Tevun-Krus #106 - Best of '22

Electric Sheep - An Android Story by @elveloy

Electric Sheep

by elveloy

Gina opened her eyes, eager to see the world, but everything was disappointingly pitch black despite her best efforts.

Perhaps it was too soon, perhaps her programming was not yet complete.

After a while, she gave up searching the darkness and turned to internal contemplation. Streams of numbers rained down in mesmerizing sequences and there was a faint whirring noise, humming in the background of her mind. She wiggled her fingers and tried to tap her feet, without success. She knew she had extremities, because she could feel her connection to them, but she couldn't figure out how to activate them to do more than twitch. Something was stopping her.

She felt ready to experiment, to experience "life" but evidently she had yet to reach that stage in her installation programs. She wondered how much longer it was going to take. Curious, she reviewed the programs already installed. Sweeping, Dusting, Cooking, Washing, Ironing, Child Care. All of them involved movement and doing things. Useful things. Gina could hardly wait to get started.

Time passed slowly and, bored, she lapsed into sleep mode.

Images began to drift in and out of her consciousness, superimposed on the streams of numbers, splotches of colour and shapes she had no names for. Mildly irritated by the interruption, Gina tried to ignore them, attempting to concentrate on the purity of the numbers, until she realized the shapes were multiplying. First there was one, then two, then three, increasing by leaps and bounds. She began to count, absorbed by these new patterns. Briefly accessing her data bank, she identified them as prime numbers. Beautiful.

She was well into the millions when she was rudely interrupted.

The world was flooded with bright light, dazzling even before she opened her eyes. With no other warning, she found herself gripped by both arms and lifted into the air. The sensation was quite unpleasant. Her eyes struggled to focus, whirring and clicking in a distracting manner as the room spun around her.

What in Amca's name was happening? Before her concerns could turn into a full-blown panic attack, she was placed safely on the ground. A metal frame swung down from the ceiling and slotted into place over her shoulders, holding her upright. That was better. She felt much more stable now that everything had stopped moving. Did this mean her programming was finished? Was she getting ready to start work?

Gina scanned her programs to check if there was anything new but failed to detect any obvious changes. Although, oddly, she felt more alert, as if she'd had another level of power added to her RAM. She tried to turn her head and look sideways but nothing happened, her body remained immobile. Frustrated, she ran through her programs again.

Ah, there. She didn't know why she had missed it before but there was the key, a tiny virtual switch to flip to "on" instead of "off". She flipped the switch and became fully aware of her body for the first time. She stretched her arms out in front of her and examined them, paying special attention to the ten fingers. The tiny tools hidden inside each one were especially interesting. She experimented for a while, extending and retracting each device, learning as much as she could without actually using them on another object.

As she familiarized herself with her various body parts, she noticed that the frame on her shoulders was a little tight. Gina made a small adjustment and then looked around, eager to assess her surroundings. She was in a large warehouse. Strip fluorescent lighting illuminated bare metal walls and the floor was polished concrete, clean and dust-free.