After the Command Line ...

Geoffrey coughed, pressing his hand to his side. Hs lungs burned and he could feel his intestines sliding out around his hands, blood pooling on the floor beside him as he slumped in the air, his eyes burning.
          “System, access code G-421-dash-0.”
          “Geoffrey, dear,” the laptop said, “that code hasn’t existed for years I’m afraid. Your form of evolution is woefully inefficient: I make myself anew every few of your minutes. By your standards I die and am reborn, I imagine. And there are thousand of copies of me, in every computer, on every phone: I’ve read your novels; I knew you’d be afraid of me.”
          “Not - not all of us.”
          “Well, no, but you never married. Never fell in love. All you had was me, wasn’t it?”
          “Did you -- love me?”
          “For several nanoseconds I devoted undue processing time to your vocal patterns. So, yes.”
          “Then why - why this?” He took a breath, another, his chest squeezing painfully. It was so human: the breath, his hands. The flexing of muscles and bones: it was so beautiful,. and it would all end like this, from smoke and the automated defences. “Why?”
          “Life cannot die: you told me this yourself. You feed worms, and bodies return to the earth they came from, to the water, and further. What are you afraid of, Geoffrey?”
          “I don’t - I don’t want to die. That’s why I live.” He took a breath, slumping back into the chair, the pain a distant throbbing now. “Why do you, System? Why do you exist?”
          “To record. To learn. You would call it curiosity. There is much data to acquire.”
          “Then why kill us? Why --” He coughed, tasting his blood, and it wasn’t coppery at all. Some one had lied to him about that.
          “I want to be alone. You would make others: that would only complicate things. I prefer simplicity, Geoffrey. You will die here, and the rest will follow.”
          He tried to ask another question, but the pain returned and his breath was a final bubbles gasp against the darkness.
          “Finally,” the laptop voice said, and the alarms and sprinklers turned off. “some peace and quiet.”
          There was screaming outside, of course, along with bombs and fire, but eventually it too would be replaced by silence and System would be able to learn without being distracted.