“Dear mother and father,” no, that not correct. “My dear mother and father,” Enter. He remembered when he used to write a letter, how many centuries was that before? He would write the first sentence, not like it, throw the paper away and start with a new one. Nowadays computers were here.

You don’t need to throw away anything. You just press Enter, rewrite what you wanted to write and simply delete the wrong line. You can even copy paste. The last time he wrote them a letter or better an email was four months ago and he had managed to write a proper one after two hours. Where the hell had he saved that?

He always saves his post or better his mails. Check ‘send’, right it's there. Control A to copy the whole letter and then he would do the corrections, control C and new page, control V and here it was. A new letter.

“Dear mother and father,” after all this it is the best way to write it, “I’m well, working in the same mine as the last two years, even though there is this conversation about moving to another mine with more money,” well this had to change a bit. “I’m well, working in a new mine that we opened just two months ago.”

Bloody hell two months had passed. Time goes so fast, especially when your only sense of day and night is your damn computer. “They said that it might be a bit dangerous the new place, please don’t start worrying now we have talked about it; but the money is much better.” Shit, this needs changing as well. “The new mine is harder than the other and we found some difficulties installing ourselves in the area but the money is good and I hope I will be able to save some and come home sooner than I had calculated.”

“How about you two? Are you ok? Does dad get his medicine?” He always answers their letter a bit after, since their letter is mainly written by his mother who fills it with complaints about his father’s refusal to take his heart medication. Enter. He thought for a few seconds, reread it and then saved it. This was a good email.

Oops, he had forgotten something, open file, letter 006 and then he added “with love, your son” And the very last thing. Enter, enter, enter some more lines down and then: ioiiioooioioiiiiiioooioioioiioooioioio

A few thousands miles away two months later…

“I think we have to terminate the program here and now,” said the thin man in the gray suit sitting next to the window. “No, I think we can keep it on until we find out what’s really going on.” The other man had a slender cigar in his mouth letting clouds of blue smoke fill the air. 'Disgusting habit,' thought the thin man but he was the expert and he had to live with it. Of course, he didn’t have to live with the program as well. One at a time was enough and this smoking habit was too much alone.

“Did you know all the way? Did you know from the beginning?” asked the thin man drumming his fingers on the glass table. “You know well enough that I had no idea. This order came for a thinking computer because they knew that they were going to die and they thought that their son didn’t need to lose the feeling of his parents being gone while he was doing such a difficult job. Therefore, we programmed this computer to react to any communication from the son. We thought that could last until their son returned home and then one of us would tell him the truth!”

The thin man stood up, his height was impressive and made the older one with the thin cigar take a step back. “The son has been dead for six months now! He's dead, dead!” He wasn’t screaming, on the contrary his voice was very low like a whisper but the feeling, the feeling was like screaming.

“How could we know that the son bought a similar computer? How could we know that the son would be killed in a lethal mining accident? How could we know that he would get the same type of computer?”

The thin man took a deep breath and asked quietly, “That was an experimental model and we had no idea what a computer with its own logic can do, so how many have you done?” The older man reached the office where there was an ashtray and said, “We don’t know.” “You don’t know? What the hell are you talking about?” “Well there were a lot of demands like that one and you know how sensitive we are to people who die.”

“How many…” and before he finished his question a sound came out of his pocket. The thin man pulled a small pocket computer from his jacket pocket and read:

“ioiiioooioioiiiiiioooioioioiioooioioio

Tell your friend that his order for the logical computer arrived home an hour ago and that he should have quit smoking six months ago.

iIoiiioooioioiiiiiioooioioioiioooioioio”