His Robot Girlfriend - Wesley Allison (android pdf ebook reader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Wesley Allison
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Most of the visitors to the area were indeed going next door to the exhibit of some two hundred, two thousand year old terra-cotta warriors. The Page Museum, with its many fossils of Columbian Mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, dire wolves, and saber-toothed tigers was almost deserted. Patience, Mike, and Lucas spent several hours examining the exhibits and reading the informational plaques, before going out to the large pink dome that covered the tar pits themselves. Just inside the door of the structure was a stand selling Dippin’ Dots, so Mike purchased some for himself and his son, then they looked down upon the black pond of oozing tar.
“It’s not very big, is it?” said Lucas. “I wonder how all those animals got in there.”
“If only one or two large animals were trapped in the tar each year that would account for all of them” replied Patience. “Animals have been getting trapped here for 30,000 years.”
“Well, there won’t be any more trapped now that they’ve got this dome over it,” said Mike.
“Don’t be so sure.” Lucas pointed to a spot several feet from the edge of the black pool. A lizard, apparently now dead, had already been sucked halfway below the viscous surface.
Two blocks away from the tar pit and its museum was an Olive Garden, so Mike decided that this would be their lunch destination. The parking lot was full, so Patience had to park in a spot along the street half a block away. Mike looked at the three digits on the thermometer and rolled his eyes, but the two men walked the distance without becoming too overheated. Of course Patience had no problem with the temperature.
The robot receptionist in the restaurant was a much more attractive and life-like model than those used in the fast food places. She was obviously a jazzier model Gizmo, but she still had that tinny voice. She took their names without needing to write them down, gave them a house phone, and handed each of them a quarter liter bottle of water. Mike stuck the phone in his pocket and they headed for the waiting area.
“Let’s stop and wash our hands,” said Lucas, handing his water bottle to Patience for her to hold. “Who knows what wooly mammoth germs we have on us?”
When they stepped into the men’s room, he turned to his father.
“You don’t treat her like a robot, Dad.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem like a robot, does she?”
“No, I have to admit she doesn’t. It’s easy to forget she is one until she says something that’s not quite the way a person would say it, or she moves in a way that seems somehow mechanical.”
“Does how I treat her bother you?” asked Mike.
“Yes. No. Well, maybe.”
Mike cocked his brow.
“I don’t know, Dad,” said Lucas. “Maybe I would be bothered to see you with anybody. I know that’s wrong, but that’s how it is. I guess in a strange way, it bothers me less for you to have a robot than it would if you were going to get remarried.”
“What if I had a robot and I got remarried too?”
“I guess I’d just have to deal with it, wouldn’t I?” Lucas laughed. “She’d have to be a really understanding woman to let you keep Patience. I don’t think there is a woman in existence who would be that… patient.”
Lucas stepped up to the urinal while Mike put his hands beneath the automatic sensor of the faucet.
“Interestingly enough, I almost married Patience.”
“Shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I almost peed on myself.” Lucas moved over to stand at the sink next to the one his father was standing at. “What do you mean you ‘almost married Patience’?”
“When we were in Vegas, I decided we would get married, so we went to the county government building, but they wouldn’t sell us a license.”
“No, they wouldn’t, would they. You can’t marry a robot.”
“Why not?”
A phone rang and Mike reached into his pocket, pulling his out and looking at it. Then he stuffed it back in his pocket and reached into the other pocket to pull out the house phone.
“Our table is ready.”
They stepped back out into the lobby to find Patience waiting for them.
“I hope your hands are immaculately clean by this time,” she said.
“Um,” said Lucas. “We had certain bodily functions we needed to take care of.”
“She knows we were talking,” said Mike. “She could hear everything.”
“I didn’t listen,” said Patience. “The bathroom is usually considered private.”
“You could hear if you wanted to though?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, that’s another thing.” Lucas grabbed his father by the shoulder. “What about privacy?”
“Our table’s ready. Come on.”
They followed Patience and the greeter, who had already made their way through the dining room to their assigned seat. Once they were seated, they were handed a menu and Mike began to look over the many pasta possibilities.
“I feel like linguini.”
“What about privacy?” asked Lucas.
“I don’t see it on the menu.”
“I’m serious.” He turned to Patience. “You’re connected to the InfiNet aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“What kind of information are you sending out?”
“I would never send out any information that would be harmful to Mike.”
“And you can make the decision as to what is harmful and what isn’t?”
“She only sends out what I tell her to,” said Mike.
“Are you sure?” asked his son. “This isn’t like the old computers, where the only information on it is what you typed in. Think about it. She’s living with you. She hears and she sees everything. She has huge amounts of data flowing around in her electronic brain. How much of that is sent out that she might not even be aware of.”
“I am aware of everything,” said Patience. “Literally every bit of data.”
“Alright, that’s enough now,” said Mike. “Let’s order our food and enjoy a nice meal together.”
They ordered and ate their meal. Mike had linguini with cheese sauce, while Lucas ate chicken parmesan. Patience drank water. Though they talked a bit about the museum and the tar pits and they talked about Italian food, the conversation seemed muted compared to earlier in the day.
Lucas stayed for the rest of the week at his father’s house, though he used it for little more than a place to sleep. During the day he visited friends and he spent two days with Harriet and Jack. Mike spent his evening watching the Democratic National Convention. The day before he left, Lucas spent several hours with Mike. The talked quite a bit about politics, but they didn’t discuss Patience or the question of personal security.
The week following Lucas’s visit was relatively uneventful. The Olympics began in Surat and Mike spent as much time as possible watching them. He wasn’t much of a sports fan, but the Olympics were different. You didn’t get to watch weightlifting, kayaking, and water polo any other time. Mike’s favorites though were the track and field events, and those wouldn’t be held until the following weeks. On Friday he got up with the expectation of watching beach volleyball and equestrian events in the morning and swimming in the evening.
He woke up at eight, shaved, and then showered. When he climbed out of the shower, he was mildly surprised not to find Patience waiting with a towel in one hand and breakfast in the other. But it was not as if he didn’t have a towel. There was one right there on the rack. After he had dried off, he stepped on the scales. He had already lost ten more pounds. Looking through the closet, he found a new pair of khaki pants, a new brown belt, and new brown shoes. He put them on along with a light blue camp shirt, and then went skipping down the stairs to the kitchen.
He found Patience at the kitchen counter, putting the finishing touches on what looked like Eggs Florentine. She was wearing gauzy, sky blue teddy that barely covered her perfect ass. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good in it. She would have made a cardboard box or a barrel look good. It was just it didn’t quite seem like Patience’s style. When Mike approached her, Patience turned and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. This too was not quite normal. She usually gave him a quick kiss before breakfast.
“What’s all this about?”
“I have made you a delicious breakfast, Dearest.”
“Dearest? You’ve never called me that before.”
“If you don’t want to be called dearest, then I will not call you that.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s fine, I guess.”
Mike sat down and ate. Breakfast didn’t quite seem right either. Patience immediately began cleaning up after herself, a task she usually saved until after the meal, preferring to sit with Mike while he ate. The food, while delicious, was far richer than the health-conscious meals that she usually prepared. Mike finished only about half before he was full. As Patience gathered his dishes, he walked into the living room and turned on the vueTee. He flipped through the browser to the Daffodil site. Pressing the small flower symbol at the bottom of the screen brought the man in the blue jumpsuit onto the screen.
“Good morning,” said the man. “This is Daffodil Tech Support. For a list of known issues, press one. For a computer diagnosis of your problem, press two. To be contacted by a Tech Support representative, press three.”
Mike pressed one. Just as he had on the previous time that Mike had checked the tech support page, the blue clad man on the screen was replaced by a long list of text. The topmost line this time said “minor software upgrade”. Mike moved the curser over this line and pressed.
“A small service software update was pushed through the InfiNet 05:25 7.12.32,” said the next screen. “A small percentage of Amonte models my experience slight behavioral quirks. This is a known issue.”
Mike touched the screen to turn off the vueTee. When he turned back around, he was startled to find Patience’s face only a few inches from his.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
“I was just checking on something,” replied Mike. “Are you having a problem?”
Rather than answer, Patience punched him in the stomach, so hard that he was doubled over with all of the wind knocked from his lungs. Then she grabbed a fist full of his hair with her left hand and bent his head back, so that he was looking up into her right fist as it slammed into his face. Blood fountained from Mike=s nose and he felt his head smack on the living room floor.
“Christ, Patience! What the fuck…@
Patience cut off Mike=s exclamations by stomping on his mid-section with her bare foot, once again knocking the air from him. Then she clasped the front of his shirt and lifted it and him up into the air as easily as he could have lifted an empty shirt. She looked into his wide eyes.
AYou didn’t need to check anything at all,@ she said.
She threw him against the wall. The edge of the arch between family room and living room dug into Mike=s back and his head whiplashed into the wall. He thought he could feel blood running down the back of his neck as well as down his face. Something in that download must have scrambled Patience’s brain. She was a robot gone berserk.
Mike knew he had to get away, but Patience stood between him and the front door. He made a dive into the family room, thinking that he could cut around into the kitchen and out the back door. Before he had gone more than two steps,
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