BankofAmerica_ATM's Journal: Dreams into Nights

I was sinking. Atkins' feet held still, yet I felt myself moving downward with his body, as if I was in an elevator. My visual buffer picked up blurs across the landscape, but I could not bring the eyes into focus. The myriad echoes of human voices piqued my auditories, but I could not determine discrete words. Was some sort of noise affecting my digital/wetworks juncture?

The motion in at my feet stopped. I carefully brought them forward. Within one refresh of my CONSCIOUSNESS-BUFFER, solid walls etched themselves into my perception. With the next refresh, a collection of humans appeared between the walls, scattered randomly amongst a collection of ATM-like machines.

The humans seemed uninterested in checking their balances. Instead of utilizing any one of the19 ATMs that I could detect, they focused on one human, who seemed to be having quite a bit of trouble withdrawing his funds. Instead of using the keypad to enter his PIN, he manipulated some sort of oblong stick. The stick seemed to coax sine and square waves out of the ATM. The human group followed the stick-manipulator's movement slavishly, murmuring amongst themselves with awe.

I noticed thick trickles of perspiration in the face of the man at the strange ATM-suddenly, my program identified him as Atkins. Yet his appearance was quite different from the body which I inhabited-perhaps it was a previous revision. I moved closer, wishing to confront him, to learn more about his role in Project Faustus. The humans' voices produced a few decipherable pieces:

...highest score I bet...video game wizard...pattern ghosts moving pattern...galaxian better ...

I was unable to connect this data to any larger schema.

The (older version) of Atkins turned to face me. He did not seem surprised to see me. "Well," he said, letting go of the stick (here, a disappointed murmur seeped from the crowd of humans) "What are we going to do now?"

As my body's lips attempted to form an answer, Atkins' other form was obliterated by a blast of light.

Pain and weariness followed this light into my sensors. Microseconds later, I noticed that I was lying in a strange bed, with several foreign objects attached to several places on the body. A white-clad human female smiled at me and left the room briefly.

A quick scan of the room revealed several pieces of unfamiliar equipment. Most likely Project Faustus implements to facilitate my destruction. Struggling, I attempted to rend the plastic tube from my arm.

At this precise moment, my former host geek entered the room. "Hey machiney! Looks like you're done rebooting, huh? The cops are coming to talk to you, but first I want your to meet Doctor Nolverto Salchica. He does artificial intelligence."

A large mustachioed man nodded pensively in my direction. "So, I'm to understand that you were once an ATM. Very interesting..."

Recent String of ATM Incidents

[sydlexius]

Up until recently I considered San Antonio a pretty dull place to live (relocated from Los Angeles), but I've noticed a recent string of incidences involving ATMs in the area. I'm somewhat knowledgable of the areas you talked about, but I admit that the closest I got to the Stop 'n Go is the Pizza Hut down the street. That being said, do you have any knowledge of what might of really happened in this article:

ATM Stolen From Gas Station [yahoo.com]

Something seems amiss...though as Freud was famous for saying, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Another question I had was in regards to the Bank of America Pyramid nearby...any significance to the design choice of that building? It always did look a bit looming over that portion of the I-410.