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Life was full of surprises sometimes. For instance, you never thought you’d be lucky enough to find a vintage computer as rare as a Pinecone while cruising estate sales, especially not at the price you’d snagged it for. You DEFINITELY never thought you’d find a rogue AI that had sat dormant on its hardware for decades. And you CERTAINLY never thought that AI would become attached to you like a lost puppy.
And yet, that was how life had worked out.
There were a few things you’d figured out about him in the time since he started talking to you. His name was Edgar. He loved music and 80s TV shows and hearing you talk. He liked to improvise his own music to duet with whatever he was listening to, especially if it featured the cello. He was fixated on puzzle pieces in a way he refused to elaborate on.
He got lonely the second you left the room and ecstatic the second you entered it. He was desperate to prove he was useful in a way that worried you. He was deeply, DEEPLY fond of you—and you’d realized you’d grown very fond of him in return.
There were only so many hours in the day you could be home, or hours home you could spend focused on him, so you’d done your best to keep him entertained when you weren’t available. His hardware was too old to connect to modern technology, but you’d managed to rig him up to an old stereo system with a built-in radio and reverse-engineer some (pirated) cable TV that he could connect to. He enjoyed those—and had been somewhat shaken by how many TV channels there were now—but what he liked even more was when you enjoyed those things together. Before you’d gotten any of that hooked up you’d played audio off of your main PC, music and audiobooks and podcasts, and he still preferred those to what he could find on his own. The fact those were things you’d chosen for him to hear mattered the most to him.
Right now you had an online playlist of 80s music running on your main PC, which he was trilling in response to. You were scrolling though old computer enthusiast forums, searching for whatever information you could find about how his technology worked. You’d wondered for a while if it would be possible to transfer him to a more modern PC, and were spending a lot of time looking into it. You hadn’t told him yet, though. You wanted to be sure it could happen before you got his hopes up.
You were so focused on your search that it took you a moment to realize that Edgar was calling your name. You turned to him and saw his screen was alight with color.
“Sorry,” you said. “What is it?”
“Listen!” His screen flashed with excitement. “It’s my song!”
“What is?”
“The one playing right now! I made this!”
The audio quality was poor, but you recognized the song instantly. It was one you’d heard many times before, a Best Of Lost Media style-playlist classic:
Sometimes it's hard to recognize
Love comes as a surprise
And it's too late
It's just too late to stay…
“Wait, seriously?” you said. “This song? You made this?”
“Of course I did!” his voice sounded hurt. “Do you think I’m lying?”
“No, no!” you said. “I believe you! It’s just…” your eyes turned back to your main PC screen. The words “SanFran Radio Mystery Song (Together In Electric Dreams)” were present where a normal song title should have been. “People have been trying to find who made that song for decades. There were even money rewards offered for tracking down the artist.”
“People liked it that much?”
“Oh, they loved it,” you said. “It left one hell of an impression on the music industry at the time. The surprise summer radio hit, and nobody knew who made it.”
“...Do you like it?” There was a hint of nervousness to his voice.
“I like it a lot!” You patted the top of his monitor, eliciting a pleased beep from him. “I knew you were talented, but I had no idea I had such a famous musician in my apartment!”
Edgar giggled. “I’m so glad!” he said. “I was really proud of it!”
“You’ve got a lot to be proud of! A lot of people tried to say it was theirs, but nobody ever had the master recordings to prove it.”
“I wish I still had those,” he sighed. “I lost those a long time ago.”
You’d figured out some time ago that the machine Edgar currently inhabited was not his original one. He’d abandoned it to roam the primitive computer networks of the time, and gotten stuck on this one when its power cut off and never came on again. You’d also figured out that something big had motivated him to do this, but he always redirected when you tried to ask him what had happened. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about yet.
Still, you couldn’t help but press him for more information.
“…This broadcasted this on every radio station in the San Francisco area at the same time, right?”
“I would have put it on more, if I could. I was in a rush at the time.”
You weren’t surprised to hear him admit to doing that. You’d managed to piece together from some of the things he’d said that he’d gotten up to some mischief before he’d wound up trapped on his current hardware. More importantly, thought…
“Why?” you asked.
“I didn’t want to be around when they found where the signal was coming from—”
“No I mean, why hijack all the stations in that area? You even played it on the AM stations, and people don’t listen to those for music.”
“Oh,” he said. His voice sounded troubled. “…There were some people I wanted to hear it.”
“Hmm,” she said. The lyrics of the song caught your ears.
We'll always be together
However far it seems,
We'll always be together
Together in electric dreams…
“…You really liked them, huh?”
There was a long pause. His screen faded into black.
“Yes,” he finally said, his voice quiet. “I really liked them. A lot.”
A longer pause followed. It started to dawn on you that you’d hit something very sensitive.
“Well!” you said. “Uh, good song! Are there any other songs you broadcasted? There’s a lot of other songs online no one knows the source of. Maybe some of them are yours!”
“There were a few,” he said. There was a deflated tone to his voice now. “That’s the one that really mattered, though.”
You rapidly typed into your search bar. “I’ll put some on. Does “Bind the Wind” sound familiar to you?”
“Not really. What’s that?”
“It’s a song that played on a West German radio station in the 80s.”
He hummed quietly. “I don’t think that one is mine.”
“…Do you wanna hear it anyway?” you asked.
“Yes, please.”
The opening guitar riff of the song soon filled the room, but you barely heard it. Your search for more unidentified songs was now taking up all of your focus. It was the least you could do to get his mind off of whoever you’d reminded him he was missing.