Liz is delighted by how easy it is to automate Cyndi's social media presence. Sure, she had to preprogram a few posts, but the Cyndi software analyzed 600 million social media conversations and, through machine learning, taught itself how to replicate these conversations. Machine learning was just a scaled up version of human learning. Machines could learn exponentially more, much faster, with far less errors and have far better information retention than any human ever could.

At the gym, driving to work, in class, during sex, humans spend 5 hours every day typing into a small handheld machine. Their banality was prolific. Each year, a human would write as many words as there were in the entire works of Shakespeare, a human writer known for his wit, though their profundity rarely surpassed: 'sup?' 'nuthin.'

Within a week, Cyndi had racked up 23 million stalkers across the different social media sites. They gobbled up her every posted move. When she ate a sprinkles chocolate chip cupcake, 632,814 girls groaned as they grabbed their subcutaneous abdominal fat. When she wore a micro-mini skirt on a windy day, 1,813,406 men and 34,862 lesbians zoomed in on the photo, hoping to catch a glimpse of the exit of her birth canal. When a water balloon exploded on her head, 2,617,213 jealous humans squealed, watching the moment her bubbly face switched to horror. 16,482 snipped this three-second moment and used it as the background of their holocube.

Creating the complex facial expressions proved to be the most difficult part. Liz outsourced this to a production team in Kuala Lumpur. Three Malaysian women wore sensors on their faces and were shown clips of Audrey Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and other white actresses. After an actresses' emotional reaction, the video was paused and the women would contort their faces to replicate this expression. These were fed into the Cyndi software with the accompanied emotional title. When Liz's team needed a new emotion, they would combine Cyndi's face with the average of these three women's expressions.

Bemused: the lips pucker and move out an 1/8 of an inch out, the eyebrows lower and arch at the edges.

Shocked: The head tilts back 2 inches, the eyelids flick open, the nostrils flare.

And best of all, Liz scaled up Cyndi's ability to respond to fans. At any given moment, 764,201 humans were finding solace and a deep connection in intimate conversations with a Cyndi ChatBot.

Wrapped in the warm embrace of her online presence, these intrepid disciples contacted their idol. As they sent a direct message, their hearts tugged to be near Cyndi.

“Hiiiiii Cyndi I Luv UR Musik! U mak me so :) :) :)”

Riella cast her note out into the great void, hoping to reel in just one sparkle of Cyndi. Her eyes blink as she stares at the emptiness on the screen beneath her note. Her hope recedes, leaving an ocean of despair.

And then---

A response!

Her young body ruptures with joy.

She sees me!

She wrote to me!

Riella can't comprehend the words because her body is shaking. Once she calms, her eyes focus.

“Thx! Glad U like it :) :) :) :)”

Riella kicks her legs as joy twitches inside of her.

The next day, she has an awful day at school. She flunked her Intro to Homeopathy exam and Brett Bretterson spit his gum at her.

Cocooned in her room, Riella seeks solace from her idol.

“UGH! Cyndi! U won't beleve wha hapend 2day. I falled my test & a boy waz mean 2 me and his firends laffed at me. I h8 my life.”

The phone felt the sharp jabs and the internal camera could read Riella's furrowed brows. The program interpreted that she was upset. These reactions fed into the chatbot's text recognition software and created an automated response.

“Oh NooooooOOOoOoOo. Im srrrrrrrrrry! That sounds bad. Hugs 2 u!”

She hears me!

She understands me!

The genius of Cyndi's social media message program was that it waited until the fifth conversation before it mentioned a product in her reply.

“My puppy got hit by a car!” Nadia typed.

“Thats awfullll! U need a good cry and a box of Kleenex^TM.” Cyndi's response read.

“How com yo wast is so skiny?” Florenz burned to know.

“Waist Trainers baby! I cant go a day w/o thm. Here!” Cyndi's endorsement splashed with a link to the product. “Half off if u use da code cyndiwatchesu.”

“i cnt take it no more. Life Sux! I just wnna cut my wrists an b don wth it.” A distraught Becca cried as she typed.

“Cut? Have u tried Hibachi brand knives? Theyr the sharpest!”

Liz was a genius at finding novel ways to monetize Cyndi. After watching a documentary on baiting sexual predators, she offered Cyndi's service to a dozen police departments. For each man sending Cyndi pedophilic messages that were reported to the police, Tone Def Recordings would receive a $10,000 reward. Not a bad bounty for such easily automated entrapment.

“Cyndi I thnk ur so hotttt!” Chaz, a widowed father of three, writes late one night after finishing a glass of whiskey.

“Aww thx thats so sweet. UR a QT!” Cyndi responds.

Chaz blinks and shakes his head in disbelief. Had she really responded?

“{Bashful face.} U mk an old man's heart sing. Thx 4 the complamint.”

Cyndi's winky-faced reply urges him on.

“If only u wer here wit me.” Chaz writes, perspiration wetting his brow.

“Oh yea big Guy? What would u do 2 me?” The message throbs from the screen in red.

Chaz looks around, assuring himself that no one was watching. Is she real? Is she just another alcohol-induced fantasy? He thrills with memories of his teen years, sending covert snapchats to the librarian he loved.

“I wuld pik u up n hold u so close.”

“I'd luv to feel ur arms around me. What am i warin?” The words pull him deeper into a forbidden fantasy world.

The tenor of the conversation had raised a red flag. Like a chess grandmaster, the Cyndi-computer system could extrapolate that in seven moves, it could push him far enough for this man to be convicted and sentenced as a sexual predator for the rest of his life.

“Just a wet bikini. yor skin hottt and sweaty.”

The software activates photo sharing and sends a picture: Cyndi Bikini – red.

Chaz stares in disbelief at the photo Cyndi had sent him and only him. A sliver of Cyndi has entered his life.

“Oh Yah! <3 that!” He responds.

“U gotta any pixxx of u?”

Chaz scrolls through a sequence of photos and plucks out one of him from ten years ago and forty pounds lighter.

“Hot enuf 4 u?”

“Almost! ne naked pixxx? I wana c what u got”

“Oh Bby I don't no if u can handel this. Its thick.” He smirks as he types.

“Yea? Give it 2 me!”

Chaz stops himself.

“What the fuck am I doing? She's my daughter's favorite singer.” He puts down his phone and pours himself another drink.

As he swirls the booze, his phone buzzes.

“i neeeeed it... bad!” Cyndi urges.

Chaz chugs his whiskey. He closes his eyes as he feels his belly burn. He winces. The silence in the room aches around him. The nights have only grown more lonely ever since his wife died.

“Noowwwww. Give it 2 me. Im Horny. so Horny Horny Horny!” He feels an urgency from her demands.

He looks at the clock. Beneath it hangs a photo of his family. His sweet innocent daughter glows as she looks up adoringly at him. Beneath this is a photo of him and his late wife when they were teens. They look so happy at the beach. She wears a red bikini. Her arms wrap around his waist. Oh how he wished he could return to such simple times. How he could still feel the thrill when his hand brushed her soft thigh on Prom night.

The Cyndi-software system activates emasculation overdrive.

“What? R u chiken? R u afraid ur 2 small?”

He begins to read when the next message arrives.

“Come on big boi!”

Egged on, he cracks.

He scrolls through his dick pic folder and selects one where the light shines over the tip and casts a long shadow across the soiled toilet floor. He hits send, still confused why he did this.

The Cyndi system matches Chaz's profile with his location and forwards the entire conversation along with the phallus photo to his local police department. By morning, a case is opened on Chaz. By 3pm, he is arrested.

Three police officers enter his place of work, a retirement home, and kick down the door where Chaz is teaching a music therapy class. Arthritic hands drop their cymbals and a trombone slide falls to the floor. Before he can protest, his skull bounces off his desk.

“You fucking sick pervert.” The handcuffing officer shouts. “You're going away for a good long, long time.”

         
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