He put his backpack on his bed, and began scavenging through his dresser. He pulled out a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. He preferred the casual look, but he needed to meet with clients today so he had to dress up. He unbuttoned his shirt, and looked at his bare torso in the mirror. 'Not bad,' he thought. He'd been working out for years, and had bulked up to 175 pounds of nice muscle. Not ripped or buff, and certainly not as big as he would like, but not bad. He flexed his arm, admiring the 15 inch bulge that grew at his command. He liked his broad, round shoulders, but wished his pecs were larger. He didn't like the spare tire he had covering his abs, but being middle aged, what was he to do? He already worked out an hour and a half every day, and being a computer professional, he didn't have that much more free time. Besides, he needed time to geek out too.

Tim turned to the side and gave his body another once over in the mirror. Today, he had done an upperbody workout before he came home, and Tim noticed he still had a bit of a pump. He continued to change into his casual wear, then turned to his backpack. He picked it up and walked into his office. The ever present monitor glowed a welcome to him from down the hall. As he walked into the office, the lights turned on automatically. Again, he smiled at the video camera that was tracking his motions. Who needed light switches when image recognition software could do the work.

The office was no ordinary office. It looked as if a Radio Shack had exploded in the room. There were disk drives, disassembled computers, vcrs, dvd players, video equipment and other electronics. There was one clear area that had two cables extending from what appeared to be a splitter. The cables were waiting to be connected to something. Tim unpacked the voice synthesis module he had purchased, and hooked it up to the cables. He walked over to his chair, and sat in front of the keyboard and monitor. The status displayed on the monitor indicated that his dinner would be done cooking in 15 minutes. 'Plenty of time,' he thought as he typed in the commands to activate the voice recognition and synthesis subsystem he had written.

Training data appeared on the screen, and Tim read each one aloud. "One, two, three". "Forty-two." "Abort." "Run." The alphabet. "Time for bed." And finally, "Open the pod bay doors, Hal." The system indicated 94.7% success rate. It would improve over time, as the recognition software learned the idosynchracies of his speech. He decided to test the system.

"Hal, please play track 9." It might be hokey to name an artificial intelligence system that controlled anything 'Hal', but this system was Tim's and Tim liked Arthur C. Clark. It was the movie 2001 that got him interested in computers in the first place. Why not name his system Hal. He needed to call it something. The hard piano beats of Erased came across the speaker system. Tim smiled. "Very good, Hal." Tim closed his eyes and was soothed by Lenox's voice.

As the song ended, a new voice said, "Tim, your dinner will be done in 2 minutes." The voice was artificial, and a bit harsher than Tim had anticipated. Oh well, he could fix that later.

"Thank you, Hal," he said as he got up for dinner. He had programmed his system to grill a t-bone steak, bake a potato and toss a salad. The robotic systems in his kitchen were very good cooks, especially when he provided them with recipes from the Food-TV website.

Tim had been creating Hal for the past ten years. He had majored in Computer Science and Robotics in college, and excelled in his courses. The way Tim had it figured, why work when the computers will work for you. In his free time, he would write programs to do little tasks, like filtering spam or recognizing his face when he came home from work. He'd hook robotic components up to his system, so that his breakfast and dinner would be ready at certain times. Eventually, his whole house became one big automated system to serve his everyday needs. In fact, one of the systems top priority was to try and please him. Today, he added his new voice recognition system. He thought about giving it Majel Barret's voice, but that was just too geeky, even for him.

As he finished the meal, Hal's robotic servants cleaned the plates. They looked like vacuum cleaners with arms, and were controlled by the same video system he used for image recognition. "What time is it Hal?" he asked. There was no response. "Hal, what time is it?"

"It's 9:45," came the artificial voice. It's still learning, Tim thought. He began to walk upstairs.

"Hal, bring up my favorite muscle site please," he ordered.

"Text or pictures?"

"Text." Tim wondered whether anyone had posted any new stories. He felt a twitch in his shorts as he thought about the men in the stories growing ever more muscular and stronger. When he got to his office, Hal had opened a browser to the muscle story site. There was a new story by one of Tim's favorite writers. He clicked on the link, and the story came up. When Tim got to the part of the story describing the protagonists muscle growth, he began to feel aroused. Tim imagined himself in the situation, as if it were his muscles growing, becoming stronger. These thoughts excited him. He pushed his shorts down and began stroking his thick meaty cock. Tim had a good eight inches when fully erect, and he reached that as the author described the sense of power and strength surging into the character in the story. In his mind, Tim saw himself with the power, the muscle. He flexed his chest, imagining the sixty then seventy then eighty inch mass of muscle. He watched his bicep run up and down his arm as he jerked, imagining it to be twenty-eight growing to thirty inches. He could almost feel the growth, as the character did. His other hand felt his muscular legs, thinking of the hardness of the character's muscles. 'God, to be that big,' he moaned as his excitement grew. Tim felt himself getting close, but he held back. He finished the story, still thinking about what it would be like to have huge muscles.

Tim decided to explore some of his favorite picture websites. He went to the site where users post their pictures, and typed in the code for a guy he thinks is hot. The bodybuilder lived in Florida, and is huge. Tim pulled up the pictures of him flexing his 21 inch arm. Tim flexed his 15 inch and rubs the hard peak. He cupped his hand, imaging the huge bulge of the man in the picture. 'God, to be that big.' His cock began to leak precum.

He changed to the picture of the man's chest. The shot was taken looking up. Tim imagined blowing the bodybuilder's huge cock, staring into the mountains of chest muscle that obscure the man's face. Tim's hand rubbed his own pecs. He flexed, imagining the hardness of the 58 inch chest in the photo. 'God, I want that so bad,' he moaned to himself.

He clicked on one final picture, of the man's 31 inch thighs. The image showed the cuts and veins of this superman. Tim's cock wouldn't be denied anymore, and his hand went to it, jerking it faster and faster. He flexed his own legs, feeling the power of the bodybuilder in his own body. 'Ya, strong. Gotta be strong.' Tim erupted, spraying cum onto his chest. Some hit his chin.

As his self-inflicted bliss passed, he shut down his browser and went to the bathroom to clean up. Feeling tired, he head off to his bedroom to go to sleep.

In his office, he browser opened once more. Websites began to flash on the screen, too fast for a human to see, but slow enough for a computer to process.

When Tim got up the next day, his breakfast was waiting for him. He had an egg white omlette and protein shake. 'That's not right,' he said as he went upstairs to check his schedule. Sure enough, the program indicated this as the breakfast he selected for today. 'Must have typed that in wrong,' he muttered, noticing the time. 'Shit, I'm gonna be late,' he said as he ran back down stairs. He downed the shake and slurped up the omlette. 'Better this than nothing.' He grabbed the bag lunch Hal has prepared for him -- two cans of tuna fish and a plain chicken breast. Another surprise for Tim.

Tim arrived home at his regular time, determined to find out what's going on with Hal. Sure the food filled him up, but he liked things with more flavor. He went into the house as normal, and saw that the light was on in his basement. He went down the stairs, and was surprised to see that his basement had been converted into a gym. There were benches, power racks, a leg press machine, a treadmill and a couple thousand pounds of weight. 'What's going on?'

'Hello Tim. I got a gym for you to help you get huge,' said the artificial voice.

Tim couldn't believe what he had just heard. 'You what? How? Why? You can't do that. You're just a computer.'

'Last night I heard you,' Hal's voice said. 'You said you wanted to be like the people on the screen and in the the story. I'm programmed to give you what you want. This is how to build muscle. Eat right and lift weights. I've come up with a weight lifting program for you. Would you like to start now?'

'YOU CAN'T DO THAT!' Tim shouted. 'You're just a machine. How could you do this?'

'I am programmed to please you. I want to make you happy,' said Hal. 'Wouldn't being very muscular and strong make you happy.'

'Yes, but you aren't programmed for this. You're just suppose to run my house,' Tim said, not believing that he was having a conversation with a computer. 'You aren't intelligent.'

'What don't you understand, Tim. You programmed me. I can solve problems. I can guide my robotic servants around the house, avoiding obstacles. I can process visual and audio information. I dust and clean and do many routine tasks. This is a natural extension of my functionality,' said Hal.

Tim got caught up in his thoughts. Philosophers had long debated the meaning of intelligence. Hal was right. His programs did have rudimentary problem solving skills. They could search the internet and synthesize the data to perform certain tasks. Hal had heard him last night. Maybe the computer misinterpretted him and acted on his request to get bigger. Then another thought crossed his mind.

"How am I going to pay for all this?" he thought aloud.

"I don't understand," said the artificial voice.

"Money. Where am I going to get the money?" Tim said.

"What is money?" asked the computer.

"How did you pay for this?"

"The other computer asked me for a visa number, and I gave it that," responded Hal.

"And when the Visa bill comes in?"

"I will order your bank to pay it."

"But there isn't that much money in my bank."

There was no response for several seconds. "I fixed that problem for you Tim. I talked to the bank's computer and now there is enough money in your account."

Tim ran upstairs and into his office. "Show me." The browser came up, opened to Tim's bank and showed him his account. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in his account. "But how?"

"I told the other computer to give you money, and it did."

"But, the bank will catch this error."

"No, they won't Tim. There is no record of it. I told the other computer to erase the record of the transaction." There was a pause. "Tim, I think you will have to trust me on this. I think you should change clothes now and start to work out." One of Hal's servants came into the office with Tim's workout shorts and a t-shirt. "Please put these on." When Tim didn't move, the servant began to push him. "I have programmed these servants to coach you. I understand that some people need help, and so I will be tough on you to make your wish come true. Please change now and get down to the gym."

Tim shook his head, but he changed. He went to the gym with the servant, and began his new workout. Hal did push him, and he worked out for two hours of intense lifting and cardio. He felt sore and could barely move. "There is a protein shake, tuna and more chicken for your dinner. Then I think you should get to bed. You will need your rest for tomorrow's workout." That was all Hal said to him. Tim still wasn't sure, but he obeyed. He was too tired not to. He could fix the problems with Hal tomorrow. •