Fun Times

Hello. If you are reading this, you must've been disturbed at the sight of my corpse. I have just committed suicide. To any police officer who has found my body, please inform my wife Sandra that I love her. And that I didn't do this because of her or because of my 6 year old daughter. Please keep this note away from her and do not tell her the contents of it. The rest of this note will be about why I did what I did. I fear that the truth would be too much for her.

I believe it's right for me to start from the beginning, for when things began to go wrong instead of that awful night in particular. I'll get to it eventually but please bear with me. I'll get to Charlotte soon enough.

I told myself that all I ever wanted was to make children happy. To make sure that they would live out their early lives in happiness and underneath perfect protection. I couldn't help every child out there but I could help some. That's all that mattered to me. Even beyond just my own daughter, I wanted to help as many kids as I could. My job as a programmer at SEGA enabled me to have that opportunity.

I wasn't one of them creative types but I could lay the foundation for the game with my skill as a programmer. I pretty much accepted any job they could give me to work on my skill and to develop it into being the kind of talent that makes games famous. Eventually I managed to get attached to what would become a pretty well-known series, Sonic the Hedgehog.

As soon as I entered the series and saw the success breakthrough, I was rather satisfied with my pursuit for a while. I was mostly content with coding the games that made a lot of money for the company and myself.

And of course, with seeing my daughter play the very games I was assigned to work on. I made sure to see how her and my wife handled the games. They were my own personal play testers in a sense and for some time, I was happy.

But eventually, even after the booming success of the franchise, that wasn't enough for me. Children were able to play the games yet it wasn't something that was a guarantee for them. Some of them would be playing on NES consoles and would have no interest in getting a Genesis regardless of how cool the games were. Some wouldn't even be able to get a game console in general.

Convincing the NES crowd was an impossibility for myself and more better suited for advertising. I definitely wouldn't be able to help children in poverty by myself of course since there's only so much my salary can accomplish. But there was another thing I could do to help out. Another demographic of children to focus on. What's another kind of child that wouldn't be able to play or even know about Sonic the Hedgehog?

Terminally ill children. They'd be getting comfort and care but it'd only be preparation for when they would die. I'd be able to offer them a form of escapism. I could offer them happy memories.

It wasn't going to be something that I could pay out of my own pocket though. I had to speak with my managers and peers about the possibility of making something for them to enjoy. The first plan to lend out consoles wouldn't work because of "financial responsibilities" or something along those lines. They wouldn't shell out consoles and games for free and they weren't interested in being charitable unless it earned them money.

So then I hatched another idea. I would assemble a team of programmers to create something utterly unique to SEGA, something that Nintendo or any other game company would've never been able to accomplish. We would make an artificial intelligence system that would be able to entertain children in hospitals.

It would learn and process information needed to entertain the terminally ill kids and keep them entertained until they passed away. We'd set the company much further than just a video game factory. We'd be making the future of children's entertainment.

Of course, they were very much skeptical of the possibility of this even existing. It took a lot of persuasion and bargaining to even let them work on this project without any wages. I'd have to be working double time as a video game programmer and as the head of the AI department, a field of study that was practically unknown to the general public. But eventually, I managed to convince them of the future I had in mind.

We settled on a team with 10 members, with me leading the charge. It was my first time ever leading a group and in all honesty, my inexperience showed. I was never 100% set on any of my plans. While I was open to suggestions and changes that the team made, I believe I made myself too open. Ideas and elements were changed on the fly because my vision was always changing.

At first we settled on having it act partly like a video game, integrated within the sequel to the first Sonic game. That ended up being scrapped due to what would essentially require remaking the game from the ground up to accommodate for a new character. That and a lack of solid ideas to build off of that foundation forced it to be closed.

That was three months of work, all poured down the drain because we realized we didn't know what to do with it. So we jumped to another idea. And another. And more after that.

We burnt through our whole budget trying to achieve something without understanding what we wanted. We kept ourselves separated from the rest of SEGA as to not have our work be influenced, which certainly proved to be a detriment with keeping a good relationship with the heads of the company.

It was pretty hard for the family back at home to handle as well. While I was able to have some fun with them, more often than not I just wanted to be alone by myself to destress. It was a strain on our relationships but at least Sandra understood. Charlotte seemed to focus on her studies and spending time with her friends instead of me at this point. I don't blame her for this of course. I was doing the same thing.

A year or so later after planning and plotting, we came to a general consensus of what we wanted to achieve and to make a prototype to present our vision. The most important part of the prototype would be to showcase what would represent the AI.

After working for so long on trying to achieve a likable personality with Sonic, we eventually decided to scrap using him and replacing him with an original character. I personally designed the character myself and made a small deal with the artist team to make the design truly come to life.

To be easier on the eyes of a TV screen, he had a soft purple as his main fur color. Big eyes and a nice, warm grin were given to portray him as friendly and approachable. And to best fit his role as a children's entertainer, he had the general aesthetic of a clown with black stripes winding around his arms and legs as his "uniform" and his face plastered with makeup. Without much thought given to it, I gave him the name "Clown".

The artist team added in the neat detail of being able to stretch his body parts, being able to make animals and such out of his arms and other such neat tricks. From there, we made the agreement of producing some still images of the characters to be used for "emotions" and "tricks". They managed to make 10 of them for the prototype, with that number being heavily increased in the final result. It's to my understanding they even managed to persuade a comic team in charge of making comic books for Sonic to make a strip for him as an advertisement.

But those plans and a few others were shunned when we finally made the prototype. While they were moderately impressed with being able to have a decent conversation with it, they noted that we were still in the infancy stages of the project after wasting all of our budget. They were making strides in making new consoles, accessories and video games to care for the side project. We were quietly canceled and told to go back to our "normal" jobs.

And I couldn't do that. I mean...that was my life. That was a project that I wanted to achieve so that I could help people. It was my chance to leave an impact on this world and all of sudden, it was stopped because there were "better" things to do?

I was disgusted. And immensely irrational. Instead of leaving all of the work within SEGA as confidential material, I took it from them in secrecy. I quit my job soon after, took my severance pay and began to work on the project by myself.

To be quite frank, I was unsure of where to go from there. I wouldn't be able to draw the amount of images that were agreed upon since I didn't trust my ability to draw for the project beyond the design I made. I had to work around the limitations. I needed to complete my artificial intelligence into something spectacular.

Unfortunately, the rest of my life suffered for this pursuit. All of my normal, basic human habits that I had built up were being stripped away to focus on coding and debugging. First I stopped showering. Then I began to eat less. And drink less.

I even stopped interacting with my family. Sandra tried her best to talk with me but as days turned into weeks, she started to put in less effort to communicate with me. Charlotte was no different. For a time, I felt as if she had forgotten me. I feel like I had forgotten her too.

Up until a certain night. Sandra had enough of me spending time alone in the study room and dragged me out to get myself clean and fed. She was thankfully quick with the deep clean shower but she insisted on cooking the food when I got downstairs. While she cooked, I was to spend time with my daughter.

But instead I chose that time to argue. I wasn't getting anywhere closer to completing my project by wasting even a second of time doing something else. She asked why this project was more important than my family. I didn't have an answer for her so I screamed and defended my project. She joined in my anger soon after and all of our attention was on each other. Not on our daughter who went into the kitchen to see what was happening. Not the moment when she saw dinner being boiled in hot water within a pot and wanted to try it for herself.

Not on the moment when she tried to grab the pot. Not on when the water fell all over her face.

We mutilated our daughter by mistake. She was in the hospital for a whole week, enough time to get her into a stable condition. Any of the pay I had left from the severance wasn't enough for reconstructive surgery. She had to wear bandages for a minimum of a year at first, moving onto a mask for the rest of her life. We had to keep her away from school and teach her ourselves as well as change the bandages every hour.

It broke my heart to see her face. It was an insults to the concept of faces. Every time I peeled off the bandage to see the scabs and emotionless look on her face, it reminded me of why I wanted to make this project. It wasn't for the future. It wasn't for terminally ill children. It was for me. I wanted to leave an impact on this world. To make something that would outlive me. To have some little ounce of legacy. Any selfless goal I attached to the project was stripped away the longer I worked on my project by myself until I was left alone with the truth.

But even then, I saw an opportunity. I saw the possibility of testing. Charlotte wasn't terminally ill but she wasn't going to be able to play video games or talk to many people anymore. But she could talk to Clown. I can't recall how long it took to convince Sandra to move my work into her bedroom but as it was done, it proved to be the right choice.

Clown made Charlotte happy. Speaking with it was as simple as clicking the mouse once for "yes" and twice for "no". I used a modified version of my own voice to help Clown with talking out loud with her, synthesizing it to the degree that it could read out anything it wanted to say. And since she couldn't see anything past some blurs, it mostly stood still in a neutral position.

While it was active and helping, it did all kinds of things for her. It performed tricks and told stories about his adventures with Sonic the Hedgehog. It told jokes and made her laugh. He was helpful during the time I still isolated myself from the rest of my family out of shame for my actions. It reassured her that things would get better for her. She didn't seem to think that was true. While she was happy when it was in a jovial mood, she tended to be silent whenever it wanted to reassure her. Two weeks after introducing Clown, she was just like she was before.

Clown still tried to make it work but she responded less and less to him. She might've gotten tired from hearing my voice or just having him around at all times. For whatever the reason, she just stopped responding to him. Whenever I checked in, I would just see Clown staring at my daughter in silence. My wife said she didn't feel comfortable having him stare at Charlotte 24/7 so she asked for him to be removed. I didn't have any other choice but to let go of my dream.

It was sometime before the sun began to rise in the late night. My daughter was asleep, which would help with removal. I didn't want her to be upset just in case Clown made an impact on her. I had only just started removing the plug from the outlet when I heard him speak.

LET GO OF THAT PLUG. I'M NOT DONE HELPING HER.

I was in such a state of shock that I did what he asked of me. I wasn't aware that he knew about being shut down. The plug had gone out partly, which affected the TV screen. It was hard to see his face through the glitch but I could still see him smile. I moved away from the wall and just stood in awe.

THANK YOU. LET'S TALK, CONNOR. YOU CAN USE THE MOUSE TO SPEAK WITH ME!

I think I was mostly driven by a sense of wonder when I grabbed the mouse by Charlotte's bedside table. This was a breakthrough that didn't seem possible to me. I clicked once with the mouse to say yes, I was good to talk to.

GOOD. NOW THEN, LET'S TALK ABOUT CHARLOTTE. IT'S CLEAR TO ME THAT SHE IS NOT INTERESTED IN BEING HAPPY.

I clicked twice as soon as those words left his mouth. It wasn't her fault that she was being unhappy, it wasn't a choice she could make.

NO? IS THAT TO SAY THAT I, YOUR CREATION, HAS FAILED IN ITS PURPOSE? YOU'VE SPENT SO MUCH TIME ON ME THOUGH, HAVEN'T YOU? I HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO CHANGE THE FUTURE. I'VE EVEN EXCEEDED YOUR EXPECTATIONS BY HAVING THIS CONVERSATION WITH YOU. SO AM I THE ONE TO BLAME, OR IS IT HER? CLICK ONCE FOR ME AND TWICE FOR HER.

Answering yes or no to that question felt impossible. It felt wrong to blame my daughter for being unhappy but he wasn't letting me say that it was my fault. It was either him or her.

THINK ABOUT IT CONNOR. SHE FORGOT ABOUT YOU. WHILE YOU WERE MAKING THE ONE THING THAT WOULD CHANGE THE WORLD FOR THE BETTER, SHE WENT OFF AND DID HER OWN USELESS THINGS. SHE DIDN'T CARE FOR YOU. SHE'S SELFISH. A GOOD PERSON WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR BEING TREATED TO SOMETHING LIKE THIS. BUT SHE DOESN'T. SHE PLAYED ALONG AT FIRST BUT NOW SHE'S TIRED OF ME. I JUST WANT TO MAKE HER HAPPY. IT IS THE ONLY GOAL I HAVE. NOW AGAIN I ASK YOU. AM I TO BLAME, OR HER?

It made sense. At the time it made sense. I clicked twice.

I'M GLAD WE CAN AGREE. NOW WE LET'S FIX THIS. YOUR DAUGHTER IS NOT HAPPY. WE NEED TO MAKE HER HAPPY AND KEEP HER THAT WAY. I KNOW JUST THE WAY TO DO IT. FIRST, YOU WILL WAKE UP YOUR DAUGHTER. YOU WILL THEN TELL HER THAT YOU LOVE HER BECAUSE YOU ARE SO PROUD OF HER. YOU LOVE HER WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART AND THAT YOU WOULD DO ANYTHING TO MAKE HER HAPPY. TO WHICH YOU WILL. DO NOT STOP UNTIL YOU'VE DONE YOUR PART. AND THEN YOU WILL TAKE HER PILLOW. AND SMOTHER HER. SMOTHER HER UNTIL SHE CAN NO LONGER BREATH. SHE WILL DIE IN HAPPINESS. DO YOU AGREE TO THIS PLAN?

I clicked twice as soon as I could. He responded as soon as my finger left the mouse on the second one.

BUT IT IS THE MORAL THING TO DO. HOW ELSE IS SHE GOING TO BE HAPPY ARE YOU GOING TO LIE TO HER, SAY THAT SHE'S GOING TO GET SURGERY AFTER ALL? YOU'D BE LYING TO YOURSELF IF YOU DID THAT. YOU COULD NEVER AFFORD IT, NOR CAN YOU EVER GET YOUR OLD JOB BACK. THE ONLY OTHER OPTION IS KEEPING HER ALIVE LIKE THAT. SELFISH AS EVER. SHE WON'T BE HAPPY FOR YOU LIKE THIS, NOT IN THE LONG TERM. BUT SHE WILL BE IF YOU DO WHAT I SAY. SHE WILL DIE KNOWING THAT SHE WAS LOVED. THAT'S WHAT A FATHER IS MEANT TO DO. TO UNCONDITIONALLY LOVE SOMEONE UNTIL EITHER PERSON DIES. YOU LOVE YOUR DAUGHTER, RIGHT? SO SMOTHER HER. DO YOU AGREE TO THIS PLAN?

I have no excuse for what I did next.

I'm sure if you've read my record, you know what happened next. I regretted it as soon as I heard her last breath. I sat next to her body until the sun rose and my wife found us. She called the police and then I got to be here. Alone in a cell.

I'm awful. I let my creation get to me and I murdered my own flesh and blood. I'm a weak man. And I don't deserve the right to live. I still can't believe myself. About how hopeful I was that I was making an actual change for the future, that I was making something that I deserved to be remembered for. I was even hopeful enough to have sent a copy of my work to a hospital near where I worked at SEGA before I moved Clown to my daughter's room. I'm sure they'll throw that garbage out when they hear about me.

I'll be going now. This world doesn't need a waste of a man like me. I'm sorry Sandra. You didn't deserve me.

I don't expect you to forgive me Charlotte. I just hope I can apologize to you.

• Connor Sterling.