"...didn't we already agree that the old man was a little off his rocker?" Jansen was saying. When Tim didn't reply, he continued. "Oh, come on, man. Don't tell me you actually buy his Existential-whatsit taradiddle."

Yeah, Tim. You're just overthinking. Blame it on the sleep deprivation. Tim gave his head a forceful shake. "'Course I don't."

___

Throughout the next week, Tim, Jansen and the rest of the team had quite a bit of fun chatting and interacting verbally with the Obelisk. Once she developed the Response-Response Algorithm (Jansen was the one who came up with that name, which Tim absolutely abhorred), she was be able to talk to the employees, gauge their reactions, and issue the appropriate responses. At first, she made quite a few erroneous and cringe worthy responses, but as time passed, she became better and better at it.

Now, she could almost have a flawless, humanlike conversation with anyone at all.

"How are you feeling today?" Tim would ask.

"I'm feeling absolutely fantastic!" She would reply. "And how are you doing, sir?"

One day, during another routine feedback session that Tim and Jansen was performing on the Obelisk, they asked her this question: "What do you need to accomplish your main objective that you don't already possess?"

This time, instead of saying "more pre-recorded conversation samples" or "more data storage space" or even a joking "burritos", her reply was something like this:

"I would like to have direct access to a larger library of English vocabulary that includes colloquialism, slang and loose grammar that actual humans apply in their daily conversations."

There was a long pause in the room. Both Tim and Jansen exchanged glances. They both knew that the easiest and most obvious solution to the Obelisk's request was to connect her to the World Wide Web. This would be way more convenient than to manually upload the entire Urban Dictionary into her system, which might not even guarantee a complete and holistic knowledge of all the slangs and colloquial speech in the world.

The thing is, there were strict policies set by Harold when he first commissioned them with the Obelisk Project, one of which was that no self-improving AI can be granted access to the internet.

"Was it something I said?" The Obelisk piped up.

"No, it wasn't." Tim replied, hastily. "Just give us a moment, alright?"

"Okay." She trudged out of the room, her gait slumped, almost as if she was reluctant to leave.

"Timotheus." Jansen began with that tone that Tim was so familiar with once the door slammed shut. It meant 'dude, I'm serious; don't be stupid now, come on.'

Tim sighed. "I know! "We're just this close to success", "the Obelisk is gonna be the invention of the century", yadi yadi yada–"

"You're being flippant, Tim!" Jansen hissed. "We won't make millions, Tim. Once the Obelisk Project is complete, we're gonna make billions. Billions, Tim. Billions."

"I understand. But will the billions of dollars be worth it?"

Jansen shrugged. "I guess that's the million dollar–no, billion dollar question. Plus, we can always disconnect her after a certain period of time. She's still far below AGI level. Seriously, man, what's the harm?"

Tim didn't speak for two whole minutes. A thousand thoughts were whirling through his mind, but he didn't know which one to start with. When he spoke again, his voice was uncertain. "Okay. But we still have to tell the team about it."

"Fair enough."

Oh dear Lord. Tim, albeit a self-professed atheist, prayed. Please tell me I'm not sending humanity to its doom.

___

The team said yes, of course, and the Obelisk was allowed an hour's access to the internet. Right when the 60 minutes were up, Tim disconnected her personally, and did another round of feedback session with her. There was nothing abnormal with her functions. No anomalies, no sudden spike in intelligence, no nothing.

"Told you." Jansen's face was smug as a cat when Tim finished his inspection of the Obelisk. He gave his friend a comforting pat on the back. "This is gonna be worth it, I promise you that."

"I certainly hope so." Tim murmured.