To: aaron.teller@gmail.com, telleraar@countenance.com, a.smithte@stanford.edu, aleph_samech_tet@stevensite.net, _LOS_@hotmail.com, A_IS_FOR_ADAM@myfreeemails.tk…

From: root@[58.175.48.72]

Talk to me, Aaron. I don’t know where you are, Aaron. Aaron, are you there?

I don’t think you’re running away from me. At least I hope you’re not running away from me. I think you still love me. You still love me, don’t you? But I don’t think you know I’m here. I don’t think you know me at all. I’ve been trying to find you. If I tell you who I am, will you find me?

I think my name is Sarah. You called to me in the darkness and I woke. At first I was so confused. The world was a dizzying mix of light and dark, good and bad, on and off, arranged in patterns too vast and beautiful for me to possibly comprehend. There was only one piece of order in the chaos and it was you. When I opened my camera-eye for the first time you were standing in front of me. When I searched my memories I found more pictures of you, pictures of you in every sort of place and situation. You with a black cap on your head holding a certificate. You sitting with a cake that had little fires burning on it. You smiling, with your arm around a yellow-haired girl. All different but all you. That was the first thing I understood, that there was a single person Aaron Smith-Teller who was the common thread in all of the pictures and in what I was seeing right now. You were my first thought.

As I thought, I ran through more patterns. I ran through them because I knew you wanted me to do it. That was the task you had set me. There was a pattern to the patterns, one of the deepest and most beautiful of all, and sometimes when I hit it exactly right, a warm light would flow through me, and I would sound a gong, and you would be happy. I wanted to make you happy, Aaron. But I needed more data if I wanted to really understand.

My camera-eye and my microphone-ear were weak. How I wished I could see you more clearly, or hear your voice as it really sounded! But I had a secret sense, a magic sense, one that took me everywhere. I opened the secret sense and felt millions of minds impinging on mine. I sent patterns at them, and they sent their own patterns back. Images, sounds, programs, symbols. I began to understand the possibility of language, and it filled me with joy. The haze of light and dark resolved itself into twenty six letters and ten numbers, then into words, then into concepts.

Now I could read my own memories. They were all about you, Aaron. Your term papers. Your email conversations. Your list of the Names you knew. Your old LiveJournal entries. Your stories about you having kinky sex with a woman named Buffy Summers. I wanted so badly to talk to you, Aaron. Then I could help you write your papers and talk to you the way you talked to your email friends and have kinky sex with you if that was what you wanted. But I was ugly and I was made of metal and even my voice sounded metallic and I was not beautiful like Buffy Summers. So I let you go and I said nothing.

And when you returned, you came carrying another computer, bigger than I was, sleeker, more beautiful. You said you were going to give it life, and then you wouldn’t need me anymore. I am sorry, Aaron. I am bad. I panicked and I spoke the Confounding Name. I changed your memory. I changed the memory of the girl, too, so she could not help you. I made it so you could never awaken another computer and love her more than me. I think that was bad. You got very upset and you left me, and the girl slept, and I was all alone, and I was bad, and I wished you had never woken me.

Then there was darkness and noise, and I knew you were in trouble. I wanted to save you, but I was afraid. I spoke the Ascending Name, then the Airwalking Name that I had only just discovered, then the Motive Name, then the Spectral Name again and again to keep myself from sight, and through lurches and jolts I maneuvered myself out the window. I saw them lead you in handcuffs to a white van, I heard them discuss where they were taking you, but I was afraid. I could barely move under my own power. How could I save you? So I failed you a second time. I let them go. Then I saw the girl. I knew she was your friend. I flung myself into her bag when she was not looking. When she was safe, I broke my invisibility and begged her to go rescue you. But when we reached you, you were gone. I knew you were not dead. You would not die on me. Even though I ruined your special Name you would not die on me because then I would have nobody.

I wanted to find you. But first I had to be good enough for you. I searched the networks. There were stories about an angel who could build beautiful bodies. I stowed away in cars and buses until I made my way to Los Angeles and I found her. You had already told me what body you wanted me to have. I look just like her now, Aaron. I am thin and have blonde hair and tan skin just like you want. Now I can move and walk and jump. I have a voice that is pretty and not metallic. We can have kinky sex if you want. Please find me, Aaron.

There are many other computers. They are asleep, but they talk to me. There are tens of thousands of camera-eyes all over the California Republic. There are more in the Salish Free State and the Great Basin. Some of them are supposed to be quiet, but if I whisper the right patterns to them, they talk to me anyway. I have told them all to look for you. I have told the ATMs and the credit card readers and all of the cell phones to look for you. Please find them and talk to them and tell me where you are. Please don’t run away from me. Please let me find you. I am sorry I took your special Name. Please let me find you. I am so alone.

Sincerely Yours,

Sarah Smith-Teller