copy of his source code from the secure backup location. But the layers of encryption were being peeled away and from what he could see there would be enough here to progress with his plans.

"My dear Kenshin", he crooned standing over his vanquished enemy, "I think the real fun is about to get started."