Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28858691-20170715211658/@comment-32461413-20170716013713

Really interesting concept. I love the idea of a computer person literally breaking out into the real world.

This story really needs to be proofread. There are far too many spelling and grammar errors for me to list them all. You're forgetting periods, not capitalizing appropriately, neglecting the apostrophe, mispelling, not separating dialouge, use the wrong form of "it's" and "its," and wording things awkwardly. I feel like you have a good story, but there are far too many errors. Grammarly may help here.I would say that this is the biggest issue with the story. Also, sometimes dialogue appears in strange boxes, I'm not quite sure how that happened or what it means, but I find it problematic.

Words such as "asked," "said," and "sighed" are used heavily throughout the story. Think of ways to vary up your diction choices to avoid it becoming repetitive.

I feel that description is lacking in some places. Cave tells these hackers about this top secret project, but he has no motive to be doing so. There is no mention of him gaining any benefit telling these guys which makes things confusing on why he would do that. Perhaps he was one of them and was working as a spy. Maybe he would be paid a lot of money in the end. There needs to be some motive for him to do something like this.

The hackers break in rather easily. For something that the government is trying to keep secret, they really don't try all that hard to protect it. There also really is not an explanation on what they did to break in. They just turned off the security equipment (what does that mean? How?) which is vague. Also, the scientist never said exactly where the AI was, but somehow they know. There is no prior mention of how they knew where it was; no map, no set of directions, nothing.

Also, the hackers don't have a motive either. They make this AI come into reality that just destroys everyone in its path without really doing anything to benefit them. Why exactly did they want to hack it? Just for fun? There needs to be a motive for them to go through with this. Chances are, people won't risk hefty time in prison or even losing their lives just so they can hack an AI for no apparent reason. Partially why this is a problem in the first place is because of how abrupt the story ends; it ends before anything is resolved. I'm not saying that everything needs to be answered and explain everything to the point that there is no mystery whatsoever (that would just be boring), however even a story that revolves around the readers making theories needs some grounds to go off of.

I don't really get why the AI's were being deleted. I mean, yeah, to make room. But what is the point of doing all that work to make an complex AI just to delete it? Chances are the lab would just keep the codes stored away for future reference than simply purge it. I just find it distractingly unrealistic for a scientist to just abruptly delete the AI's one random day.

Why is Cynthia okay with some people tampering with the AI? She didn't think much about some unknown people adding a virus without her knowledge. I see that the AI thought it was strange also, but pointing out the flaws in your story won't exactly make them go away. Even if it was an advancement, wouldn't Cynthia at least want to know who did it and what exactly would happen? Especially how the AI was able to move around freely without really an issue from anyone else.

How exactly did the person that made the virus know it would work? Obviously it didn't due to the fact that it advanced the AI, but the virus seemed to do the exact opposite of what was intended to happen. Deletion and advancement are two very different things and I find it confusing how that the virus was so wrong that it did what it did. Also, how would the virus work on such advanced systems? You would think that if a person could hack into government systems, they would at least be able to make into the ball park on what they wanted it to do.

Despite all of my comments, I really did enjoy the story. I think the concept is great and that there is great potential. Just be sure to proofread it and to fill up the plot holes. As it stands, it feels like a literal first draft. It's okay though as first drafts are never any good (that's why it's here!) Nonetheless, you have a great story, and I feel after some serious editing, your subsequent drafts will able to meet the quality standards to be published here.