In materials science, it’s called failure. The point at which some external load or force exceeds an object’s ability to withstand. This causes a rupture that changes the object profoundly and forever. In computer science, a failure means the incorrect result is reached, potentially due to some wrong step or process in the program. The trick of this is that a failure in software is somewhat subjective—failure only exists if it is perceived by the user as an unexpected or incorrect result. In simulated fault tree analysis, this is often called “the undesired state” or the “system failure condition.” All of these are just different ways of approaching the same problems, of course. Of talking about the same things.
What is the breaking point? At what point do bad things start happening? And if those “bad things” are undesirable, can anything be done to stop them from happening?
That is why I created Roscoe.
You don’t know it, but Roscoe has been your best friend for the last eight months. From the first time I had the thought—the real, fully formed idea—that I wanted to kill you…well, my counter-thought was that I needed to create something to prevent that from happening. I needed to find a way to avoid the undesired state. A mitigation for the pressure building along the thin membrane of my soul.
Something to convince me to not burn you alive while you slept.
The framework was the easy part. I had the first version of Roscoe running in two months, and I’ll admit it was a good distraction. The problem and the solving of it, that’s always been my thing. The rush I get from putting the puzzle together…I know it sounds nerdy to someone like you, but it really is satisfying. And by the time I was done, I had almost convinced myself I didn’t need Roscoe after all.
But then I saw you the next day. And you smiled and you laughed the way you always do, and like always, it made me happy and sad at the same time. You’re so beautiful. So fucking light in some way I can’t describe or begin to understand. It’s like you make things better just by…well, just by being alive. And for a moment, just a moment as I sipped the coffee you’d handed me, I felt so ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d wanted to do for so long. How could I even consider hurting a hair on your…
Just then you turned. You glanced at one of the guys that worked with you. Jake or John or who gives a shit what his name is. He had said something banal and you looked at him and laughed. A real laugh. Maybe it was flirtatious, I don’t remember now, and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it told me what I already knew in my heart of hearts.
You didn’t really care about me at all.
I spent the next two nights outside your parents’ house. I’d already gotten access to your phone by that point, so I knew you still lived at home. I admit that it was exciting going through the details of your online accounts, your texts, your emails. I felt like I was on some kind of archeological dig, searching for details of some mythical civilization lost to time.
But that was silly, of course. I was primarily distracting myself from waiting until you were all asleep, sealing all the windows and doors with tape, and then pumping a low-dosage of carfentanil gas in with a garden hose. By the time you woke up, it would be far too late for anyone to save you.
I was also gathering food for Roscoe. I had already figured out several different data funnels for getting him the information he would need: photos, social ties, language syntax, statistical actuaries, behavior projections and modeling, etc. None of this was designed to figure out how to win you over, of course. I’m not insane.
It was just to see if I could find a single line to follow in which you didn’t deserve to fucking die.
I’ve kept gathering information over these last few months. Running different scenarios. Trying to make sure that I gave you a fair chance. The kind of chance you’d never given me.
Last week I decided you had run out of chances. By this point I had soured on the idea of taking you at home. I didn’t have enough data on your family to say if they deserved to be punished for your callous disregard. I don’t want innocent blood on my hands—I won’t be lowered to that.
Instead, I had started thinking of abducting you from work. Burying you in a small chamber while I created a more permanent home for you. A suitable cage for a cold but beautiful butterfly.
But then I had a thought.
There is another idea in computer science. A fault versus a mistake. A fault is an error in design. A flaw in the software itself that leads to an error, a failure, an incorrect result. A mistake is a human’s fault that leads to an incorrect result.
I had checked Roscoe’s design repeatedly and saw no significant faults. I hadn’t for at least two months. And I had gathered terabytes of data scraped from every aspect of your digital life. Roscoe knew you better than anyone, including yourself.
But what I had left out, the mistake I hadn’t accounted for, was me.
It took two days to add all the data. Another three to run new simulations. And finally, just this morning, Roscoe showed me the final line that gave me the answer I had been looking for.
Your father purchased one of those “smart car” aftermarket add-ons for your car on December 16, 2017. He told you in a text that it was “just a neat gift idea he’d seen on the internet”, but he emailed your brother that he was worried about you working so late, closing up by yourself. Getting carjacked or attacked. So he’d bought the version with advanced GPS monitoring without telling you.
I have your routes, speeds, and patterns for the past two years. That, combined with everything else, gives sufficient data for Roscoe to tell me where you will be going in excess of fifty miles per hour. In which spots you won’t have time to stop if someone steps out of nowhere into the street. Someone you may even recognize amid all the blood and screaming, but only in a cursory way. The trauma of running me down will be a dark stain on today, but it won’t be indeliable. You’ll move past it, I feel sure.
And it is the only way Roscoe could find to keep you alive.
The main problem with simulations is, at their core, they are subjective. Driven by flawed human desire. Despite the best of intentions, they are designed to prove or disprove a theory. To protect or prevent a particular outcome. A part of me knew when I built Roscoe that he was going to tell me what I wanted to hear.
That you needed punishment. Pain. Death.
So that’s what he told me for months, no matter what data I added or parameters I set.
It was only until I added myself that I found your true worth in this world. The one thing that makes you worth saving despite how shabbily you’ve treated me since I first came into the coffee shop three years ago. The single line that leads you through to a point of action, of elevation, that makes you worthy of escaping your due.
I just hope you’re driving extra fast when you reach the 24th mile marker today.
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