Cary wrote: worthless geeks.
You mean like the people that deveop and maintain the technology that enables you to make
sich an remark? (OK, the story just says 'software job' and that is just one posibilty...)
Cary wrote:II like to believe it was just a hoax perpetrated by a lonely old bachelor.
You got point there. Essentially all the input into the system was guided by the computer's owner,
who might have known the response of the system beforhand and have steered his guest towards providing fitting keywords.
On the other hand, the author really seems to push the idea that the system responses display unexpected intelligence -in my eyes even overdoing it - in that she has the guest muse about artificial intelligence when all the computer has done so fare is display an unusual prompt.
Cary wrote:I don't care for heroines who throw their lives away for worthless geeks.
Throw away her life, indeed. But form whom or what? That so called wortheless geek is part of her considerations only in so far as what she wants from him. It's for herself, for her own wishes and needs that she acts, not for anyone else. And by possessing the computer she also seems to have destroyed his pet project (or mission in life). There might be some deep story here if at least one of these consequences hab been voluntary. But as is is neither her corporal death nor the destruction of her rival, the pet project did enter her considrations before she made any decision,
that is as long as she could have had any say in that matter. So what remains is doing something really stupid in order to gain someone's attention and accidentially dying.