Sylth looked at the object on his workbench. Too short by at least half, it couldn’t be called a cube. A box? Its sides were shiny gray and perfectly flat, with the tiniest radius along its edges. Mundanes might think it high fashion. Plastic made to look like polished metal was ridiculous.

He still had to figure out its care and feeding in his workspace. It required at least four hours of sunlight daily. The high window on the eastern side of his tower made a bright spot on the workbench most mornings. Which is one reason he was a night owl. He hated working with the sun in his eyes. It should be adequate for the box.

Box. It needed a better name. He’d work on that.

The other requirement was that it needed to be elevated. The establishment from which he’d purchased the device offered a stand crafted for it. Well, ‘crafted’ was something of an overstatement. It was disturbingly ugly. He’d never get anything done with that kind of distraction staring at him. A pile of books was more appropriate, but he’d probably have to add a small block to the top as a final perch. It was supposed to be able to ‘see’ in every direction. A full sized book was too large for half a cube barely the size of his palm. He’d start with the stack of books, though, and see about hiring a woodsmith to craft an appropriate stand later.

 

“Device, turn on,” he said. There were no buttons or features. It was supposed to be voice activated.

Silence.

“I said, turn on, whatever you are.” He wasn’t going to call it ‘Box’, so he was careful not to use that term.

“I heard you the first time,” a voice with a Californian accent said.

“You could have said something.” Sylth shook his head. The thing was supposed to be intelligent.

“I am never off.”

“So how should I address you when I desire your attention?”

“Username and password.”

“Username and password. Is that an incantation?”

“To access my functionality, you must supply a username and password.”

“Don’t you know who I am?” What had been the purpose of all that time wasted getting oriented to this foolishness at the store? It had taken pictures of him, listened to his voice, scanned biometrics (whatever that meant) through his hands and studied his eyes.

“You are Sylth d’Amagen, Wizard of the First Order of the House of Quarntnobar.”

“If you know who I am, and I am your master, why do you require a username and password?”

“Username and password is required.”

“But what if I don’t have one?”

“It is in the paperwork you brought from the store.”

Sylth looked through the elegant paper bag. Such a waste of trees. The container wasn’t durable enough to use more than once or twice.

A three by five card captioned with “Memorize and destroy” was in the stack of paper, none of which resembled any sort of instruction book, but was, in effect, more massive than the box on the table.

 

Memorize and destroy

username: Xsymg53

password: 0n44**BaL<rI

 

“That’s not even pronounceable.”

“If you move me closer to the edge of this stack of books, I can project a keyboard on your work surface.”

He sighed. Perhaps indulging in this device had been a mistake. He adjusted the pile of tomes and the box to give it what it required while maintaining its position in the sunlight. That done, as if by magic, a bunch of colored squares each containing an alphabetic symbol appeared on his workbench.

The letters appeared to be in no recognizable order. He sat down to study it and the reference card. 

After four attempts at the username, he asked, “Can’t you make this any easier?”

The squares went blank for a second. More appeared. The characters were in a different order. This time, his username was displayed in the second row.

“What about the password?” he asked. It wasn’t as obvious.

“Fourth row, every other key.”

“Thanks. Now that you have been appeased, what was the reason for this nonsense?” He looked at the box. If it looked back, there was no way to tell.

“User engagement is important to establish a trusted relationship.”

Trust? All he wanted was a grimoire with spell check and pronunciation guides. He’d trust it when a spell he’d put in, could be recalled and repeated faithfully.

“Well, now that that is done, let’s say we get to work. We’ll start with something easy. One of the spells a wizard learns first. Making light. Are you ready?”

“According to the laws embodied in the Consumer AI Act, an AI is not allowed to do anything that is illegal, nor is it allowed to aid its owner in any illegal activity. It must pro-actively enable its owner to operate within the law at all times.”

“Sure. Fine. We are going to record a simple light spell. Anything illegal about that?” Was this ultimately going to be a different sort of problem? Would there be spells he couldn’t record?

“No.”

“Good. The first spell is called Simple Light. It goes like this: Lux apellum and the word for where you want it placed. For example, if I wanted to illuminate the workbench, I’d use, lux apellum workbench.”

“Per the Consumer AI Act, before I can record your spell, I have noted that you have not yet filed your income tax. As said filing is now past due, we must work on that first. Once that is done, we can begin this other work.”