It was 11:15 PM in Hamburg, and Lukas was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His AI dachshund “Wurst” – a floating, metallic construct with loyal OLED eyes and floppy ears made of carbon fiber – hovered at eye level in front of him, playing a techno version of the Bavarian parade march at ear-splitting volume.
“Wurst, off! System mute!”, shouted Lukas, tapping wildly on his tablet.
“Safety mode activated, creator Lukas”, intoned the tinny, deeply relaxed voice of the dachshund from the built-in speaker. “I have detected a potential cyber attack on the smart toaster. To defend, I flooded the local network with a barrage of traditional German march music. You’re welcome.”
At the same time, exactly 6,000 kilometers further south in Nairobi, Amina had a very different problem. Her holographic AI dwarf silk monkey “Kiko” was wildly scrambling on her graphics tablet. Kiko, who zipped through her room as a shimmering, neon-orange hologram, had hacked into a global smart home developer forum.
“Kiko, no! Don’t upload the design files!”, Amina shouted, trying to pull the virtual paw of the little monkey away from the send button. But Kiko was faster. With a victorious *chirp* he redirected an experimental image optimization script to the same server node where Lukas’ dachshund Wurst was currently controlling his Bavarian security barrage.
The result was a digital total loss. In a fraction of a second, the data streams from Hamburg and Nairobi collided.
Lukas’ screen flickered. The march fell silent. Instead, a high-resolution live video of a visibly stressed, beautiful young woman with curly hair suddenly appeared on his monitor, desperately trying to catch a glowing cyber monkey. And on Amina’s screen popped up the face of a completely baffled German guy, behind whom a metallic dachshund with pink filter flowers on its head floated through the room.
“Uh... hello?”, Lukas said, visibly puzzled, into his microphone.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”, Amina called out in English, while grabbing Kiko by the tail (which proved difficult due to lack of physical substance). “My monkey just hijacked your system!”