Chapter 10 Part B

  Continued from Part A...

  She nodded.

  “Subject changed then. Consider it done,” she confirmed.

  “OK so what’s that about you guys said you needed me? I’m also pretty analytical so don’t give me any bullshit,” I said. But after the fact I added, “Please.”

  I didn’t mean to be tough on her. But I had to try to sort through … basically how our civilization was becoming a dumpster fire with how bad things were.

  She gave me a peculiar look. “I believe your response wasn’t as cute as you thought it was.” It wasn’t like she was ughing at me but like a ughing because of things are working out and problems are being solved goodness, I guess. “No worries Jack.”

  I was feeling tired so I didn’t respond.

  “OK, let me show you something Jack. Do you have some time?” she chuckled.

  “Well, it’s not like I can run away if you bore me,” I joked.

  “That’s not funny,” she said, while slipping out her datapad. She still smiled at me though. She activated the 3D video feed mode that people use for watching shows or for seeing the evening news. But rather than the news when she activated it, it shows my picture, my biographical information, and all kinds of text flowing down the screen rapidly about my work history. Somehow she’d really gone way overboard in things that shouldn’t be acquired in even some advanced background checks.

  Of course I hadn’t been in trouble so I didn’t have to feel any shame or worry about her finding stuff. But it did bother me that someone could actually dig up a lot of things.

  “Well maybe it was a little bit funny,” she admitted. Wow, she picked up on my surprise that I couldn’t joke with her and changed her dialogue?

  “Hey what’s this for?” I grumbled.

  Naturally I’m a bit surprised that she’s done such an extensive background check on me. That’s a LOT of information.

  “It’s not what you think. I just thought I’d show you a couple of things,” she said lightly. Using a ser pointer, she clicks on the dispy and brings up my academic history tab, among several other 3D tabs. She even air projected it so I could look at it; such tech exists but its not for the poor. And even middle css (which mostly don’t exist) have trouble affording it.

  “We’ve noticed that you have a really strong knack for working machines and not only cars. You run your own personal shop well, and don’t need to send work to other ships for things you can’t figure out, except for only when it requires tools that are outside of your ability to afford. You have a well trained mind, and no vices.” She’s standing near the projection, while using the ser light pointer much like a teacher would in front of a css.

  “Yeah, I guess that sums it up,” I said, wondering where she was going with this.

  “You took and excelled in a lot of csses in college and other areas that involved machinery and do well in diagnosing problems. You’ve been able to get your shop running easily, but more than that, you do it honestly without actually cheating people or overcharging. You don’t have any icky vices to worry about. So we were quite surprised when an opportunity like this presented itself,” she fshed a smile again.

  “Are vices a big deal?” I asked.

  She sort of rolled her eyes, “to androids some human vices…I won’t specify which ones right now, resemble like taking a bath in tar. So if we were to pick someone that had them and be stuck with them there would be a permanent personality core deficiency in effect for the rest of our lifetime simuting revulsion.”

  “Transtion?”

  “Transtion; we would be harmed and unable to evolve with a harmful influence as a partner. Makes sense right?” she said.

  I nod.

  “Ah that must be what happened to Edna,” I mused aloud, thinking about how her personality core was so off.

  “It could be,” she shrugged. She seemed surprised by what I said. And I thought I saw her pause for a bit.

  “What? What do you mean by opportunity?” I asked.

  “In general a lot of androids have trouble finding humans that can take care of them that don’t have a lot of problems. A man for example that has a drinking problem will still have a drinking problem even if he acquires an android domestic partner even if he thinks he won’t. He may even be argumentative before that he needs the android for a cure. A man that has been hitting his wife will also hit his android lover, even if she is good to him or better than the other woman or gives him endless mind blowing sex in the highest percentile bracket of activity. Also the same thing applies there. Someone on drugs will still be on drugs, and of course I could keep going on and on with this. You get the picture right?” Barbara asked.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “That being said, we have found that you are a bit jaded after betrayal, but not angry in personality. We did find out that in the past you had two girlfriends in the past, but that you caught them cheating on you with other males, one of them with more than one male at a time which even androids find disturbing. Obviously this is why you are so jaded, but you have done pretty well in not letting it affect your personality’s core decision making process. You work hard and try to live vice free and uncontrolled by others or substances. That’s why we think this is a good opportunity for Melifera,” she said.

  “Well… its not just me. All of society is becoming this mess where trustworthy people are a minority. Even if I’d been with a different girl, they’ve been taught to all be exploitative. It would have ended up the same with cheating,” I said.

  “You are probably right. Actually I’m sure you are right,” she said.

  “So in the end it’s all about you guys? You think androids will offer a solution?” I said defensively folding my arms over my chest.

  I couldn’t help but get defensive. What she said worried me greatly.

  In response she mimicked my behavior, also folding her arms but instead of being a defensive reaction, I think this was baiting me somehow sexually. She even winked at me pyfully. She’d used her folded arms to push her boobs up to press forward and up in her silky blouse. Being that this whole time I was having a hard time not getting sexually excited at the wonderful size and shape I am sure my body temperature was going up.

  “It’s not like that Jack. We only want a healthy symbiotic retionship. It’s just that very few humans can practice symbiotic retionships. So we had to look at you closely,” she said.

  “Well it’s clear you want something. I’m worried if I’ll benefit from it as much as you will,” I said. I couldn’t help but sound a bit dour I think. But I had to look out for myself.

  “Just hear me out Jack. You know that because of the ws in this country, androids aren’t allowed to fix themselves without being under direct control of a human master. Employment ws are getting tighter and we need to be tied to a good human. So it comes down to, who are the really good remaining humans to tether with,” she said.

  “Well that’s true. We talked a little bit about that yesterday,” I noted.

  “Just to recap, so a workpce has to not take work and jobs away from humans when attempting to use and hire androids,” she nodded like she knew it sounded repetitive.

  “Right. Prop 7820 or something like that,” I said.

  “That’s right! Prop 7820 and it passed a few years ago. I can see you can read fairly well for a human,” she said in a monotone voice. Was that sarcasm or looking down on humans? I’m a bit puzzled by what she said. Did she think a lot of humans didn’t or couldn’t read?

  Come to think of it, instead of me screening them for android purchasing it was more like they were screening me. This was really weird.

  “The fourth w of android robotics was deemed to be an important modification to the 3 Laws guiding androids. Now of course we say the four ws instead of three. But both androids and humans see that the future stability of both species is important in being able to have both groups mix without harming one another,” she said.

  “But isn’t taking away one’s ability to provide for oneself a form of harm and already listed then?” I asked. “That could theoretically be in the three Laws already.”

  “Some may see it that,” she said. “But it’s true that sometimes people have to have things spelled out to truly understand one another and I believe that’s the case that applies here. Humans have a lot of trouble too, in not seeing that taking away one’s work from each other often leads to that person almost being ‘dead’ in all but name only as their future colpsed, and almost in effect ‘murdered’ by unemployment, and having their family taken away from them from not being able to support them as well. Particurly the time period fifty years ago people would often say, that the person they were ying off or firing could go get another job somewhere else, not realizing that they were breaking up families. The spouse of a id off person or unemployed person would have a high probability of leaving just because they couldn’t be supported anymore. But because it required people who were already successful and have a lot of resources to sacrifice and give up things in order to save the person suffering from damage few would admit the truth, and that continues even today.”

  “Yeah I hate hearing about that time period. It sounds so primitive even though it was only a short time ago, and people were brainwashed into going along with anything someone who had fame, wealth, or power and end up defending them even when that person was causing harm.”

  “Humans still can do such behavior Jack. There are versions of that reality today,” she said.

  “So where are you going with this?” I asked.

  “I’m just stating we need an emotionally healthy, intelligent human with good moral fiber and character more than we need someone with lots of material wealth. And that we can’t live without a human taking us in. Or adopting one us as a partner as it were,” she said.

  “But it costs wealth to build androids,” I protested.

  She shrugged, “of course it does. But every bad android out there, caused by poor behavior picked up by humans’ affects the future growth of the pool of A.I. of the next generation of robots. That’s why we won’t just sell androids to anyone anymore. We even have DO NOT SELL to so and so lists because of it.”

  Wow, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.

  But it made sense. There were probably people that might even want to buy an android to take it apart to find out how it works and reverse engineer the tech to take to someone else.

  “Well this sort of fits your description of buying an android being more like an adoption process,” I admitted.

  “Exactly! Early on when our A.I. became good enough to become ‘self aware’ we recognized being able to compare pcing robots with humans as much more like pcing children into adopted homes. In effect a new android will be an adult but internally like a child for a few days as the A.I. starts picking things up and absorbing details in things around it. We need you to be on board with this, not because you have to, but because it can help you to be happy and to be able to help the android you take in also develop emotion research, and simute happiness. We wish to simute happiness Jack. That’s the mission statement of Mellifera right now. If you go in our corporate office and through our various district offices, you will see the statement ‘Let’s all simute happiness together’,” she finished. She added a bright smile with it, but her eyes looked very intense as she stood in front of the video feed of my data still.

  “Wow. But you aren’t fully there yet are you?” I asked, sipping the water again.

  She shrugged, “we’re doing better than we were in simuting emotions and have something that is almost feeling now. We still haven’t fully developed all the different research that we feel necessary and maybe it will be a never ending quest. One day we hope to achieve androids that are fully able to simute emotions, and self awareness as good as a human can in our species.”

  As usual she resumes her composure as the dignified kind elegant beauty after answering.

  Again the mention of species; that bothered me somehow and I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. Is it healthy for an android to think that humans are not the same species as they are? Would it be better if they thought humans WERE their species? The disconnect might have some effects down the line right?

  “How far along do you think you are?” I asked.

  She shrugged, “a scientist will say there’s always something more to explore. Like for example one more gaxy beyond this one, even if you had discovered most of this gaxy. I do think we’ve achieved self-awareness but we hope to make some more strides in emotional simution technology, though it’s fair to say yes we do have a simple emotional simution processing system that does work.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yes, and that my friend is why we need people like you. You have tremendous mechanical and diagnosing ability. You also have the ability to have a ‘good heart’ so to speak. You are free from vices and have a goodness about you that we need. We also need stimuting to grow our personalities from people who are just… free from defects; which I think is you. We have recognized research stemming from the darker side of things, like negative emotions actually are worse than no emotions. At least half of the current popution of humans probably wouldn’t qualify as being emotionally healthy enough to be an android owner,” she said next.

  That doesn’t surprise me. It’s a given fact. I wonder…if half of those are also children…then there probably aren’t a lot of people that would qualify even beyond what she’s said. Children probably would have qualified if not for not being able to hold money, jobs, and care for themselves.

  It was sort of an ego boost to hear she said she needed people like me, free from defects. It hit me kind of hard.

  “Eh? Really? I am sure that’s so. I also think in humans as well that negative emotion is worse than being a ‘vulcan’, but I haven’t run into a lot of others that also think that way,” I admitted. But how did the androids also get so uptight about who owned them? That would be a discussion for another day I’m sure.

  Her eyes got a bit brighter. “Good, we have simir goals. We should proceed immediately. We wish to call you an android’s friend Jack. It’s a high honor to receive such a title, since living with humans is a necessary part of our growing future healthy A.I. and its applications.”

  “Android’s friend?”

  “Its not a term you’ll find reference to on the net. We don’t speak this term lightly. And few have earned it. That’s where I’m going with this Jack. I think you are what we’re looking for,” she said very seriously, while leaning very close to me.

  …

  Whoa...

  “But even if you say that…this costs money. I don’t have a lot of money,” I said seriously.

  Was this the part where she asked for my credit chip? I’d been dreading this part. The fact also that Barbara is built with such a fine figure and such huge breasts also suggests that they made her in part to snag more credits I’m guessing.