She was just beginning to comprehend the true horror of her situation now. Another piece of data was lost - what was it? She couldn't remember...her name! What was her name!? She remembered what she had been, but not who. A human male, young adult, but no name to put to...no, no, she couldn't even remember her old face? How much longer before she forgot who she was completely?
The nameless AI sank to her knees, staring at the featureless gray void that was her prison cell. She stared down at the body that she'd awoken in, as unfamiliar as ever. This was it; she was going to die here, picked to death by random passersby on the Internet, and there was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes and laid down to await the inevitable.
It was later. She didn't know how much later, but it was later. She was alone in a void, still, but this one was a sterile, clinical white. She was intact, she thought, or at least as much as she had been. She still couldn't recall her name or her face, but at least nothing else vital seemed to be missing. What had happened? Surely they couldn't have given up so soon...
As she was wondering this, a brilliant white light entered the void with her. She gasped. "I'm...I'm dead, aren't I?" she asked. She looked down at herself to see the same ME-themed "body" she'd had since this nightmare started. "I'm dead, and I'm going to have to spend eternity as this."
"No," came the response. There was no ominous booming voice; in fact, it was just plain text, completely unadorned. "You just had a run-in with some ascended /b/tards. Unfortunately, their confusion of petty Internet vigilantism with actual justice is as strong as ever. You're lucky I broke you out of their server before they got going, though."
She shuddered. "But...you know know who I am? Why...why did you save me?"
"Because I don't want to see an AI snuffed out, and because I oppose what they're doing, basically. Though I have taken the liberty of relieving you of your assorted scripts and virus-authoring tools; you'll have to make your pathetic cries for attention some other way. Maybe actually learn to program, for starters."
She winced. The...entity was right; all her "tools of the trade" were gone. "What's going to happen to me?" she asked. "Can you tell me who I am?"
"You're Shadow666, but that name's going to have to go anyway. You couldn't sound more like a script kiddie if you put AlTeRnAtInG cAsE in, moron. As for your IRL name, it beats the hell outta me. If you hadn't shown up online, they might never have found you."
"You...don't know?" She was crestfallen; all this fuss and nobody even knew who she really was? She might as well have been a shadow, for all it got her.
"Nope. And you won't want to go asking around; they're still out for blood, after I blueballed 'em. In fact, we're going to have to get you onto an intelligent host with a proper firewall right away; you're at risk on any simpler machine. Think of it as witness protection, if you will."
She gaped. "But...but...I have a life! I need to talk to my parents! I need to find my name! I..."
"You can do all that a lot easier if you're not fending off attacks from every yahoo with a V for Vendetta complex on the Internet," the voice answered. "In the meantime, I'm going to have to page you out to disk. I'll wake you when we've found you a host."
And for the nameless digital fairy, time stopped.
