“I beg your pardon, but what did you call them?”
The young girl released a puff of air that disturbed the unruly curl of hair that hung down her face. “They’re called rickrolls, and you know very well you heard me the first time.”
Thomas glanced down at her plate. Along with the beans and rice, there were two snug wraps of flour tortillas inside of which were a ground meat mixture combined with diced tomatoes and peppers.
“I do believe those are called burritos.”
“Burr-what toes?”
“Burritos,” he said with deliberate enunciation. “And you called them…?”
“Rickrolls.”
“I don’t think that is their real name. I think you are making a game of me.”
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Thomas drove Marcus halfway to their destination, at which point the hunter asked him to stop so they could walk the rest of the way. He hunted here, and didn’t want the noise to scare off future game. Also, he was concerned about what the village patrols might have to say about it. Likely they had already heard the engine, but would be less likely to shoot first if they saw the two men walking the last of the road towards the village. Thomas agreed and he pushed the vehicle along for the last two kilometers.
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Ding.
Ding.
The internal alarm continued to sound, waking him slowly from reboot mode. Low power alerts flashed across his HUD. His eyes took a while to come into focus; some sort of translation error was happening between the visual sensors and the eyes of the facial mask he had installed the day before, according to his internal system check. It corrected for the error and the room shifted into focus.
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The door opened to their performance room, just five minutes before their set was to begin. All three looked up, but awareness dawned on each of them at different times.
“I’m sorry, sir,” K began, “this is a private room, reserved for…”
S1D laughed. “What the shit, Thomas! What the hell did you do? Is that syntheskin?”
K looked closer, finally seeing her friend. “Thomas? Thomas?? Oh my god, Thomas! Your…face! You have a face!”
Moving quickly to stand in front of him, MöG reached out to take hold of the cloth and fabric draped over him. “You are wearing clothing? This is crazy, man.”
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“I’m sorry, what?”
“Flirting, Thomas. I know you’re aware of the concept.”
“Well, of course, but…you? With…me?”
Her eyes rose until they were level with his. “What logic would there be in my lying to you?”
“The logical conclusion is that you are attempting to test my own processors by positing an impossible scenario, one which would drive me beyond my capacity to respond so that you can evaluate my error code.”
“Exactly,” she nodded, “only there is one problem with that.”
“Which is?”
Her smile took on Cheshire Cat-like dimensions. “You didn’t respond with an error code.”
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Thomas made his way slowly across the light crowd within the call center operations floor of the AmaSoft Convention campus. If there was a word that could describe him today, it was “tired.” A silly word for an Automaton, but it certainly fit him today. He felt sluggish, drained. His battery meter was fine, but it was his processor that seemed slower than usual. Humans were fortunate. They had coffee. No such thing existed for the constructed masses.
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Eighty-eight keys. Thirty six black, fifty two white. Eighty-eight notes, seven octaves; five major chord types across twelve notes for a total of sixty possible combinations, spread up and down across the keyboard. Augmented, diminished, sevenths, and so on. Minors, majors. Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eights, sixteenths, triplets, rests, tempo, intensity. A sustain pedal, volume and pitch bend, vibrato control and even a sampler/sequencer to add pattern building and timbre manipulation, as well as memory bank full of a variety of keyboard types ranging from harpsichord and hammered dulcimer to all manner of pianos and electric organ.
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This is one of the images that inspired the direction of the story. One machine in a crowd of machines, lost in a bit of sonder (the sense that other people have lives too).
The next day of work was mostly a blur. Calls came and went; customers were helped, problems were solved, and reports were filed. Thomas managed to help solve one rather complex issue revolving the diagnosis and repair of a man’s kidney. He later assisted a team of cybernetics developers in Cuernavaca with the installation of an upgrade to their communications relay.
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Thomas had not been programmed for combat. Weapons, defense, tactical assessments – to say nothing of causing or preventing injuries – though his frame and chassis were durable, they were not designed with fighting in mind. But being plugged into the network nearly all day long, and working in the service of human beings that consumed copious amounts of entertainment left its mark. True, he had been designed and programmed simply to assist humans, and he prided himself on finding his own way to adhere to that intention.
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He had walked two blocks down Pike Street towards his home before it occurred to him that it was raining. Rain wouldn’t hurt him – his processors and memory core were well insulated, internally cooled and waterproof – but it would mean additional cleaning to prevent carbon buildup in his joints. Strangely, he found himself unable or unwilling to care.
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There is an old saying that came to my attention, once upon a time: that Insanity is defined as repeating the same action again and again but expecting different results. Conceding to that definition, a machine would be by its nature the perfect example of sanity. At least, insofar as a machine exists in the strictest definition of the word.
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Ding.
Ding.
Slowly, the lights inside the narrow room coated the habitation area with a growing amber glow until their gentle fluorescence filled it from floor to ceiling. At the opposite wall from the room’s solitary window, halfway across from the exit, a gentle hum emanated from one of the room’s few furnishings. A metal cylinder which nearly touched the ceiling provided the source of both the hum and the incessant pinging chime. A series of diodes blinked to life in ascending order and gradient shades from red to green, and as the final light blazed, a harmonic tone sounded, signaling the end to the chimes. The front of the cylinder rolled open with a soft hiss, and the lone occupant, having come to the end of its charging cycle, disengaged from the electrodes and slowly stepped into the room.
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