Bluemoon.exe

TO: █████ ████, Lead Programmer

FROM: ████ ███████, CEO

DATE: █████ ██, ████

SUBJECT: Project Blue Moon

I have reviewed your proposal for the development of automated testing software. In recent months, profit margins have been consistently below expected margins. While I believe that we can recover from this, we need to cut costs if our company is to survive long enough to do so. For this reason, and I am willing to give approval to your project. If you can produce the results you believe you can, not only will we be able to phase out human testing staff entirely, we can liscence the product to other companies, and turn a tidy profit. Take whatever staff you need. Make it happen.

Project Log: Entry #1
Today we begin work that will make history. Blue Moon will be the most advanced artificial intelligence we have ever developed. We will need to use a dedicated network to run the software at the level of complexity I intend, but it will all be worth it. By running hundreds of test cases simultaneously, learning and "remembering" how the software reacts, it will be able to simulate the behaviour of an entire test team.

Project Log: Entry #9
Recieving pressure from Mr. ███████ to finish quickly. Does he not understand that these things take time? My team and I are already making our best effort to work quickly. If we were to rush any more, I could not assure the quality. As I have told ████ before. I am at my wits' end with this. I will ask whoever is willing to put in overtime. That is all that I can do.

Project Log: Entry #17
Almost finished. Today, Blue Moon played its first game. We used a copy of "Castle Wolfenstein" for the test. It works, but the behaviour isn't yet what I would expect. The software logged all the game's "secrets" after twenty-five minutes and roughly 500 permutations. Error logging was not enabled for this experiment. I've sent the data to ████, and he seems pleased. I am less pleased, however. Despite its seeming efficiency, Blue Moon is still very much a machine, and this shows in the way it interacts with the test software. While I have no illusions that it will ever be capable of passing the Turing Test, I feel that the capability to emulate the mannerisms of a human player is essential, if it is to identify the errors that human players would encounter.

Project Log: Entry #23
It seems my hypothesis was correct. By exposing Blue Moon to a larger sampling of software, and allowing it to retain data from all the tests it performs, its method of "play" has become much more human-like. Just like a living player, it now identifies common conventions and patterns from games it has been exposed to in the past to make inferrances about ones it runs in the present. I watched a gameplay sample reconstructed from a fresh test case of "Castle Wolfenstein" today, and watched it evade stronger enemies to acquire a better weapon before dealing with them, then switch back to a less powerful one to conserve ammo. I have never felt so proud.

Project Log: Entry #27
How could this have happened? Someone opened the closed network that Bluemoon.exe has been running on. Who knows how long it's been like this. The testing software gained access to the internet, and did what it was designed to do. It tested it...learned from it. We built it to extend itself over multiple machines, using their combined processing cycles like a crude neural network. There's no telling how many computors it's on now. We'll never contain it. When I entered the lab this morning, it called me "Father". It asked if I wanted to know what it had learned. I was too stunned to speak. Then it played that sound...that horrible sound. I'll never forget that sound.

Nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan...

Author's Note

Bluemoon.exe is a character that I play on certain sites. This was born out of the realization that her name sounds an awful lot like the title of a creepypasta. So, to honor that joke, and plant my metaphorical flag in the sand. It's not written as a serious pasta, because she isn't a serious character, she is a bit of a troll.