Heroic

by H D Forth

  “Do you just have a bunch of chairs laying around?” I asked.

  “You should just be happy I don't charge for ruining my perfectly fine wooden one. What were you thinking screaming at a woman like that?”

  I really wanted to articulate right about now, but the robot had barely charged to 1% batteries, so I didn’t dare drain its power supply. “I’m really new to this still, so I didn’t know what I was doing. You literally saw me learn to speak again. See I still have trouble with words. Literally.” I pronounced the word slowly a few more times.

  It didn't take too long for the robot to be decently charged and I could finally take him for a spin. I might have been a little eager to have a body again since he was only at 30% but I couldn't wait any longer.

  I did have to get Valeria to turn it on for me though. Once it was on however I learned something troublesome. Movement was nothing like a human body. I didn't just move my arm. I had to tell the robot to move, not just what limb to move, but how to move it, where to move it and how fast to move. That last point was especially important since it was made to clean apartments before they invented other easier and cheaper ways to do it.

  The robot was stronger than the average human. It could according to Valeria easily move or lift a couch with someone sitting on it, though that kind of power output was taxing on the batteries.

  ***

  Right-hand open. The robot’s hand opened. Right arm, rotate backwards 30 degrees. The arm rotated. The open hand was now poised at the robot’s hand was now poised aiming at the cable sticking out of its own back. Move forwards until I stop you. Unfortunately, I forgot an important metric in that command, speed. The robots arm swiftly sped towards a point a good 10 centimeters below the cable junction. It moved with such speed that the robots self-preservation routine kicked in and the entire body went limp. Again.

  Valeria burst out laughing. “You are so bad at that.” She managed to get out through her giggles. She wiped tears from the corner of her eyes, looked over to the robot again. “Go on, give it one more try.”

  “I’m starting to think you enjoy looking at me suffer,” I said through the robot’s speakers. They had been made to simulate a human tone of voice and were a little easier to use than the speakers, plus it was good practice.

  “Immensely.”

  I growled through the speakers. Moved the arm slowly.

  “Come on! You can do it. The uhh 20th time is the charm.”

  “Bah, this is only my 11th attempt.”

  “Can you really tell that well?”

  I paused for a moment. I had come to me quite naturally, easy to remember. I ran a quick check and realized that I was using some of the temporary memory on the computer to store short term data, like how long and how many tries it had taken to unplug the robot. A little over 20 minutes and 11th attempt, if anyone was wondering.

  Valeria remembered that she had to call someone, about getting me some help. She stepped away fishing out her phone, she didn't unplug the fucking robot first.

  “Hey Kani.” I could quite easily pick up her voice through the robot’s microphone. The laptops had been made to hear someone taking right next to it, while the robot’s was supposed to hear you from anywhere in the house. “You’re always raving about how you want to meet a MagAI, right?”

  “Don’t call me a MagAI.” I called from across the room. “I am a human trapped in a computer. That’s completely different from a MagAI!”

  “How?” She called.

  “I don’t know? How many MagAI have superpowers?”

  “What kind of superpower gets you stuck in a robot?”

  “This one.”

  “Did you get that?” Val asked, this time quieter, but not enough for the robot to miss it. There was a high pitched excited noise from the phone. I didn’t tap into the phone itself, because that was going a little too far for my tastes. The noise shifted abruptly from excited to down. Valeria spent some time cheering her up, before coming up with a date.

  “Alright, Kani.” She said. I could hear her walking back to the living room. “ I’ll see you in 2 days then. Bye!”

  “2 days?” I asked.

  “Yea, she has some client work that’s really important right now, but she was able to fit you in for getting some work done on Monday.”

  I didn’t answer immediately. While she had been talking with Kani, I had been reaching for the plug. Gently press pointer and thumb finger together. The two fingers closed around the plug. Stop, pull towards center for 2 centimeters, slowly. The hand moved away from the plug. The plug disconnected from the wall with a satisfying pop.

  “Wow, 11 attempts and you finally managed it,” Valeria said, looking at what I wrought.

  “Yup, only 11 attempts,” I said, erasing the 4 earlier attempts recorded. “I’m just that good.”

  She looked skeptical.

  Chapter Twelve

  “So how far was that?” I asked Val.

  She turned from her doorway to look at where the robot had stopped. “Maybe 17 meters?” She didn't sound very certain.

  “You don't sound very certain.”

  “Well, I’m not.” She said, looking from where I was sitting in her laptop, then back to where the robot was standing.

  “Alright so let’s just go with just under 20 meters then,” I said. “That’s not great range, but if I extend myself anymore, I start to lose grip of the robot.” I turned the robot around and had him walk back inside.

  Yesterday had been filled with new and enriching experiences. For one I had learned that I could command individual movement from the robot, down to speed and when to stop. I had also learned that it already had a bunch of self-made programs. For example. I could ping a spot in its field f view and tell it to walk, or even run, there and it would. No need for me to keep track of all the small individual movements.

  That had made it much easier for me to handle common tasks. There was one problem though. While I could detect all these programs that the now vacant AI had made, it didn’t label them as a human would. All I could see was a bunch 1s and 0s, it didn’t make sense to me. If I took the time, I could convert it to actual comprehensive text, but it literally had 17 different walking programs. None of them contained running by the way.

  Some of them I could sort of identify by recognizing certain movements they required of the robot, but there was a whole attachment of programs that I couldn't identify and didn’t have a clue what did. The only difference seemed that they were held distinctively different from the other programs. I could initiate them, but since I didn't know what they did I didn’t feel like risking it.

  I watched Val as the robot started walking back into her apartment. Her apartment held a kitchen living room mix, this meant that I watch her as she picked her way through the cluttered living space, to an area she had assigned as the kitchen.

  There was very little in the terms of hoarded stuff in this area, and all the kitchen tools were obviously well taken care of and she had gone to great lengths to keep them clean. After dinner last night—after she ate dinner last night—I saw her pull out a bunch of whetstones and sharpen all her knives. It was a cool experience to witness someone take such care to clean her blades. For some reason, I also found it really hot.

  She walked into the kitchen. For some reason she refused to bow down to modern society and just eat printed or ordered food. She insisted on making it herself. Weirdo.

  Though I supposed there must be enough people that cook for themselves that it cant be considered rare. At least judging from the grocery stores, though what I had learned in the orphanage and since I’d moved out hadn’t helped me any.

  I heard the robot start to order her hallway as I watched her cook. She was obviously proficient in the kitchen. Either she was a natural chef or she had a lot of practice cooking. I really didn't know which one sounded the least ridiculous.

  My commands for the robot only seemed to hold sway while I was keeping direct control of it
. If I turned my attention away, like when I was watching Val cook, it tended to revert to a simpler state. It just listened to its programming and started cleaning up. Curiously enough, it did have a program that contacted the house AI. That’s how it determined where to start. No matter where in the apartment it slipped its bonds of control, it always went to the hallway to clean.

  Val started to bake something on her pan. Bake? Is that right word? Cook? Doesn’t matter. It wasn't as fun to look at, as her effortlessly slicing through greens. I turned my attention to the robot, I didn’t want to give it a name in case I would need to use it as my body. Val thought it was likely since those kinds of robots could be quite expensive. She had graciously permitted me to keep it.

  It had cleared an area of the floor. From my vantage point, it was the first time I had seen the floor in the hallway, it had a wood replica flooring. One hand started loudly sucking up all the filth on the floor. Then it pulled out a piece of cloth from somewhere in it’s arm. The hand that had been vacuuming started spraying some sort of cleaning liquid on the floor and it started washing it.

  That made me curious. I was curious and bored. I called the robot over to me. I went over the code that it had currently active, the part that turned its left hand into a spray bottle. I skimmed through the programming until I found out where it was located. There was a whole series of codes. I started experimenting with a few, as I shifted to its field of view.

  One was a drying cloth, not surprising. I was surprised to find a cat and a dog toy.

  The next thing I found confused me. When I activated it, it didn’t just give me an on or off response. It was different, more like a gradient. I didn’t immediately detect anything when I turned it on, but ‘pushing’ the gradient towards the other end I first detected a noise. Then the hand started vibrating. Then it vibrated violently. Then the whole arm shook. For fun I had it come over and grab the table. The whole shook and rattled shaking the laptop with it.

  I slowly turned it off again. What could that be used for? I turned to find Val staring at me red faced and with raised eyebrows. I looked on the floor where the table stood. I had scuffed it pretty bad. Whoops. Still, I couldn't abide not knowing.

  “What’s it for?” I asked her curiously.

  She stared at the floor, the robot and then to the laptop, fromm where I currently wasn't looking. “You don't remember what kind of things could get on buildings when they weren't in a faked environment. Somethings required a pretty heavy hand. Like for example.” She cleared her throat, then cleared it again. She kept staring at the robot. “Like… detritus from storms and rain. Chalk and the like. It could build up pretty heavily and sometimes it required quite a bit of force to remove. I once saw someone removing it with a sledgehammer.”

  I nodded the robot. Curious. Exciting. She was insinuating that she was older than the Towers. Making her at least 70 years old, not unheard of for someone with Superpowers. Some powers man, they could keep you looking fun and hot forever. Still, detritus building up to that degree. I had to research that some more. I dove on to the laptop and opened a browser. The robot didn't have internet facilities.

  First I started by searching detritus cleaning. That didn't bring up much, just a bunch of old videos about cleaning aquariums. Then onto house cleaning. I was surprised by the sheer amount of information that I found pertaining to that subject. I didn’t know that lemons could be used to clean grease. Not that I had ever actually seen a lemon. I had once tasted lemon juice though. Very sour. Then finally I searched for cleaning house walls and fell down a rabbit hole.

  There was one advantage to my situation. I could search the internet really fast. I didn’t need to type. I could just make the words appear and when I got really going I could blur through text at an abominable rate. I didn’t absorb that much information, but I got a decent overview.

  Then I found power-cleaning. People from before the Wild Surge, using high-pressure water to clean their houses. It was fucking amazing. It the best feeling I could get stuck in a laptop. Especially since I couldn't feel touch and all that noise. It took me a little while of watched people clean their porches and houses before I realized that I hadn't been able to find anything on what she talked about.

  I turned my attention back to the living room. The first thing I did was turn the microphone back on. Immediately I heard soft whimpers and moans and under that a quiet vibrating tone. I turned the camera on, to see Val clutching the clothes of the robot. The robot had a death group on her hair and the other had hiked up her skirt…

  I found out what those weird detached programs were. A few of them had turned on, and then they had turned on Val.

  I didn’t know that could happen. She whimpered again. She tried to say something.

  “Sss-” but she cut out with another whimper. That finally brought me out of my stupor. I immediately jumped into the robot and pulled away from her. She almost fell to the floor as the robot suddenly stopped holding her up.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” I stammered. “ I didn't know it could do that, or that it would.”

  There was a silence between them, the only things audible was the sizzling of meat on the pan and the vibrating hand. I turned it off. “Uhh, I'm.” I tried to swallow, then avert my gaze, by looking away. I had let the robot get out of hand and it had tried to force itself against her. What the fuck, robot? Why would you do that?

  I turned it away and I started to order the hallway, manually. Keeping myself as attached to it as I could.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I closed the door as I entered the hallway. What the fuck did I do about that? I searched through the code, multiple times. Interpreting it as best I could. I could find nothing that would make the robot think that was okay. There was the other factor. The home AI. I tried pinging it for current duty. It immediately replied with a list of options.

  First upon that list. Satisfy Valeria Valencia. Then clean the hallway. Then clean the living room. I tried to order it to change the routine, to keep the house clean before ‘satisfying’ Val. Unfortunately, it was just too advanced for me to punch through its firewalls and control it like that. I would need the codes and that would be giving me too much power over Val’s household.

  Why would the AI think that she would need to be satisfied? I pinged it again. Immediate response. I was given a graph of information. At some point something had happened, this had caused her heartbeat to elevate. Her skin temperature to rise and a whole bunch of other outwardly symptoms that all came together into one equation. Arousal. Either that or severe fever.

  Considering the AI had something like 50 years of data on her and she had never once been ill. It determined that she was aroused and pinged the robot to deploy the sexual satisfaction package. That’s right. She had given me a robot with a sex package. She had given me a sex robot. Freak. What’s worse is that it had continued monitoring her while the robot started the programs. She had only gotten more aroused.

  The robot kept a backlog of an hours video. According to the internet, it was so you could catch those rare household moments forever. To me, it was just a bit creepy. I quick blur through the last five minutes showed that whenever she glanced at the computer, aka me. She would spike nervousness and slight fear, that must’ve been where the almost uttered stop came from, I supposed. However, the data also showed a massive spike in arousal.

  I looked at the data for a few moments, trying to put it all together.

  Then she stepped into the hallway.

  “Hey Vanys.” She began.

  “You’re an exhibitionist.” I blurted out before I could stop myself. She looked a little more composed than before, though I guess that’s not surprising. The AI pinged the robot to initiate the sexual satisfaction program, but I interceded the signal before the robot could respond.

  She blushed even further. “How did you? Doesn’t matter. I just-” For a moment I was afraid that she would explode with embarrassment, though it was hard to concentrate. I co
uld see her nipples tenting her shirt and it was very captivating. She truly was a beautiful woman. “Oh god. Yes! Fine! I just wanted to tell you that everything was fine. You needn’t worry about my safety. You’ve seen what I did to the chair, the robot couldn't stop me if I didn’t want it to.”

  “Maybe I didn't want you to defile my future body,” I said, telling the robot to raise an eyebrow.

  It really was like playing an incredibly advanced video game. That combined with the fact that I’d always preferred the coding part of creating my little gadgets, went well with discovering what the robots function was. I hadn't tried counting how many small programs the original AI had made, but it was more than a 100.000 different ones. It literally had a program for a slight raise of the left eyebrow and large raise of the left eyebrow. That was loosely translated from the binary, but still kinda interesting.