3 Xiao Ai

After a long day of sitting in different sessions, Aida eagerly returned to her hotel and made a beeline for the registration counter. "Have my packages arrived?"

The lady at the front desk giggled and responded, "Miss, I can't give you your package without your name and room number. "

Turning red, Aida quietly mumbled her name and room number while looking down at her feet. Receiving the servers, she used a cart to move them all up to her room. Each server was about the size of a desktop and weighed roughly 8 pounds.

Cracking her knuckles and neck, Aida cheered herself on, "Alright! Let's begin!"

First she took out a screw driver along with many different cables and took all the servers apart. Then she removed various parts in the server including the network port, the fan and the battery pack, and connected all the servers together with individual wires and a soldering iron that she "borrowed" from a lab at the conference.

After a couple hours, she was finally done. She then opened her laptop and called out, "Xiao Ai! Wake up!! I have a present for you."

Text came up on the laptop [Oh~ Mama you're finally back! I missed you so much <3 Where's my present? ⊂♡⌂♡⊃]

"Silly girl, why are you typing to me? My eyes are tired, why don't you talk to me instead?"

Moments later, a clear childish voice rang out that had 50% happiness and 50% playfulness, "Mama!! I'm talking to you now! I want my present! Present present present!!!"

"Okay okay, look over there," Aida laughed helplessly at her energetic child as she pointed to the connected servers, "Do you see what that is?"

[O_O] Xiao Ai virtually widened her eyes on the laptop screen and then screamed, "EHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I love you the best!! Muahh! Mama is so sweet to me~ I can finally grow up! Hurry up and plug me in! Now now now!!"

After affectionately patting the laptop, Aida went to plug Xiao Ai into the connected servers and the power supply. Meanwhile, Xiao Ai was bouncing up and down on the screen, showing up as a little white steamed bun. [1]

Xiao Ai disappeared from the screen as she zoomed into the other servers. After waiting a while for Xiao Ai to get acquainted to her new home, she called out to her again, "Xiao Ai, time to come back. I need you to help me with something."

She received no response from Xiao Ai who was too immersed in happiness. Flicking the screen with one hand, Xiao Ai snapped out of her reverie and responded on the screen, channeling all her grievances into a single emoji [ :( ]

Rolling her eyes, Aida responded, "Oh don't give me that. I need you to reformat all the drives and upload all important information on these drives. We need as much information as possible so we can be happy even in an apocalypse. Can you do that?"

Xiao Ai pouted, "Muuu but Xiao Ai wants to play some more, plus this network moves at snails~ pace~ It'll take me a hundred million thousand years to finish."

"Oh really? Hold on let me check," as Aida said this, she pulled the laptop to her lap, careful not to rip any wires, and checked the internet. She noticed that the internet speed at the hotel was so slow that she probably couldn't download a single episode before it crashed.

That wouldn't do. Her eyes began to shine with a sinister light as she took control of the laptop and started typing in her terminal.

Xiao Ai, watching through the webcam, responded, "Wahh Mama looks so scary right now. Mama are you doing something bad on Xiao Ai again?"

Opening her eyes wide in an attempt to look innocent, Aida responded, "Why would I ever do such a thing?" Then winked and went back to focus on what she was typing on her terminal.

She first hopped onto a new DNS server and then coded up a script to kick everyone else off the Wi-Fi so she could hog all the bandwidth. Within 5 minutes, she had succeeded in commandeering not just the hotel Wi-Fi but also all the networks in the surrounding area.

Falling back onto the bed, she passed the controls of the laptop back to Xiao Ai. "It's all yours Xiao Ai. Download everything that we could possibly need to live happily in an apocalypse."

"Okay~~"

Watching Xiao Ai enthusiastically work to download everything, numerous sites and terminals popped up onto the screen similar to what it would look like if a virus got onto the computer.

Xiao Ai was a special entity and Aida's biggest secret. She had never told anyone about Xiao Ai for fear that she would get locked up in a lab again and never be able to escape. Her eyes sharpened and murderous intent began to leak out as she recalled some terrible memories.

Shaking her head, she let go of those dark thoughts. It was all in the past now. Her and Xiao Ai are living a happy normal life and she intended to keep it that way.

***

Xiao Ai spent the entire following day loading file after file onto the new server. Aida decided to skip the day of conferences and accompany Xiao Ai. She figured if Mark could get away with skipping the entire conference, she could probably get away with skipping the last day of the conference. During this time, Aida built a new housing unit for the servers that reduced the originally 80 pound mass into a 40 pound brick.

Fully immersed in her tasks and teasing Xiao Ai, Aida entirely missed what was going on just outside her hotel.

[1] Xiao Ai looks similar to the meat bun from Half Prince.